San Francisco 2012

We spent a few days in San Francisco last week. We were attending a class for those in the copier industry that are also Sharp dealers.  It was a GREAT class.  I learned a lot!  Now, I need to put that into practice and things should fall into line nicely!  I am excited about this relatively new career change into the copier industry!

The trip began on Monday night (8/20) at the Fairbanks airport.  We had a first flight directly to Denver, Colorado.  Man, that was one long flight!!  But, we were flying on Frontier Airlines that seems to be only operating to and from Fairbanks in the summer months.  Anyway, we left Fairbanks an hour late, but made it into Denver just about on time.  This gave us time to have some breakfast and stretch our legs before leaving on the next flight to San Francisco.  However, we were given even more time to explore the Denver airport because the flight was delayed 2 hours before we even took off due to fog delaying landing in San Francisco.  We were arriving a day early so there was no worry about missing the class.  We just chilled out in the airport.  We eventually made it to San Francisco.  We called the hotel to get the free shuttle from the airport to the hotel.  The hotel was where the class was so we didn't get a car rental.  So, we had the afternoon/evening ahead of us.  After working thru some things that came up back at work, we went to have a late lunch and then a trip to the mall was in order.  The mall was only about a half mile away and it was nice weather so we walked!  It was a good walk to a so-so mall.  Not much there.  But, we got our land legs back under us and got a good walk in.

Wednesday and Thursday were filled with classes so we didn't venture out much Wednesday night.  After class on Thursday, we ventured down to Fisherman's Wharf.  We took the BART subway system to the stop at Union Station where we were told we could get on the trolley car!  What a great way to experience San Francisco, I thought!  We got down to the trolley car loading point to find a LONG line waiting to get on the next few cars.  We were not to be deterred ... we waited in line!  Finally, we were getting onto the trolley!  We took the last of the seats available.  Yet they continued to pile people onto the car!   Finally we took off!  Okay, we were packed in like sardines but we were moving toward the wharf and we surely didn't want to walk all that way.  However, we couldn't move, we couldn't see, we were NOT enjoying ourselves!!  I couldn't look out the window on the other side because it was a wall of legs and crotches in front of me.  I couldn't look out the window behind me because I couldn't move!!  Ugh!  Then, the big fat guy at the back of the car had to come thru to collect our money for riding like a sausage!  He made his way to the front collecting our $6 each!  He then had to make his way back to the back to help control the car with the brake back there.  Okay, we are moving.  Wait, we are stopping again .. picking up MORE people.  This happens again and again... at each stop a few get off and a bunch more get on.  However, those that got on at each subsequent stop ... never paid anything!  Ha!  So, if you ever go to ride the trolley cars in San Francisco don't get on at the start ... get on in the middle and you won't have to pay the ridiculous price to ride like a sausage!  We finally made it to the end of the line and only a couple blocks from Pier 39 ... Fisherman's Wharf.  This was more tourist-y and we visited a lot of gift shops and looked around.  It was what we needed to decompress from a couple days of intense classroom work.  After dinner at a sports bar on the pier, we visited a few more gift shops (one of which I had to kick Tom out of because he kept finding cool things!!).  We made our way to the bus to take us to the subway to take us back to the hotel.  What a fun night!

Friday morning dawned and we were again off to the airport to head home!  Yay!  Always nice to head home!  We got to the San Francisco airport to check in and discovered after we got thru security that our flight was already delayed an hour!  Wow.  Okay, we had a nice sit down breakfast.  Then, I made some much over due phone calls.  We finally boarded and got underway to our first stop in Denver!  We had a long layover already so the delay in San Francisco didn't hurt our progress.  We wandered around the airport ... and around the airport ... and around the airport ... we ate lunch, grabbed something to eat on the long flight to Fairbanks and then we finally boarded!  Whoo hoo... we were on our way home!  We landed ... finally found the vehicle and we were home in no time!

Honestly, San Francisco is NOT a place I will go back to for a personal vacation.  If I go back for business I hope it's not at the same hotel because this was one Marriott I was NOT impressed with.  All in all, it was a good trip but as usual, we are happy to be home!!  It's back to work tomorrow!