They've All Gone To Look For America

Takeoff was somewhat delayed due to some people who were transferring flights.

Whilst walking to the gate, it had seemed we would be travelling on one of Qantas' new A380s. But then we kept walking and saw that that plane was for QF11 to LA. QF73 to San Fransisco (my flight) was on one of those faintly old and incredibly cramped Boeing 747-400s. And it was completely full.

Taking up a reasonable chunk of Economy was (and someone had better tell Koby about this) the Sydney baseball team for the U25ish age group.

The inflight movie selection was underwhelming. I watched How To Train Your Dragon, which was fantastic, and Wog Boys 2, which was rather funny thanks to my wog roots; but they were about it.

The plane took off at 1400 EST, and by about 2130 EST, I was completely exhausted. So I had a nap, only to be awoken at about 0030 EST for breakfast. Strangely, I was quite awake regardless of the fact that I'd only had 3h sleep.

We arrived at 0300 EST [wednesday] or 1000 WST [tuesday] (NB: from now on, all times will be in Western Standard), spent a very long time in customs (and it would have been longer had I not used my Canadian citizenship, and mum her Canadian Landed Immigrant status), and eventually got onto the BART train station at the airport (Bay Area Rapid Transport - they didn't just nickname it).

The trains were lovely. One level, well set out, spacious, well ventillated and a hell of a lot more fast than Cityrail. They were powered by an electrified 3rd rail. This becomes relevant later.

From SFO, we caught a red line train to San Bruno, followed by a yellow line train to Millbrae, at which point we tranferred to Caltrain to get to San Jose/Diridon.

I'd like to comment on the design of the train stations. A fusion of Brutalism and dingy neo-classical Cityrail.

And as for the Caltrains... Giant double decker diesel drawn (sorry, I had to keep going once I'd started) behemoths which (and it may have just been that car) smell of ammonia. Ick. Ickickickickick. The countryside is however quite pretty. Very Californian.

And everyhting here is huge. The stores, the roads, the schools, which all have aroung 3-4k students. The schools here are purty.

I wrote that at 1155 and I was still quite awake. Mum, on the other hand, who only slept during the last hour of the flight was failing miserably to stay awake.

The rest of the day was spent going through giant shopping centres. There was a Westfield, and all I can say is the Australian ones are set out better.

That's it for today. Or perhaps not. Who knows. Tata all.