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Published: September 2nd 2008
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setting off
Setting off from Spain ON OUR WAY Saturday 30th August
We’ve been in England for one week now and have been enjoying the cool weather and green countryside, after the heat of Spain in recent weeks. Today we braved Terminal 5 at Heathrow and “Yes” they still have problems there. We arrived in good time and were told that the only seats available to us were numbers 29F and 30E, in other words, sitting apart in different rows and also cramped between other people in the middle section for eleven hours. I don’t think so! Anyway, after a visit to Customer Services we finally got two seats together (having previously been told quite emphatically at check in that the flight was full and there were no spare seats “whatsoever” on the plane!!! As it turned out, the plane was nowhere near full and we had three seats including a window seat to ourselves! After this we sat on the runway for 40 minutes because the baggage wasn’t on the plane and so we missed our slot. We eventually took off. California here we come! Despite BAA’s continuing problems at Terminal 5, we enjoyed a good flight with British Airways, touching down at San
England
Beautiful Berkshire, the River kennet in Newbury Francisco earlier than expected at 2 p.m. (but 11p.m. according to our body-clocks). We decided to “do” California and Nevada by car because there is so much to see, spread over long distances. Later on in our travels we’ll be carrying the backpacks and using public transport but for now we are going to enjoy an easier way to travel. We spent ages getting a rental car from Alamo but succeeded eventually and headed south towards Santa Cruz. Prior to this we had an interesting time in Passport Control at San Francisco airport. Our advice to free-spirited people backpacking in the States is when asked where you are staying just lie. Look somewhere up on the web (hostel, whatever) and give that address. Unfortunately, we didn’t! The conversation went as follows…
“Where are you staying in the US ma’am?”
“We haven’t decided yet!”
“Well ma’am, without an address to put on The Form I can refuse to let you in”
Refuse to let us in!!! Oh dear. When are the Americans going to understand that it is a few centuries since Europeans begged to become Americans. We don’t actually want to be illegal immigrants in your country thanks. We live in a beautiful country already. Why should we want to leave our home in Spain to bum around forever in the States? We didn’t say all of this, we were more polite and eventually passed through, assuring them that we were going to stay in a B & B in Santa Cruz. We didn’t. We stayed in a motel in Palo Alto being too tired to drive any further. Tomorrow hopefully will be more chilled!
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