12 July: San Francisco
Our wonderful Uber driver was right there on our Calgary doorstep at 8.10am ready to drive us to the airport. We had met David yesterday and booked him for today as he had taken us under his wing. He despatched us safely at the glittering new state-of-the-art Calgary international airport. All of the formidable check-in process was done electronically completely obviating the need for human involvement .  The only person in this vast glass and marble concourse was an extremely friendly assistant who had nothing more pressing to do than confirm the buttons we were pressing. And so we checked in, parted with our bags and cleared customs. Nothing else to do but enjoy crepes and coffee before boarding and enjoying a superb Westjet flight to San Francisco ready for the grilling we had been warned about in order to enter the USA.
Well, actually there was nobody there. We just disembarked, picked up our bags and left. The aggressive, rude customs interrogators must have been out to lunch.
So the next step was to dial up Uber and be driven to our glitzy San Fran pad right on the beach front. We drove and drove and drove and the fog thickened and the temperature dropped. Thank goodness for merino and a down jacket . Eventually the car stopped at the corner of a long row of two-storyed tenement dwellings, broken footpaths littered with inorganic rubbish. We are paying $200 per night for this basement of a 1960s beach bach. Oh, it has a heated bathroom floor. There is no sign of any host - just a key left in a garden pot. Need I tell you we are not impressed? We're a 30 minute bus trip from the CBD once we have discovered where to catch the bus. For now we'll drink the wine and go to bed.