Woke up at six o’clock to a tremendous din coming from the street outside. Shouting and banging on drums. What?! It’s 6.00am for goodness sake. A woman with a particularly shrill voice was bellowing into a megaphone, so I got out of bed and looked out of the window, to see where the noise was coming from.
A little way up the street we could see a crowd of people milling around, waving placards, which were too far away for us to read. They were chanting something, but the megaphone was distorting their voices; all I knew that whatever it was they wanted, they wanted it NOW!
Going back to bed, I inserted my industrial-strength earplugs and tried to go back to sleep, but the noise was still too intrusive. It went on for a full hour, abruptly stopping at seven o’clock. We decided to get up and do a bit of packing, then go out and find somewhere to have some breakfast.
I took a long, hot shower and shampoo and changed into clean clothes, then I blow-dried my hair and applied some makeup. Then we packed up our cases, using the new, smaller case in place of my rucksack (which folds up) as one of our carry-on bags. It was now time to go for some breakfast.
We left the hotel into the cool, early-morning air and walked along Geary Street, looking for a diner that was open. We walked to Union Square to see if there was anything around there (there wasn’t), and then we went back along the other side of the street. We saw a place called the “Pinecrest Diner” which was open and looked to be doing a roaring trade – obviously a popular place, so we hoped we would get a seat.
Inside, we were lucky as a table for two had just become vacant. The waiter took us to our seats then handed us a large menu. There was an extensive choice, and I selected scrambled eggs with chorizo and hash browns, as well as a large mug of coffee.
It was a tasty and substantial breakfast which would hopefully last us until we arrived at the airport this afternoon.
Afterwards, we just returned to the Clift Royal Sonesta hotel and retrieved our suitcases from our room before lugging them down to reception. Then it was just a case of sitting around until the coach came to collect us at 12.15pm to take us to the airport.
This was the boring part now, where you just want to be home once the holiday is over. We just did the usual things at the airport; looked around the duty-free shops and had a couple of beers each in a bar, while keeping an eye on the departures board.
Soon the call came for all passengers on British Airways flight 284 to London Heathrow to make their way to the departure gate. On the way, we spotted the giant A380 aircraft sitting waiting for us, and I took the photo that forms today’s featured image. 🙂
We were lucky enough to have the seats at the bulkhead, which meant no-one was in front of us and we had plenty of legroom; we were handy for the galley and the toilets. Just as well – we had another 10 and a half hours on this aircraft. In fact, counting this flight and the one hour flight we had tomorrow, from Heathrow to Newcastle, we will have spent a total of 84.5 hours flying this year… and it is still only May! That’s three and a half solid days on an aeroplane.
So that was it, really. We took to the skies on time and set off across America and across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for home.
Another interesting and eventful holiday had come to an end, and we could start counting down the days until our next exciting adventure. 🙂
