Day 89 – San Francisco 2.0
We were supposed to wait for our Global Entry interview, but there was a sign-in sheet and an hour wait. Our driver was already there (he was a tad bit early, but this was mostly another Travel Agent blunder since she never accounted for us needing to go through Customs or Baggage Claim), so we couldn’t wait a whole other hour. We went through normal customs, got our luggage and headed his way. He was nice and told us some of the things that have changed about SF since our last time (2007, IIRC).
We got into our room, got a little settled, and napped. After, we went to a nearby Detroit-style pizza place for dinner, and ran a couple of errands.
Day 90 – San Francisco standard stuff
We had brunch at the “famous” Irish Coffee bar. Watching them make drinks up to 10 at a time was pretty entertaining.
We ran another errand and wandered around Ghirardelli Square. We took trolley rides. We found a good place for tacos and a burrito. We made it to the wharf/marina to see the sea lions and shopped for socks and yellow ducks. We also browsed a robot shop, a magic shop. (And later, we wandered through a spy shop.) We took a Waymo driverless car back to the hotel. While he napped, I did some writing/editing.
Our hotel had “cookies and milk” every night from 8-9pm. They can’t find a cookie vendor they like, so it was just Oreos, but I like those just fine. I had some whiskey with the “Baby Bartender”. She’s new to the craft and still learning, but she’ll be fine and working in a real bar (with real hours) very soon.
Day 91 – Alcatraz
Alcatraz is a great tour. It was one of the only things we didn’t get to do when we were in the city back in 2007ish. And if you go, be sure to peruse the books in the gift shop. There are some interesting titles and stories from the families of the guards.
Day 92 – Exploratorium
The Exploratorium was filled with kids, but it was super cool to see.
Day 93 – train day one
Murphy’s Law: our driver was early, so we were early, so the train was delayed. I should have known the ride we had in store for us when they were selling amenity kits for $20 (basically: pillow, blanket, toothbrush/paste, and comb.)
The Amtrak roomette was about half the size of the sleepers we had in Australia. The information we had ahead of time was very misleading/incomplete, but once on board, we heard stories of worse rooming layouts.
Because it was a departure city and because the train was late, breakfast was skipped, but the hot dogs we got from the “concession stand” for lunch were pretty good. We settled in. Pretty soon, we got up to 6500’/1980m where there was a lot of snow and pretty views.
Dinner was awful: we were forgotten at least three times. When they did bring our food, it reeked of cigarette smoke; I guess the server took a smoke break once he thought everyone had been served. The food was sweet carrots, sweet green beans (?), sweet mashed potatoes (??), sweet “gravy”. The steak was okay, but not great. The dessert was a very dense chocolate cake that was really good. At least the wine was decent. We tipped them anyway.
Day 93 – train day two; the end
All of our meals were terrible. While we were at breakfast, the room attendant changed our sheets. The joke was on her because we didn’t sleep well and would be napping during the 12+ hours we had left.
So we did that until lunch, which was also terrible. We were forgotten again, so I asked about our food. I was super nice, but I got lectured (loudly) several times by both dining attendants “we have to cook it” “we ain’t got no microwaves here” “It has to be cooked!” etc. I guess it takes extra time to cook a salad. All I asked was that they check on it since everyone else had their food and our time slot was nearing its end. Turns out, yes, we were forgotten, and I was right all along. That came with no apology, of course.
Dinner was basically a repeat of the same forgotten experience. But every meal came with a literal minutes-long speech by one of the dining attendants about how our ticket paid for our food but not for the gratuity and how they liked to see presidents’ faces. Funny how getting forgotten and getting cigarette-flavored, sugar-laced food doesn’t garner a tip. And even when we did tip, the amount was a guess. It’s not like we know how much the food cost compared to the rest of our ticket.
But wait! There’s more! Somewhere along the journey, all upstairs plumbing stopped working. We had already heard that it all stopped working the day before, so we were lucky it wasn’t worse. And, we expected the train to be old, but these were very old. Parts of it were literally held together with duct tape.
By this time, I’d seen all of “my” movies on my laptop, so I started to repeat them.
When we had about an hour until Denver, the room attendant came by and asked if she had changed our sheets. We told her, “Yeah at 6:30 this morning, but we’ve napped since then.” Cue another lecture about how now the sheets are for the next guests and not to touch the pillows. As if we asked her to remake the bed during breakfast. If she hadn’t still been there when we came back, we never would have known.
Riding through Granby/Winter Park/Frasier was fun since that was our “home” two summers ago. But the train really dragged from there to Denver. We also went through the 10º turn just west of Denver. Once we got into the city, the train had to back in at Denver Union (which is handy for passengers but terrible for trains). It doesn’t look like that could ever be changed.
Our rideshare was quick and we had a very nice driver. Once home, we had to get new security fobs for the building. They had changed over to a new system while we were gone. Some things are good to miss!
epilogue: When we got home, I watched a YouTube video of Tyler & Todd on The Canadian train across their country. Their experience was far worse, making me glad our roomette didn’t have its own bathroom. I think trains in North America are over. It seems we can learn nothing from anyone European. Stupid Americans. Stupid Capitalism.
But we arrived home to our new pantry!