Reykjavik to San Francisco

The final leg of our trip was the flight from Reykjavik to San Francisco airport. We flew WOW Air, a budget Icelandic airline.

After waiting for a mechanical problem to be corrected, we were in the air and on our way home. G mostly snoozed, and I mostly binge-watched Netflix shows I had downloaded in the Reykjavik airport.

About 8 1/2 hour later, we were on the ground in San Francisco. Tired and hungry and sore from sitting so long, we stumbled off the plane and into the airport. After waiting our way through the immigration line, we emerged in the airport.

We caught an Uber and made it home by 11PM. Exhausted, I went straight to sleep. I had work the next day.

Journey to Peru

Feb 11, 2014 1:42 AM

Months ago, my friend Alli and I booked tickets to fly to Lima, Peru. Neither of us had ever been, so we decided to venture together. We booked at different times on the same day. The result was that we were on different flights from San Francisco to Atlanta, but we were on the same flight from Atlanta to Lima.

After we booked the flight, we essentially forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago when we realized that we had to start booking hotels an tours. We also had to get the appropriate immunizations.

We rushed around to get everything done in time. We met a couple of times to make plans, and we both made doctor's appointments.

Suddenly, it was February 10th and time to fly out to Lima. We boarded our separate flights (Alli boarded hers about 8 hours before me as she had a much worse connection).

Now, we are at the Lima airport. We are basically stuck here for the next 5 hours until our next flight leaves. I was expecting a fairly empty airport, mostly shut down. I was wrong. Near arrivals, there are dozens of taxi drivers and hundreds of family members waiting to pick people up. Apparently, a number of flights come through Lima in the middle of the night, so the airport doesn't really shut down. All the restaurants are open, as are the kiosks and convenience shops.

Lima airport.

Every few minutes, an announcement comes over the speaker at a very high decibel. For the first hour or so, we were dealing with the loud scraping noises of metal chairs and tables being dragged across tile flooring as the cleaning crew. And now, we are being serenaded by music emitting from Manos Morenas (yes, that's the real name of a nearby restaurant).

From here, we fly to Cusco. From Cusco, we will take a bus or maybe a taxi to Ollantaytambo, Sacred Valley. Only another 7 or 8 hours of travel time left.

Sigh.

On My Way Home

I just boarded a bus headed to Bergen Airport. I love that most Scandinavian buses provide free wireless internet on board.

Today, I fly to London Heathrow, and then I make my connection to SFO. I will arrive in San Francisco around 5PM.  G emailed to say he would pick me up from the airport. Lucky me! I won't have to deal with riding the bus home after such a long flight.

The next time you hear from me I'll be back home in San Francisco.

Home at Last

I've lived today, January 11th, twice (because Tokyo is 17 hours ahead of San Francisco). The first this morning G and I went to the Imperial Palace gardens in Tokyo, ate lunch at an Italian-ish trattoria, and got on the plane to return to San Francisco. The second this morning, we arrived at the airport, G went to work, and I went home, but later went to work.

And now we are now both home and ready for the sleep that eluded us on our planes. We have, for the first time in our lives, lived a day twice.

Going Back Home

Of the five hotels we stayed at, four required that we check out by 10am.  We really could have used an extra hour at the hotel this morning for packing and resting up for the nine hour flight.  Today, we left Tokyo; but not before we explored the Imperial Palace gardens.

View from the hotel room

We checked out of the hotel right at ten, having been warned of an automatic fee for staying past.  The Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel was located very near the Imperial Palace, so we saved that destination for last.  We basically crossed the street and arrived at the park surrounding the palace.

Like the palace in Kyoto, the Tokyo palace was unseeable and untouchable.  The gardens, however, were available for pulbic use.  Dozens of runners were using the patch circling the palace.  The palace is ringed by parkland and the gardens are east of the palace and behind the watchful eye of a guard.

Imperial Palace parkland in Tokyo.

One of the problems with visiting Japan in the winter is that none of the gardens are very attractive; none of the flowers are in bloom and most of the trees have lost their leaves.  Despite this emptiness, the gardens still held some surprises, including the base of a castle destroyed centuries ago and never rebuilt and a bansho (or samurai guardhouse) where we heard the grunts and groans of what sounded like a martial arts class.

Base of a castle destroyed long ago

Moat around palace with city in the background

We exited the gardens by the east gate.  The next order of business was food.  We hadn't eaten breakfast, and it was already noon.  We managed to find an Italian trattoria popular with the lunch crowd from the nearby high rise office buildings.  They vegetarianized one of the four meaty pasta dishes on their menu for me.

We finished our meal and hopped  on the metro (we had managed to walk three stops from our hotel).  We got back to our hotel, grabbed our bags, and hopped back on the metro to get to the train station to take the reserve only Narita Express to the airport.

We managed to make it to the airport, check in for our flights, return our Suica (metro) cards and the phone we rented, and say our goodbyes.  We were not flying on the same plane; Greg's ticket was purchased by his company and we couldn't afford a ticket for me on the same flight.

My return flight wasn't nearly as horrible as the flight there.  One of the first things I told Greg when I arrived in Japan is that I would have to stay there forever because I couldn't take another flight like that.  But I survived.  Perhaps the flight was bearable in part because of the interesting Canadian couple seated next to me.  The girl cried, then stopped, then cried, and then the boy cried.  I didn't get it because I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but the drama did make my journey more enjoyable.  I spent much of the flight speculating about what was going on.  I have no definite conclusion.

Greg and I met up at the airport (our flights left and arrived 30 minutes apart).  We boarded the train at the airport.  He got off in Burlingame to go to work and I went home.  Home, sweet home.