This was never going to be one of the best flights that we had due to us both still having flu but you don't really have much choice but to go when the time comes but at least it wasn't a middle of the night taxi ride to Heathrow. We always pick a Sunday to go on as the traffic on the roads is a lot more quitter so you don't need to set off as early, it was going to a long enough day as it was without adding more time to it. The flight didn't leave until 12.20pm but you still have to be there 3 hours beforehand to check in so the taxi turned up just after 6am and got us to Heathrow at about 7.30am, I'd rather be there early and sit around than be on the last minute, so we were able to check the bags in straight away to get rid of them and get Jane's wheelchair tagged as we were taking that on plane with us. All was going well to start with until we got stuck behind the idiot in front who wanted to take one golf club onto the aircraft. Most people know that you are not allowed to take items that can be used as a weapon onto the plane as hand luggage but there just seems to be no explaining to some people. As he was at the disabled counter and taking so long he really started to get on my nerves, eventually, the bloke behind the desk sent him upstairs to sort it out with somebody else so we could finally check the bags in. With that done there really isn't much else to do for the next few hours apart from a walk around and get a drink, neither of us felt like eating as we didn't feel too good. When it got to around 9am we thought sod it and went through the security part where you get searched and got something to eat on that side, at a price. It’s not that cheap to buy food at the airport. As you don't really have a lot of choice on that side you’re stuck with what you have, anyway, that wasn't going to spoil things. So onwards and upwards, as they say, time to spare and all that so lots more sitting around for us. As normal the gate you need to get on the plane is always going to miles away from where you are that's one of the reasons we took the wheelchair with us. We got to the plane and they were already loading the people with the expensive tickets on but we got called to the front of the queue, being in a wheelchair has its advantages sometimes so we were on the plane in only a few minutes but sadly we didn't go anywhere for the next hour. It’s bad enough sitting on a plane for 11 hours without a delay. But there's not much you can do about it but grin and bear it.
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| Streetcars at end road |
So there we sat for the next 12 hours flying to San Francisco without even moving and starting to feel more ill than ever, it seemed like it was never going to end this flight, things weren't helped by the air on the plane was so dry, by the time we got off I thought I was going to have a stroke or something very similar. At least we got out of the airport in record time; I think it took about 30 minutes from leaving the plane to being on the train station. We got the woman on the ticket booth to sort the tickets out for us for the train as the machines are not that easy to use and then had to wait only about 10 minutes for the train to turn up. After that it’s another 30 minutes on the BART train into the city. As we had been before we knew where to go when we got off the train to get to the hotel so the last bit wasn't as bad as thought it was going to be, what really helped was that they have now put a lift in from the BART station up to the Westfield shopping canter so we could drop into Walgreen's to get a couple of bottles of drink then headed out of the west door and a couple of minutes later we were at the hotel.
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View of SF Chronicle
from hotel |
By now we were both feeling really rough so all as we could do was drop the bags and crawl into bed and watch a bit of TV for a few minutes. Even the fire department trucks racing pasted couldn't keep us awake on this night. With that we fell asleep and didn't hear anything until about lunchtime the following day. At least the worst part was over; I'm not that keen on traveling a long distance to start with so things could only get better from now on I hoped. I think this had been one of the longest days we have had ever, I think from the time we got out of bed on the day we set off to the time we got in bed at the hotel 18 to 20 hours (by now it was around 3am UK time) must have pasted and we was feeling every single minute of it but we knew it was never going to be the easiest of days for us.
