Finally... We're leaving!

Finally! We're leaving!

The time has come, the suitcases are packed and the taxi has arrived. Time to go to the airport, we are very excited!

Check in we could do ourselves by using the kiosks and we had to lift our very heavy bags onto the conveyor bags... bye bye.. see you in San Fransisco.

Then we went through immigration and security. All our bags got scanned and we had to go through a  walk-through scanner ourselves.

We had to wait quite a long time before we could board the plane, this waiting was a bit boring. But then finally... we were alllowed to go on the plane!

We were sitting all next to each other on a row. At the back of the seats in front of us were little monitors and we could chose our own movies and games to play. A little while after take off, we were given dinner - the choice was beef or chicken.

Then it was time to go sleep. Sleeping on the plane is actually really hard because the plane is so noisy. Everyone got at least a little bit of sleep.

About two hours before landing, the lights came on again and everyone woke up for breakfast. We weren't very hungry, but we had some fruit and yogurt anyway.

Then, it was time to land... we could see a bit of San Fransisco through the windows... very exciting!

After the plane landed and we disembarked (big word for getting off the plane), we had to wait a very very long  time to get through immigration. Inge had to be scanned, finger printed and a picture taken... They did this with every adult. No wonder it take so long to get through immigration.

But finally, we were through and our bags were already waiting for us!

San Fransisco has a train station right outside the international terminal, so convenient. It's called BART and all we had to do is buy some tickets and get in. There were little gates, you had to put your ticket in and it would pop out again and the gate opens. We had to do this one by one with our luggage... it's almost a like a game. Inge would put the ticket in and shout and the Loud Monkeys "GO!" one by one until we all got through, with our luggage.

The train was super fast and got us to the city within 30 minutes. When we got out of the train station it was amazing, the sun was shining, there was a little market and street artists performing... what a nice welcome to San Fransisco.

It's a bit weird to think that we left on Friday evening in New Zealand and we are now in San Fransisco at 3 pm that same day... we've traveled backwards in time!
 
The Youth hostel was about 15 minutes walk away... But... it seemed ages with all the luggage and we were quite tired from the trip.

The Hostel is part of the Youth Hostel organisation and it's a very welcoming place. We are in China town so there are little Asian restaurants everywhere. 

Our first dinner in San Fransisco was Vietnamese takeaways... Sooo yummy!

We are sleeping in a four bed dorm, with our own little (tiny) bathroom. It's simple but comfortable and perfect for us. After dinner we all had a shower and off to bed... even though we didn't think we could sleep that easily in strange bed and hearing lots of strange sounds... soon everyone was fast asleep!