Well everyone, it is with great sadness that I type this final post and bring an end (almost) to our USA 2009/2010 holiday. It's been a wonderful experience and made even moreso by my trusty travel companion, my sweet BlackBerry Katherine. Since this is going to be a long "day" (wake up 10am on Thursday morning, land in Durban 11:30am Saturday), we will do our best to keep the post as close to a picture-story (with captions) as possible, for your reading pleasure. For those that have endured my lengthy accounts of our holiday, thank you for taking the time - it was a joy feeling like people that we value were sharing in our day-to-day adventures. Thanks too for your comments!
I woke up 8am'ish, but saw Kat was still sound asleep, so I snoozed our alarm until about 10am, whereafter we got up and packed. We were fully packed and ready to check out by 1pm (I had arranged a late checkout time with frontdesk of 3pm). The initial plan was to get up at 8am, collect my camcorder from John Bennett, and do some touristy stuff while my camcorder charged, before returning to our room at about 2:30pm to checkout after final clean-up. We had also planned to pack our bags the night before, but we were both exhausted by that time. So 1pm checkout wasn't ideal, and it would probably have been better to sleep on the planes and to be up early today to enjoy our last day and make it more productive, but in hindsight you can tell how beneficial the sleep was especially for an over-worked Kat, who looks stunning and radiant in these pictures (but you can watch the slow deterioration into exhaustion as the day progresses, teehee). Also, I think the sadness to be leaving USA also contributed to our slow packing process! The worst part was that Kat was starting to fall sick with a possible fever / post-nasal drip, and she had a sore throat. At least she held out until the bitter end!
First stop was China Basin to collect my camcorder and meet the hero of the moment, John Bennett. Kat is seen with my our camcorder. The total cost of the camcorder (after deducting the shipping costs) was below the R6,000.00 threshold for import tariffs.
This is Kat's favorite eating place in San Francisco; the prices are reasonable, and the selection is good, and the portions are big, and the quality is great! I had my eye on the soup :)
And with good reason too! Check out this soup! Oh man it sounds delicious, and trust me, it is!!
THIS is a meal fit for a king - I would go back to SFO just for this soup! The bread is free (don't laugh, I always check before they give it to me), and the soup is divine. My mouth waters just thinking about it. And it was a good price - $6.
I've never heard of "aluminum plastic newspaper" but I can imagine it makes for a very interesting read! In most other countries, people with brains refer to it as "aluminium".
This giant locust is actually a bus running on electric cable. Two funny stories: we boarded a bus like this to get to China Basin, and we were greeted by four SFPD patrol cars parked behind it, six officers outside, and two officers inside the bus. I thought they were looking for someone, but Kat thinks she heard them talk about a missing backpack. Some bomb scare or something. Funny story #2: we boarded this bus in the picture to leave China Basin, and when we got off at this stop, the bus driver noticed someone sneak on without a pass (things in SFO and LA are a lot less stringent with metro, and you could very easily be a free-rider here because they don't use the control methods that NYC uses). She announced to the back of the second cab that if the person didn't own up, they wouldn't be moving. Sure enough, five minutes later the bus was still there, and we could see the bus driver still looking down the barrel to the back of the bus and I believe I heard her say she'd call the cops. Haha. The bus was way behind schedule, but good tactic, because by then everyone on the bus was getting bleak with the sneaky free-rider too!
We high-tailed it back to Union Square to take our sightseeing tour, but the bus we wanted had just disappeared before we got there (I saw the blue bus driving off), so we were looking around when another tour company asked us to go with them. In the end they gave us the $65 package for $20 each, and it included a ride to the Golden Gate Bridge. This goes to prove that even the "white-collar" guys can be bartered with. The bus was a hop-on-hop-off bus, with about six other passengers. We sat in the open-top of the bus and our first stop was Chinatown. Kat immediately wanted to hop off, but I was aware of the time - it was 2:40pm and we needed to be at Fisherman's Wharf at 4pm in order to get the bus to Golden Gate Bridge (after that, we'd stop off near Alamo Square at 5pm, so we could view the sunset by the Victorians). I set our alarms and we then strolled into the LARGEST Chinatown outside of Asia.
Me and the kids. Admit it, I'd be a funny dad!
This has to be the most cliched scene in the world.
Nerd alert: see the poster for Mass Effect 2?
What? A close-out sale of 50% to 70% off? What a bargain! We better buy something there!!
What? A retirement sale of up to 90% off? Another bargain! Let's buy something there too!
Wait! There's even a clearance sale of jewelry too! Buy! Buy! Buy!
What? A closing sale too? Such bargains! Buy! Buy! Buy!
Everything MUST go? That's such a unique business model for a shop! This is surely a first - normally shops operate with the mantra "nothing must go" so we must be in bargain country now! Let's snap up this bargain too! ... sheesh, talk about tourist fodder!!
I didn't doctor this photograph in any way; it looks doctored, doesn't it? There's almost an optical illussion here; which building is in the foreground and which is in the background.
AWESOME SIGHT!!
Uh oh. A blue branded camera shop. It looks like the yellows have some competition.
Chinatown, obviously.
I can't believe it! A clearance sale! This is so exciting - and so... rare...
I still don't know much about this cone-shaped tower, but I have to say it's beautiful (if I haven't already). It is certainly iconic of San Francisco.
We hit a muni bus to the Golden Gate Bridge because we missed the tour bus (we stayed too long in Chinatown, and the bus we expected to arrive for us to hop on didn't, so we missed out on the tour bus that takes you over Golden Gate Bridge to Vista Point and back again). We decided instead to give up on the $40 tour package we'd bought and to make our own way to the bridge. The initial plan had been for the tour bus to be our transport for the entire day (since it took us to the key points on a hop-on hop-off basis), but it was already after 4pm and we had little time remaining to get to the bridge before sunset. Fortunately a friendly bus driver from the morning had given us each "all-day" transfers (you're entitled to one 90 minute transfer per bus ride, so thanks to his generosity we only paid $2 each for use of the bus all day, which is a far side cheaper than the one-day muni pass of $13 which we had anticipated, or the $2 per bus trip). He had apparently recognised us as tourists and he wanted to help us out, so our transport was free for the day anyway (there are some really friendly and generous people here, and we have truly been blessed as a result). It was just a pity that we had paid $40 for a sightseeing tour we couldn't use, and after complaining to them, we weren't even going to be around the next day to benefit from the "free" second day they'd offered us. 
The bricks around the Golden Gate Bridge have been sponsored or something, because there were a whole lot of bricks with names. I hadn't even noticed because I was so excited to get to the bridge, but Kat spotted them so we stopped to have a squizz.
Some bricks even told a story :)
Self-portrait of us and the bridge! Woohoo! Iconic San Francisco sightseeing completed.
The view from the west-side of the bridge (there's a pathway that leads under the bridge and around to the beaches below)
West-side sunset.
It's a pity we only have a bog-standard camera, because it doesn't completely capture the grandeur and beauty of the view. The gentle mist that hovers around the base of the cliffs, the gentle rolling of the waves on the beach, and the peaceful serenity of a Pacific Ocean sunset (if you can ignore the hundreds of cars hurtling past on the bridge behind you).
I had to take a picture of the construction of the bridge. It's just a monstrosity of steel and metal.
A somber reminder of what some people come to the bridge for. There were emergency phones posted on some points on the bridge.
A beautiful shot of lovely Kat and the sparkling city of San Francisco in the distance. Again, the camera still fails to do true justice to the beauty. Kat and I had a wonderful view of the city and the sea as the city started to "turn on" for the evening. The camera was failing to capture properly because of the low light, but this is probably the most beautiful shot we took :)
(If anyone is wondering why we didn't go to the west-side to capture the sunset; the west-side of the bridge is a cycle lane, and we had already tried, but were asked to go by the cyclists, and there are a LOT of cyclists using the bridge)
Darkness is falling. The city is awakening.
I LOVE this photo! I shot this with the SONY on low-light (slow shutter) and it is probably the best sort of shot we can hope to get with the camera in low-light.
Alas, all good things do finally have to come to an end, and as with our beautiful day, we had to return to the hotel lobby to await the airport shuttle. On the bright side, we managed to end our holiday in grand style with a viewing of the sunset over the Pacific Ocean from the Golden Gate Bridge - I don't think we could have asked for more! Starting the holiday with New Years in New York City, and ending with a sunset over the Pacific Ocean from Golden Gate Bridge. We have been blessed!!!
SFO airport is huge. In fact, all the airports we've been to have been huge. I guess I should be surprised that San Francisco only has one international airport when compared to LA's three, or DC, or NYC, but nonetheless, it is huge!!
Check this out - you can buy songs for your iPod - how cool is that??
In a moment of heroism, I managed to capture the attack on the San Francisco Soup Company by those dastardly miniature biplanes.
Sourdough bread of all varieties. We have turtles, teddy bears, and even BUNnies...
This is my last meal in SFO - cheese and broccoli soup in a sour dough bread bowl... essentially it's a scam, because it works out to be cheese and broccoli quarter bunny-chow :)
Security at the US airports was quite strict. Take your shoes off. Walk through a scanner. Get frisked. Get your bags checked, and so on. Quite a big operation, but at least the security personnel are friendly and courteous (mostly). The security guard we chatted to asked where we were from, asked why we didn't see Yosemite Park, etc. and it was a nice chat - he encouraged us to come back, so they do a good job of promoting their home too!
This became a pet peeve of mine. People that put their carry-on luggage in the overhead storage lockers like this. If they put them in "vertical" rather than "horizontal" then there would be more space for other bags. As people board the plane, the seating process becomes longer and drawn out because people are hunting for nearby lockers to put their bags, and by the time you get there to put your bag in, there's no more space. I got into the habit of talking loudly about this and people started to reshift their bags "vertically", otherwise I'd just reorganise the locker for Kat and me to squeeze our bags in.
THIS is the right way to stow your luggage!
Great sadness as we depart JFK (we stopped off at JFK after SFO - the SFO - JFK flight left at about Thursday 10:30pm and crossed the various timezones and landed in JFK at 6am'ish Friday). We left JFK just after 8am for JHB. We are tired (having woken up on Thursday morning 10am) and sad to be leaving our wonderful adventure :(
(We fortunately missed extra delays by the Haiti security scare later that day!)
Woohoo! At least we have a great selection of latest releases to watch on our long flight home!
What??? No!!! These are the same as the ones we had on the way to NYC! I must complain! This is not right! I want my money back! Not even any popcorn!!
Kat got a "no dairy" special meal for the flight back; it was a bit strange, but in hindsight we suspect Kat also had it on the way to NYC but the woman in front of her was given her meals.
TRAVEL TIP: specify LOW FAT or NO DAIRY or whatever on the special meal requests list when booking your flights and you get really quality meals and ahead of everyone else too! Admit it, it looks like a nice meal - and it was delicious!!
One thing I'm not so sure about - this cutlery thing. I look rather menacing with my fork, and I could definitely have done some damage. Just imagine if these fell into the wrong hands. What are they thinking??
TRAVEL TIP: Sneak to the back of the plane during the flight and help yourself to copious amounts of free chow. Pictured here is just a small selection of what you can get: water, fruit juice, ham rolls, cheese rolls, various biscotti, and chocolates. If you're heading to your destination, especially grab as many as possible and stash them into your carry-on, and if they're non-perishables, you'll have yourself sorted for snacks for the first few days!!
I bought these to keep myself sane on the flight home. I snuck these into my bag from JFK (I paid for them though!! $5 in JFK). They were absolutely delicious!! Granted, the pretzels on the cover look more like masks from SCREAM.
I had bought these the night before from Walgreens for $2.69 (JFK charged me DOUBLE) - we only discovered Walgreens was literally ten metres up the road from our hotel on the last night we were there, and boy was I miserable about that late discovery. It sold fresh fruit, cheap cooldrinks, snacks, mementos, the works! We could have saved at least $20 a day probably, and that would have added up to almost $100 in SFO!
Here's a comparison of the no-dairy breakfast to the normal breakfast.
Not too much different. Kat gets a roll with jam, whereas I get a croissant with yoghurt. Otherwise pretty much the same!
JHB to DBN - Kat is fading. I have passed "that point" and am floating on some ethereal fumes.
Lunch time on SAA, DBN bound! Yummy!!
Observe the madness slowly enveloping poor BrYan's mind... slowly, relentlessly, unavoidably...
Sigh. This would have been even funnier if Kat had got the angle correct. World's funniest photograph. FAIL.
Not only did I score a memento from our BROADWAY show, but I also used my little Santa as a smuggling device to bring home the oats, teas, plastic cutlery, and various bathroom paraphernalia that we paid for while in the USA. Good on you Santa! No-one suspects Santa!
Behold!
The fruits of our labour! The prizes of industry! The spoils of victory! The loot of our conquests!
Bath salts, shampoo's, conditioners, body lotions, soaps, sweets, pens, chocolates (from the plane), shower caps, and the (now legendary) HEINZ ketchup bottle (from day one of our holiday).
Our last experience of "Real Food" was Charlottesville, so by the time we came home we were so desperate for some "decent home cooked food" that we bought ourselves 1kg of Woolworths Lasagne, potatoes, and Mediterranean vegetables. It was a good feast, fit for the returning victors whom have conquered the States. Incidentally, Steers is supposed to be "real food, made real good" but we resisted that temptation :)
These are the clothes that I packed but never wore. I could have saved some money (which would have subsidised another trip or three to the laundromat in the USA) and luggage space (which would have made room for extra goodies on the return leg). Note, there are only about two or three pairs of underpants in this picture; the rest of the clothes types I recycled while there, but not undies :)
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