The Albatross
Sunday 11 February 2024
Arrgh, the joy of long haul flights out of Perth means you leave for the Airport when you should be heading to bed, so after a busy Saturday, cleaning the house, getting things sorted for our house sitters and packing, off we toddled. Really not much to say, sit on plane, get sweaty in Singapore, have a shower, get sweaty again, hop on a plane to San Fran. Amazingly we had a nice customs bloke, that must be the difference between travelling through here as opposed to LAX.
We grabbed some public transport cards and headed for our apartment in Oakland. We’d organised for early check in as there wasn’t meant to be anybody staying the night before, so were somewhat surprised when there were two very vocal dogs barking from behind our door. We tried calling the owner, but the phone wouldn’t connect. Fortunately at this point the cleaner showed up, so we asked her. Unfortunately she didn’t speak English, but did have an excellent voice translator on her phone. She rang the owner and we worked out the current occupants wouldn’t leave until 11:00 and the place would need to be cleaned. It was 10:00 at this point so no big deal. We dumped our bags in the corner of the small entry way, and were sitting on a fence working out where a supermarket was located when the owner showed up and had a chat who could at least sort that out.
Off we slowly toddled to a whole foods market where we bought some basics for dinner and some sushi for lunch. They must make some amazing bagels here at one shop as there was a queue out the door when we went up the street and still one when we came. How good can chewy bread be? I must point out that we were beyond knackered at this point, so shopping and making decisions were hard, as was walking after many hours walking on airport floors followed by many more of sitting still. It was luckily a beautiful day.
Back to the apartment at 12:00, the cleaner had every room overturned, so I’m guessing the other guests hadn’t been gone all that long, she did get the living room done for us after half an hour, so we could finally sit down and take our shoes off. She finished about 2:00 and we could relax and get our lives sorted. An early dinner and off to bed. Yay.