As mentioned in my last posting we weren’t yet sure what to go for next, however it would have been quite silly to go for San Diego without enjoying it a bit. So we’ve looked at the Zoo while BJ stayed at the hotel to give his body a day off to get rid of his cold (which turned out to be the absolutely right decision). We on our part, enjoyed the stay at the Zoo and the change from the last activities. Some animal pictures can be found here.

Afterwards we dropped back to the hotel and picked up BJ to start our trip to Vegas. After an about 6 hour ride we finally arrived there and checked in to our hotel. Most of the other stuff happened in Vegas is filed under our non-disclosure agreement based on “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. I can however tell that it was one hell of a trip. We needed all of our time for “different” activities and so weren’t able to go for Grand Canyon or Hooverdam either.

Our back flight was just the extension of our one-hell-of-a-trip, which we however didn’t want it to be. All started out right at the Vegas airport when we figured out that there are quite a lot of people trying to depart on mondays. To make things even easier we figured out our flight was put over 30 minutes earlier for departure. Later on turned out we missed a mail of our travel agency trying to tell us exactly this. Well, however we made it to the gate exactly when they pushed-back the plane for departure. Only thing we could do was to wave after it. After the persons at the gate absolutely pissed me (us) off by stating via the loudspeakers that they are no information or whatever and are going to close now, we had no other possibility then going back to the Check-in desk to rebook that stuff. The lady at the check-in desk later stated that she was so sorry for that, as they would have needed to do this up at the gate. Anyhow she did a really great job by finding an alternative flight for us going via Denver and Frankfurt which only caused us about 7 hours later arrival. The rest of the trip was quite smooth as we catched all the connections and also today arrived our luggage.

I myself enjoyed the trip and now try to work things out, that came up in the meantime.

Our trip started in Vienna on last sunday at about 8am in the morning where we headed to the airport. Everything worked smoothly as we could go over the long lines at the Austrian airlines desk (which are there since i can remember) with Gerhard’s frequent traveller status and use the business class check-in desk. After a coffee break we took our 9 hour flight to Washington D.C. and arrived on-time. But, as always in Washington this fucked up just everything. We could go about 25 meters from the plane exit where the queue for immigration started. I dropped all our plans to catch our 2 hour later connection flight to San Francisco immediately.

After about 2 and a half hours we (Bijan and me) came finally through the immigration. Where it seems i was the only trustable person, because Bijan became a C status meaning he has to go through 2nd inspection at the customs. And, even better – Gerhard and Herbert disappeared! *DOH*

Asking the people that looked informative we got the information that they could just be sent to further inspection at immigration, otherwise they must have came by. Not bad, Gerhard is really travelling quite often to the states for business reasons, so i was really wondering if that could even be. Then i remembered that the DHS officer also asked me several times why i was so often in the states recently and why always for short trips (about 3 to 5 days). When i explained he seemed satisfied however. Nevertheless, after helping some guys from germany and south-tyrol with their claim for lost baggage we finally found Gerhard and Herbert again and – yes they had a 2nd inspection run. Which was, as they told us seemingless, except of the lost time. Maybe something to be proud of, i got a 1 with underline on my immigration – so no 2nd inspection. Keep an eye on that.

So, after we made that we grabbed our luggage and went to the United desk to check for some alternative connections to San Fran. There were 2 more flights this day, where the 2nd one was allready sold out totally (Remember our line – i guess there were some more people going further to the west coast ). So he gave me the option to get on the stand-by-list to San Fran. That was really an impressing option, i couldn’t even decide which one i should decide for. Okay, after we’ve waited on the stand-by-list we finally were told that the plane is full (what a wonder if there are about 10 people on the stand-by-list). So we couldn’t get any flight to SFC today anymore. But, our luggage was already on it’s way. *STRIKE* After we got the tickets for next days first flight at 7am we headed to Austrian desks were (oh wonder) nobody was there anymore. At the SAS desk nearby (Austrian told us we should contact them if there are any problems) also nobody showed up. So we tried our luck at 3 information desks where no one was. After i was finally slightly pissed-of we jumped on a car and drove to a near by Holiday Inn and booked our accomodation for this night ourselves. I’ll keep you posted if Austrian will pay for that when we’re back.

As Bijan was the only one of us who has never seen Washington we decided to do a quick trip (at this time we didn’t know – how quick) to the center so he sees the main tourist attractions. So we headed with a cab to the nearest metro station (Vienna Fairfax) from where we took the next metro to Federal Triangle station. At this time it was about 10:30pm already. As we didn’t want to pay over 100 bucks for our ride back we made a 1 and a half our trip to the Washington monument, Lincoln memorial, 2nd World War memorial and saw the white house in the distance. At about 1am we finally came back to our room and fell asleep for 4 hours till 5am to catch the 5:30 shuttle to the airport. The flight to SFC then was pretty seemingless.

Arriving at SFC we brought our stuff to the Hotel and i had a shower since we’ve been travelling for about 40 hours now. HOW refreshing. Then we enjoyed our lunch at Quiznos and had a long walk to get to know SFC a bit. We headed over market up to Lombard street and down to Fishermans wharf. There we had some calorie-bomb in form of a crepe. After that the day was over for me, as i really needed to give my body a rest because i’m experiencing a heavy cold since 4 days and try to manage that.

As soon as i come to upload there will be some photos on my flickr account.

The flight itself was seemingless. We catched both connections and that even though we had very tough transfer times (1 hour in Paris – which means a mission impossible for Paris CDG). The fear of Teemu regarding Air France however came to be true. It’s amazing how flying changed in the last few years. On one hand you have cheaper prices for inner european connections now. But you also have increased prices (you know – security …) on long distance (especially the United States). However although the prices raised the service on board and also at the airports decreased dramatically (maybe it’s just my subjective opinion). At the airport in Vienna i was very astounded about the incompetence and rudeness the woman at the checkin desk had. I was just asking about the connection in Los Angeles to United and she just came up with “i don’t care about that”. At least they brought us to LA on time.

But for sure the flights couldn’t be without any problems at all. When we arrived at LAX we were astouned that the immigration and luggage pickup were working fast (about 20 minutes). So we headed over to the terminal our flight with United should depart from. A nice woman at the checkin desk (Air France someone) made a fast and competent checkin and even explained us the way to the gate (Air France huh?). So we headed over to our gate took a coffee at Starbucks and grabbed our first US Dollars from a nearby ATM. The boarding was done in some minutes and so we jumped on our plane to San Diego which was a Brasilia EMB-120 (according to the onboard brochure). I’ve been on such kind of “airtaxi” my first time it only had place for about 10 people and was really nice to fly with. The flight to San Diego took just 35 minutes and so we arrived there on time at about 7pm. I’ve already been a little bit tired then. So we waited for our bagges … and waited … and waited … and waited. While i … waited … Teemu went out to call our hotel for the pickup shuttle. After waiting for a while i headed over to the United desk and guess what? United lost our bagges from LA to San Diego. But the girl at the information desk was really nice and beyond helping us with our lost luggage she gave us some tips for San Diegos nightlife. A little later we arrived at La Jolla (speak: La Hoya) which is about 20 minutes ride from San Diego airport.

Now we’re going to grab our first american burger here and then fall asleep. It’s about 10pm here.