Heading off to California

Tullamarine Departure

I flew out on my adventure on a Friday afternoon. Tullamarine was experiencing lots of delays I think probably due to the closure the day before so we finally got off about an hour and a half or so late. An hour of that was sitting in the plane waiting to be allowed to take off. As I had a scheduled three hour layover time in Auckland all was good and it just meant that I didn't have much to kill in New Zealand. I went Air New Zealand and the service was great. Neither flight was completely full and though that may not have been good for their profits it did mean there was more room to move. I watched Chinatown on the plane to get in the mood for California: it is such a good film.

In transit in Auckland

I arrived in San Fran about midday on Friday, due to the amazing feat of the date line before I had left Tullamarine. Customs was not too bad for delays as there was no one else in the hall when our flight arrived. I was all fingerprinted and photographed but we all got through in reasonable time.  Then I had to find Ronnie whose plane was due in at 12.45. We had two plans: one involved phones and the other a scheduled rendezvous near an art exhibition. Fortunately the latter worked perfectly as I couldn't activate my phone/sim for US number without instructions I had in my luggage (hand luggage admittedly) and then I discovered that I had not input Ronnie's cell phone number. Duh! It turned out she had also input mine with a wrong digit or I had sent the wrong number. So the art display was great. We got a shared door to door shuttle van into SF - a first for me!

View from our apartment on first day

Our apartment is in Castro towards Mission and just great. It is the middle floor of an Edwardian with another apartment above us and garages laundry etc below. As we are on a steep hill the garden out back is on our level.  And we have a great view from the front window as you can see above!

That afternoon we walked around the neighbourhood and chatted with an elderly Chinese man who had helped his father deliver laundry from Chinatown to the neighbourhood in the 1940s. We wandered Castro and bought yummy Nicaraguan ground coffee for the plunger in the apartment as well as having lunch/dinner/whatever at a burger place. Both of us were thoroughly out of kilter with meal times. Anyway a glass of Californian red helped wash that down.  We finished our outing with a visit to the Castro supermarket, Mollie's, for provisions. It had the amazing service of giving you and your groceries a lift home if you spent over $50!!