Nataliya and Seth's San Francisco Vacation
When things started going wrong at 3:30 AM, I knew that this
was destined to be a very long day...
I woke up around 3:30 AM needed to use the shared bathroom in the hall.
Figuring that I'd be back in the room in a minute, I chose to put on the
small bathtowel instead of the robe they supplied us with to go to bathroom.
As the lock engaged on the door, I suddenly came to the realization that the
card key was still laying in the room.
Well, I decided to just go to the bathroom anyway, and upon returning,
I started knocking on the door. No reply. I knocked a little louder, fully
aware of the thin walls and the people who would be upset if I knocked too
loudly in the middle of the night. Again, no reply from Nataliya - she was
sleeping very soundly - she'd have to considering the snoring that others
claim they hear coming from me.
I stopped knocking and decided to go to the front desk to get another card.
I took the stairs four flights down, the towl barely holding onto my waist,
the slit in the side revealing a bit more than I felt comfortable displaying.
I guess after 9 days in this hotel, I got a bit too comfortable in my
10'x10' room.
When I got downstairs, the night-time manager at the front desk chuckled
- he'd seen this happen many times before but it was always funny. He
called to the assistant and asked him to activate another card-key for me.
After he spent a moment checking me out - hey, it's San Francisco - he made
another room key and I went up to sleep.
Once I got to my room, I found that I was no longer tired, so I watched
"Tomb Raider"
until around 5:15 AM. That's when we got the wake-up call. We had to
wake up and get moving to get to the airport before the crowds.
When checking out of the hotel, the manager and the assistant both immediately
recognized me. The manager made some joke that the clothing was an
improvement. (Not sure the assistant felt the same way, though...) I
suppose I should have felt embarrassed, but we all had a laugh.
After the airport shuttle arrived, we got to the airport within 25 minutes.
We checked in within minutes and then went to the Business Elite room to wait.
We loaded the plane for the return trip relatively quickly, probably because
it wasn't a full load. but the plane didn't leave the gate right away. In
fact, we ended up being delayed for about twenty minutes because there
were five people still working their way through security.
But before long, we were cruising down the
runway and climbing over the clouds, on our way back east!
Once we took off, we started to watch the in-flight movie,
"My Big Fat Greek
Wedding" which was very funny! (It sort of makes the idea
that eloping might not so bad after all!)
Then we watched the first part of
"Scarlett" which
I liked, but Nataliya wasn't too impressed as she's a big fan of the
original.
Once the plane reached NY, we had to circle around the airport a few times
before landing. The landing was a bit rough - possibly the hardest
landing I've ever felt in an aircraft. (Still, any landing you walk away
from is a good one, right?)
Then, right before getting to our gate, we had to turn around and taxi
around for 20 minutes because another plane was late in leaving our
destination gate!
We went over to pick up our luggage. Once we got there, we found our driver
waiting for us. We watched as the luggage was loaded onto the belt, and we
waited... and waited... and waited... When it was obvious that our luggage
wasn't coming out, our driver took us to claim our missing luggage.
The woman found that that our luggage wasn't even on our plane, but luckily,
it made its way to NYC on an earlier plane. We found our luggage in the
back with the rest of the unclaimed luggage! Whew!
So, to summarize, we were out of the plane at 6:00 PM, in the car service
by 7:10, and home by 7:50...
Our vacation to San Francisco was over. No one wore flowers in their hair, we certainly didn't leave our hearts there, and we still don't have any idea where we could enjoy some Californication, despite all the time we spent sitting on the dock by the bay.
Anyway, Trip completed, and glad to be home!
The End!
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