I just came back from a weekend with my family in San Francisco. I flew down to heavy fog, and left in 70* sunshine.
That is the city of my youth in a nutshell: a dichotomy of dynamic tension.
As promised:
We flew out on Friday afternoon, and returned this (Monday) afternoon. Three hours time difference. I thought I was doing OK, but by the gentle shake in my hands and lack of focus — oh, and did I mention the tendency to babble whateverthought is going through my brain at any given moment? — seem to indicate that I am not fully functioning.
Blog posts on hold till I recover — but as a tease, my first one will be:
“Guns, A Wedding, and Rock n Roll: My Weekend in Ohio”
Going to Europe was incredible. The section was quite empty (likely due to the season and not the usual happenstance) and we got very attentive service. The food was also quite good (for airline food) and felt ‘real’ rather than like a school room cafeteria. We started with a fresh salad (real lettuce, not iceberg) and a shrimp, prosciutto, and vegetable crudités. The main course was a choice between bacon-wrapped strip loin, pecan-crusted chicken breast and cheese totellacci (no, not tortellini). I had the beef (very good, very tender) and J had the pasta (very rich and delicious). I skipped dinner but J enjoyed his key lime cheesecake (which tasted like real key limes were used, not bottled concentrate – and it was NOT green, always a good sign). About 90 minutes before arrival we were served a nice continental breakfast of bread, yogurt, fruit and preserves.
The return trip’s food was not very good at all. Quite a disappointment. The salad was poor quality and had a lot of iceberg in it. My filet mignon was overcooked, dry and required the mashed potatoes to make it edible. My green beans were absolutely inedible. J’s cannelloni was actually more tortellini, and was decent. The ‘specialty dessert’ was a cookie. Our meal prior to arrival was a Tuscan Sandwich and was cold, hard, and may have been decent if it had been room temperature. Very unsatisfactory.
That said the seats in Business Class are worth the expense (or the miles, which is a different kind of expense, but how we managed it). We both were able to sleep and it made all the difference in the world in how we felt when we arrived.
Pictures are now available at www.pitchwife.net.
Because we were meeting Gretchen at 9:00am in front of the Rodin Museum, we asked for a wake up call for 8am. To our horror, the phone rang at 9am – there was no way we were going to make it in time if we were going to shower and dress fancy for lunch. Friends are more important than food, so we canceled our lunch reservation and got with the moving. We were out the door and into a taxi and in front of the museum at 9:30, no later. And no Gretchen! It would have been weird for her to have left, even if we had made her wait for 30 mins in the cold. But when it was 9:45 and still no sign of her, we went in.
Our day began at the Eiffel Tower around 11am. Two of the elevators were being renovated (apparently they were actually being modernized) and we aren’t fans of heights, so we decided to skip the lines. Today was the first day we had sun – the sky was clear and bright blue, the city looked very different.
We planned to wake up early, see the Louvre and then go to lunch at a 3-star (the highest appellation possible in France). Not so much. We slept until 11am and that meant that lunch was our breakfast. So as to not completely lose out on sightseeing, we took a taxi to a point about ½ way up the Champs Ellysses and from there walked up to the Arc d’ Triomphe.
We slept until after 11am, and it easily could have been after noon. We clambered up from the depths of a very good sleep and looked at various walks for the day. (Breakfast was a croissant and hot drinks from a local boulangerie.)
Business Class is _the_ way to fly to Europe, and Melatonin is your friend. We ate well, I had yummy wine (1st Class was essentially empty so the cabin attendant brought me back wine from that cabin to drink — and gave me a bottle “to taste” for the hotel room.) and we slept at least 3 hours. I say this with pleasure because our trip to London elicited catnaps and maybe an hours sleep — TOTAL. *shudder*. Business Class seats are much more comfortable (they recline nearly 180 degrees for one thing) than Economy Plus, and the food was very very good, and so is the wine. It was seriously empty, so we had lots of individual attention. Oh — and the ‘amenity bags’ are great! Eye mask, ear plugs, socks, toothbrush & toothpaste, and really nice moisturizer. All in a very handy bag.