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Published: August 31st 2012
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Every book has an ending, & so too will this blog.
Wednesday evening soured a little when I received emails from United kindly telling me we were checked in: ooh goodie! But on opening their emails I soon discovered the buggers had ignored the fact that we had
paid eight months ago to upgrade
all our return seats to "economy plus", and had instead lobbed
mine to the back of the craft.
B'stards !
A phone call later and a nice chap called Phil explained it as "a computer glitch", and now he could only put me in the middle of a row. Oh great. We'll aim to get to the airport early and try to sort that out. ho hum.....bit of a low for our last tired evening to end on!
Thursday dawned with the realisation that we really ought to pack up and head on out.
Another beautiful California day, sun shining, and we didn't need to get out until 11am, so we took our time to try to wedge everything into our bags - I swear mine will burst - before tapping upstairs to let Michael know we were checking out. He quite
rightly pointed out it felt like we had only just arrived - I think we all agreed that San Fran was somewhere it would be nice to spend some proper time one day.
Nevertheless, we edged the Jeep out of the narrow garage for the last time, and set off, with me mentally humming the theme from
Bullitt to myself...
Traffic was very good, and we aimed for a few last minute shops around the Burlingame area....and then had to visit Stephen's last choice of lunch....Taco Bell. What a quality place. Actually, despite almost certainly being the cheapest place we visited, the burrito's and taco's were actually quite nice. Damn - I am a natural fast-food junkie :-(
From there we sought out a final place I had found on RoadsideAmerica.com - the
Museum of Pez Memorabilia !
What a little cracker !
Okay, so you don't need more than about 30 minutes, but the owner (collector!)
Gary Doss was very friendly, and gave some great explanations of the items in his tiny back-room museum....and yes, he even got out the "bootleg Hitler" one for us to see....
I particularly liked his small set of "toys withdrawn from
sale". Ellie recognised a whirling doll that Christine had not let her play with because she thought it looked too dangerous - well, another case of "Mum was right" ! ....& not to miss an atomic testing game that originally included 4 small vials of actual atomic material - fab !
He also had in his shop the biggest Pez dispenser in the world! Checkout page 200 of the 2008 Guinness Book of Records (apparently!). Of course, if you read the link, you will discover that his record is no longer #1: "The company that makes has created a larger PEZ dispenser, in its visitor center in Orange, CT. So the one in Burlingame is now the Second Largest." Ah well, I didn't let that shake his story....
We took a few more photos, picked up a few more daft souvenir items and said a happy farewell to Gary and his odd little store of fun.
The final destination was Preston's Ice Cream & Milkshake Parlour in Burlingame.
Many NetApp friends will know this as a superb authentic original old place, utterly incapable of producing more than one shake every 3-5 minutes due to the loving
care & attention (& sheer quantity of ingredients....). We took our time to select our shakes......I still maintain my unusually coloured Yam and Cookie Dough Malted was by far the best, but all were, as always, delicious.
No more food needed for us today..... A slow wander about Burlingame was concluded with a final gas fill up & screen wash & a return to the Alamo rental, where our trusty steed was signed in with no problems....despite the 2,361 miles we covered in the 19 days, with most having temperatures around 90-110 degrees (32-43 in new money).
Checkin at United SFO proved beyond doubt that they are the least customer-friendly airline I have used. They had no real understanding from my perspective how it was that an automatic upgrade might be a delight but an automatic
downgrade was rather an insult. They had no desire to look for a better seat, and then refused to allow a 5th bag on without a $70 charge.....luckily we didn't have to ditch the US-bought coolbox as it was okay for carry on! They also had no care that the TSA had stolen our TSA approved lock on the way over
"not our problem, you need to contact the TSA". Hey ho.
The flight was uneventful: at least no raucous babies to disturb us.....but the screens were tiny and the "touch sensitive" way of working was anything but.....& the food definitely on the lowest side of quality I have experienced.
Note to self - avoid United in future! On the bright side, we did arrive about 45 minutes early, and the weather was fine - mild & sunny, no shocks there !
Home was reached by 16:30hrs and the unpacking games begin......maybe I'll post a restrospective look later, perhaps I'll do more with the 3,367 pictures taken.....but for now, here's signing off on a
fabulous month away !
Hope you enjoyed our adventures with this blog !
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