Time to leave

So it's another bright sunny day in San Francisco but it's time for us to leave. We didn't get up until about 9:30am as most of the things we had to pack had been done the day before so it was time to lounge around for a bit and watch some TV as we didn't have to check out on the hotel until midday. We eventually left at about 11:30 and walked up to Powell Street station which is only a short walk of about five minutes or so. The station is underground so we went into the Westfield shopping center to avoid the stinking lifts that are outside, this time we managed to work out how to use the ticket machines for the BART train which we had problems with on previous times, turns out you have to put the money in first then then use the buttons to change the value to what the correct fare is that you get from a chart above the machine then press issue.

It was down the 2 sets of lifts to get to the bottom level were the BART train goes from every 15 minutes on a Saturday so we didn't have long to wait. These trains are getting fairly old now they rattle squeak their way to the airport in about 30 minutes but they are making the seats with padding now unlike some that still have the hard plastic ones but for the price, you pay for the ticket which was around £5 you can't really complain. At least when you get off you are right in the terminal that you need to be, there nothing worse than having to catch the air train around the airport to the terminal you have to get to. 

By now the time was about 1pm and the flight didn't leave until 7:35pm so we had a coffee and used the cash machine to check how much was still left on the pre-paid credit card we had, I think we were both surprised to find out that there was still $120 left on it, time to have a look in the shops and get spending. The first thing we found was a pocket watch with San Francisco on it so we had to buy that for $25. Now it was a good time to get something to eat so we got a cheeseburger and chips (fries) from one of the restaurants and a beer that came to another $25 I think but it was worth it because the food they give you on the plane is crap. Now it was time to walk off what we had eaten so it was time to have a look at the museum they have in the airport, the displays are always changing throughout the year and it was jewelry so not really of any interest to us but at the far end they had a display of old scale model aircraft from the 1970’s so that was worth looking at. By now it was nearly 3pm and check-in for opens at 3:15, normally they are open all the time but because this was Virgin Atlantic they do it on the cheap so you can't get rid of your bags straight away unlike United Airlines. Once we had got rid of them we headed straight for the security check to go airside at about 3:30pm. Once through there are only a few shops compared to other airports we have been so with 4 hours still to kill we first went to the cash machine to draw out what was left on the card in cash as you don't get a good exchange rate when you come here and it only charged you a couple of dollars, that left just enough on there to buy a bag of sweets to clean the card out, I think there were about 60 cents left on it in the end. So with so much time to kill, we found a bar right down at the far end of the terminal that overlooked the runway and watched the planes being pushed out from the gates to the runway. The best thing of all was that the bar sold bottles of blue moon beer for $6 each so I sunk a few of those before boarding the plane at 7pm. Even though they pack about 300 people on they loaded it fairly quickly and it departed on time. As I thought the food was abysmal and they even managed to make the beer taste bad but we were stuck on here for 10 hours so you just have to make the best of it so after a few cups of coffee it was time to try to get some sleep which is almost impossible on a plane.