It was a slightly unusual end to my trip as I had a full day before I left for Perth, my flight left LAX at 10.50pm. My initial plan was to be in LA, with a car which would have given me a lot more freedom to spend the day being a tourist. However, now I was in San Francisco. Apart from getting to LA I had the San Francisco Pride Parade to contend with. I found out during the Wine Tour that it was happening on the Sunday and it was running past the street perpendicular to the one my hotel was on. And it was absolute chaos.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I knew a couple of things I wanted to achieve and the first was to try the Strawberry Açai Refresher at Starbucks. There was one just down the road so I placed my order for that and a pumpkin loaf. The drink was nice, but incredibly sweet, so I think you’d have to be in the mood for it. The pumpkin loaf was fantastic, almost as good as the pumpkin scones my Nanna used to make.
Following that I finished packing, did a final check of my room, checked out and stored my luggage at the Mosser. Given the chaos of the parade, I though the best thing to do might be to head to a library (some are open in SF on Sunday), spend a couple of hours there and then give myself plenty of time to get to the Airport. I tried at least 3 different routes to get to the library and every one was blocked by parade. I did almost 16,000 steps that day and I reckon half of those would have been trying to get to the library. After I finally admitted defeat, I went to a nearby park and then shopping mall where I sat and read for about 2 hours.
Having now seen the chaos of the Parade first hand I decided that I had better give myself plenty of time to get to the airport, which was a good idea. I headed back to the Mosser and ordered an Uber. The first two drivers cancelled on me. The 3rd driver stuck with it, but it took 45 mins and me walking almost 1km to meet him. The traffic was bad for the first but til we got out of the parade, but the rest of the trip to the airport was relatively smooth. Good think I allowed extra time! In the end I got to the airport about 3 hours before my flight.
That’s a lot of text. I think I’ll end this post here and then pick-up again at the airport.