Day 1: San Fran

So what is the advice my father gives me when I arrive in San Francisco? “Don’t get lost”, so what do we do? We get lost. Instead of waiting for the adventure to begin in New Zealand we apparently decided it should happen a couple days early. Usually when you arrive at an airport, get your baggage and even meet up with friends you leave the airport within the hour of when you landed. Usually. However, this trip happened to be a little different. Not only did we not leave the airport in the normal amount of time, we walked around it numerous times with roughly 60lbs of luggage, got lost with a map and directions, were unable to find our hotel shuttle and (if that wasn't enough) we ended up returning to the airport later the same day. The adventure began.

San Francisco isn’t exactly what I was expecting, although I don’t know what I was particularly expecting anyways. There were definitely hills. When you didn’t think they could get any steeper, they did. And when it looked like your destination was roughly a half mile away, you passed over the top of a hill to find that it was in fact miles and miles away. We ended up spending more on transportation that day than anything else. A $40 10-15 minute cab ride to start it off and to end a $10 subway ride to the airport (just to catch the free shuttle to the hotel) when it should have been about $4. Despite the over-priced transportation, walking aimlessly and getting somewhat lost in San Francisco is quite the adventure. We ate at a great diner with the best burger and milkshake I’ve had in awhile. And to top off the day we ended up staying in the hotel hot tub for a couple hours once we finally got back. :)

Somehow the flight from San Francisco to Auckland seemed significantly shorter than the flight to San Fran from Albany despite the additional 7 hours it took to get to New Zealand. Also, it was entirely less stressful to fly internationally than it is to fly domestic US despite extra scanning, passports/documentation and bio-security. How does that happen? Regardless of how it happens, I feel as though it is a plausible excuse to travel internationally more often and if at all possible, I will definitely be doing so.