Day One

The Auckland -> San Francisco -> Washington leg.

Had a nice farewell lunch at Julie & Georges place, Alan and Angela came over to join us.  Much consternation as I try to move my contacts from my old piece of junk phone to my shiny new Galaxy S5.  For some reason I can’t access the contacts on my old sim card.  Much hilarity ensues as I EVENTUALLY  realise it’s because I’ve switched it to flight mode, so the sim can’t be accessed.  Sigh.  Sometimes it’s hard being me. 

We leave for the airport in plenty of time, there has been a fire at a substation and there are approx 80,000 homes without power, which also means all the traffic lights in the area are out as well.  Thankfully there are no issues, drivers are being sensible and traffic is light, most unusual for Auckland & we arrive with plenty of time to spare.  We board on time and are pleasantly surprised to find the aisle seat next to us remains empty, so we have extra space to spread out.  The flight is smooth and uneventful, just how we like it.  A few crying babies do their thing to hamper our chances of sleeping, I manage to get a few hours kip and try not to fidget the rest of the time.  We arrive early in SFO, no issues getting through Immigration, getting finger-printed or getting our luggage, though we snigger at Carousel 2 just in from Tokyo, so jammed with trollies and anxious travellers 6 deep that no one can actually GET to the carousel to pick up their bags J

We hike across to Terminal 2 to check in for our next flight, it’s hot and sunny and we stink like pole cats, so buy two new t-shirts to stop the dogs from following us.

Grab some lunch while we wait for out flight to Washington.  Board on time but some kind of auxillary power unit is not working so that means they have to start one of the engines while we are at the gate, and for some reason that causes quite a long delay.  So we are 45 minutes late taking off.  Sigh.  Another uneventful flight, this time on Virgin America, which is budget and you have to pay for everything, including checked luggage, food and movies.  Tea Coffee and water is free, and the coffee is much nicer than the swill Air New Zealand had the nerve to call coffee.  But the late departure means that it’s 1am by the time we collect our bags, wait for the shuttle and get dropped to our apartment for the night.  We are staying at Washington Circle in an apartment we rented off Airbnb.  It’s a quaint old Georgian brick house, very quirky, but the one disadvantage of booking something like this is it’s not as easy to find and let yourself into at 1am.  Thankfully the instructions were pretty thorough and we had no issues once we found the place.