(Gabi) Yay, we’ve arrived. On Friday we flew to San Francisco from Zurich with Swiss airlines. 12 hour flight. I think I’ve hit my upper limit when it comes to hours I’m willing to spend on a plane!

My lovely Dad drove us to the airport which is about 90 minutes away from our place. Comfy relaxed drive!

Sadly, we were soon informed that our plane would be ‘at least’ 2 hrs delayed because of technical problems. The ‘at least’ part worried me. And the technical problems. We would be spending 12 hours in that bird, so it better be shipshape!

Once we had boarded the plane things moved reasonably quickly. You can tell from the photo how super impressed Thomie was with the delay!

The flight was rather uneventful (apart from turbulences for the last 45 minutes before landing) and quite relaxing. Particularly because I had gotten some Bose Quiet Comfort noise canceling headphones (these) for my birthday. They work for up to 16 hours and essentially shut all the noise off. Seriously. Once I put them in and switched them on I could hardly hear the engines anymore. Will probably try to buy some for Thomie for the trip back, as they make a huge difference.

And then they started serving food. I’ve never gotten so much to eat on a flight before. Swiss was really spoiling us and the cabin crew was beyond lovely. They regularly came by with water to make sure we stayed hydrated. Once I rang the service bell to ask for more water and 30 seconds the flight attendant showed up already holding a cup of cold water. I know it wasn’t hard to anticipate what I wanted but it was a very nice touch. So were the cute little nibbles with heart and house (random) shaped pretzels.

Some more wing action (probably from somewhere over France?).

Dinner was lovely. Chicken in a herby honey mustard crust with saffron risotto and broccoli. Plus a small side salad and cheese and rhubarb crumble for dessert. Top notch food for economy, in my opinion!

The on board entertainment was top notch too! Sherlock made the time fly by.

Next they served some vanilla ice cream (for anyone who hasn’t read our travel blogs before: it’s all about the food!). This is a lovely and very popular Swiss brand. So very familiar and yummy.

Then we got this little ham sandwich thingie. It was surprisingly spicy and also contained some kind of slaw. I was kind of stuffed by this point.

The last course was a tomato and black olive panzerotto (something like an Italian pasty) and a traditional Swiss cookie (Vogelnäschtli > bird’s nest cookie) with hazelnut and strawberry jam.

And then we landed. The clouds were so thick it took us a while to finally catch a glimpse of the  city! Very smooth landing. We got through immigration in no time, which is lovely. Although I always kind of feel they treat you like a criminal when you enter the US as a foreigner. Super grumpy security/passport guy. The airport felt surprisingly small but I’m only used to Miami International and JFK.

Picking up the rental car was a big hassle, unfortunately. We booked our car with Europcar which normally is one of the big rental companies. But they don’t have an office near the airport just some shack 10 minutes away. And that didn’t look like an official Europcar location either. The shuttle that takes you there isn’t wheelchair accessible, so I had to wait for a bit while Thomie got the car. It’s a roomy Hyundai and does the job.

The hotel we are staying at in Emeryville (just over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco) is really lovely. The room we got is ENORMOUS, clean and nicely decorated. The bed is super comfy too. We will need to find a way to shut off the air con, however, as the constant noise is rather annoying (especially when you’re trying to sleep).

Dinner was super quick and filthy. Who knew Burger King does hot dogs? Nothing to write home about but we had been up for almost 22 hours by this point and just needed some grub. Then back to the hotel and SLEEP. Exhausting day but we’re very happy to be here.

(Gabi writes the English posts, Thomas the German ones. Read both if you can for a full coverage!)