Pre-trip Report
Let’s go…to San Francisco
March 2019
Cast (it’s the usual one!)
Me: Shaun, 50’s, loves travelling, eating and drinking (not necessarily in that order!)
Alison: 50’s, ditto to the above!
Well, it’s another trip thanks to another bargain fare and following the brief break from tradition for our Cape Town trip we are back on track with flying indirect once again. I always thought that once we’d starting chasing Tier points we’d spend the bulk of the flights flying west to America but instead the really good deals have mainly been going east thanks to Qatar Airways.
A West coast trip has always been on the cards for us - my initial thoughts was that it’d be a 3 or 4 week trip covering all bases. However, what we’ve done is to split it up – we did Las Vegas in 2015 and Hawaii in 2016. So it’s California on the list now – but that’s a BIIIIIIG state! So we’ve decided to tick off San Francisco this time around.
So, what’s the routing this time?
1. Heathrow to Inverness - (STAY OVERNIGHT)
2. Inverness to Heathrow
3. Heathrow to Los Angeles- (STAY OVERNIGHT)
4. Los Angeles to San Francisco -(STAY FOR A FEW NIGHTS)
5. San Francisco to Los Angeles
6. Los Angeles to Heathrow
7. Heathrow to Inverness
8. Inverness to Heathrow
So, why
Inverness this time round?
In simple terms, Air Passenger Duty is not levied on flights from Inverness or any airport further north. This means that significant savings can be made if you technically start your journey from here. The higher the class of travel the higher the savings will be.
For us it gives more Avios and more Tier Points which is what we are after plus a chance to visit some more places in the UK that we’ve not explored that much.
So the actual ‘holiday’ is Inverness to San Francisco, and back again. We have to go via Heathrow, and we’ve added a stop in Los Angeles (for 2 reasons – 1 is extra tier points and avios, the other is that the aircraft are a bit more up to date on the Los Angeles flights).
Because we’re starting in Inverness (and ending up there at the end), we need to book flights to get there and back again! This is where the Avios come in handy – we’ve booked reward flights to go there and back. On the homeward leg we were planning on landing at Heathrow, a couple of hours break then flying up to Inverness, then promptly flying straight back again on the same plane!
As ‘luck’ would have it, after we’d booked, the schedules changed which gave us a horrible long layover at Heathrow of about 8 hours, so Alison rang up and rescheduled flights 6 & 7 to another weekend altogether! Then we realised we’d have a really early start on the Monday morning for the Heathrow to Inverness flight, trying to get round the M25 in rush hour, so after a quick chat we decided to book a hotel at Heathrow using a Hotels.com reward.
So what we booked so far is:
Sunday 24th March – drive to Heathrow, park in long stay parking and stay at the
Sofitel (attached to Terminal 5)
Monday 25th March – flight 1 Heathrow to Inverness (it's not a big airport!)
pick up hire car, check into
Heathcote B&B
then drive out to see the Loch Ness monster!
Tuesday 26th March – flight 2 Inverness to Heathrow, flight 3 Heathrow to Los Angeles (on the A380)
check into
Crowne Plaza hotel
Wednesday 27th March – flight 4 Los Angeles to San Francisco, check into
Grand Hyatt near Union Square
Thursday 28th March –
Friday 29th March – Alcatraz
Saturday 30th March –
Sunday 31st March -
Monday 1st April – flight 5 San Francisco to Los Angeles, flight 6 Los Angeles to Heathrow (on a 747)
Tuesday 2nd April – collect car from long stay parking and head home
Saturday 27th April - drive to Heathrow, park in POD parking
flight 7 Heathrow to Inverness, check into Kinnock Lodge B&B, then see a bit of Inverness
Sunday 28th April – flight 8 Inverness to Heathrow, collect car, head home
That’s all we’ve planned so far but we have bucket lists (as always!)
Inverness
Distillery tour – not sure which one just yet
Loch Ness – should do this on 25th March
Trip to Isle of Skye – not sure if we’ll have enough time
San Francisco
Alcatraz cruise: booked
The rest is going to be all the usual tourist stuff, depends on how much we can actually fit in. Thanks to the all the Dibbers that have posted recently in the West Coast Planning forum. Not an exhaustive list but a starter for us to pick through and to start scheduling things.
Ferry Building marketplace - Slanted Door for Vietnamese cuisine
Chinatown - The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory
Lombard Street
Golden Gate Park
Pier 39
Golden Gate Bridge
Coit Tower
Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood
Mission district - Burrito at La Taqueria
Lands’ End hiking trail
San Francisco Go Car Tour
San Francisco Scavenger Hunt Adventure
Walt Disney family museum
Golden Gate Park
USS Hornet
Ferries - Sausalito/Tiburon
Anchor Brewery Tour
So over the next week or two we’ll start working our way thought some of the above and decided how and when we’ll do them!