Flight home

I knew that I needed to leave the hotel by 9pm at the very latest, but decided to go at 8pm so I could have a look around the Polaris lounge - it was a good job I went an hour earlier!

First of all, I turned the wrong way up 7th Avenue instead of down it, so ended up going 6 blocks the wrong way, with all the luggage.  I walked back, past the Roku office again and down to the station, and then couldn't find track 13 at all until the last moment.  The train was "full".  The seats are arranged in a 3 and 2  arrangement, and 2 people were sitting in every 3, and 1 person in every 1, so, like many others, I ended up standing in a vestibule instead.  For me that was about half an hour, the whole way to Newark Airport.

At the airport, the TSA Precheck was closed (apparently, it shuts at 8pm) so instead of using the touchless pre-check verification and being through in a couple of minutes, it took over 30 minutes with all the usual stuff that you don't need to do if you're pre-vetted.

I finally reached the Polaris lounge at 9.50pm and was told it was closing at 10pm.  They'd already stopped serving food and were putting the buffet away already.  So everybody had to leave, with still over an hour until our flight departed.

At the game, an awful lot of people were queued up for pre-boarding - about 40 or so, which was odd.  The queue for group 1 was also long, and the queue for group 2 longer still.  There didn't seem to be many people in groups 3-6.  After a while, the lady at the podium made an announcement that only Premier 1K holders should be pre-boarding - and all the people in group 1 trying to sneak through early should go to the back of the group 1 line.  The main advantage to jumping the queue is having luggage space on board - which doesn't affect Polaris Business, as each seat has its own reserved overhead bin with plenty of space.

Final view of New York, just after take-off

Then, as we sitting waiting for boarding to complete, the man in the row in front of me started a phone call and was jabbering on loudly.

He continued through the announcements, the safety briefing and ignored the instructions to put his seatbelt on and shoulder strap and to stop talking on the phone.  

Repeatedly.

The flight attendant, Angie, actually had to stand at his seat and force him to put his seatbelt on and stop being on the phone - this was after the captain had requested that the crew take their seats for the imminent take-off.

Dinner was served just after midnight!

Although he put the seatbelt on, presumably, and stopped talking momentarily, as soon as she had gone, he resumed talking on the phone.

The man across the aisle from him told him to stop - to no avail.  He was still jabbering away as we took off.  Presumably once we got high enough, he lost the signal.

During the flight, his friend who was sitting in economy, frequently came up to stand next to his bay, overlooking mine.  Although he kept being shooed away, he still kept coming back and loitering.

 

Dessert is served separately

I did manage to get over 2 hours sleep after dinner service had concluded with the usual options, but my favourite is the ice cream sundae - they now also offer a sprinkling of chocolate chips.

After we landed at Heathrow, the captain announced that we must all remain seated with seatbelts on as we had to wait for somebody who was coming to meet the flight.

You can probably guess which single passenger totally ignored this instruction too, stood up, starting getting his luggage down and mucking about unpacking and repacking bags until he was shouted at to sit down.

Our shadow on the Thames by the bridge

I suspect I wasn't the only one who hoped the delay was for somebody to come to take him away for repeatedly ignoring crew instructions - the announcements always point out that it's against FAA regulations to disobey - but sadly, it seems that it was somebody in economy who might have been  receiving a special welcome to the UK.

Maybe it was for his friend for persistently being not in his assigned cabin.

I think the guy was lucky not to be turfed off the plane at Newark - I imagine the flight attendants wished he had been!

I got through passport control very quickly at the first time of asking the computer and into a shower suite at the arrivals lounge quite quickly.

After breakfast, I bought my train ticket home and started the trek to the railway atation, which always takes an age.

London

I finally arriving home just after 4pm, a couple of hours before my Tesco delivery arrived.

I hope I'm one of the ones that receives a survey about the flight, as I'll have plenty to say about this one!

My calculations on Premier Qualifying Points were correct: I reached United Premier Silver on arriving in New York, which completed the 4th flight, which is the minimum you need for any status

I reached Premier Gold on arriving in London, only just, but I got there.  That means I can now claim automatic Marriott Bonvoy Gold too, which will get my better wi-fi in the hotels, improve my chances of getting rooms at short notice and improve my chances of getting late checkouts.

I think that means I now have the first part of the Marriott Lifetime Gold status sorted - of having Gold for 7 years overall.  I just need to stay another 90 nights or so to reach 300 lifetime nights to win the lifetime award.

Final day

Daytime view from my room

I left my bags at the hotel, as my flight tonight leaves at 11.20pm, so there is no need to make it to the airport until fairly late.

Sadly, the Classified restaurant has been closed and the normal United Polaris lounge has been expanded to take over that space.  That's a shame, because it was always a quiet place to sit and wait for your flight, although it will make dinner an awful lot cheaper - as it should be free, but we'll see!

As I was only in the room for two nights, I hadn't actually seen this view with nice weather.  You can just about see the bay in the distance.  This is looking south over Manhattan. 

I decided to visit Rockaway Beach, which is on the south-east limit of New York's borough of Queens.  I was able to get on an 'A' train which took me there.

I've been here before, but I still like the way that the train trundles slowly over the subway bridge, crossing the large lagoon.  It's not elevated much, so it feels like you're going along the water.

Apparently, parts of the bridge can be opened to permit ships to pass through, and one had wanted to pass through today, so there were quite a few delays on the line.

Just before the beach, the line splits into two, with the 'A' going east and a shuttle 'S' going west.  I went east to 44th St, walked back westwards to 98th St and got the shuttle back to the junctiona and then an 'A' back to Penn Station.

There are a lot of breakwaters like this all along the beach.

They all featured a few signs saying "Keep Off Jetty"  but there were still some people poj each one.  Usually, it would be people fishing, but at one, there was a whole group of children on the rocks.

You can just ahout see Manhattan in the distance  looking westwards along the beach.

It wasn't very long ago that I was able to paddle in the Pacific Ocean and now was able to do the same in the Atlantic Ocean.

By the time I had decided to return back to Manhattan, schools had finished for the day, so the shuttle train back to Broad Channel was packed with a schoolchildren.

 

Since the signage at Penn Station is terrible, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly which entrance and where I would have to go with all my luggage later on.

Having done that, I decided to eat at a steakhouse, which was very expensive, but the food was nice.  The restaurant is part of the whole stack of venues in the same place.  There's Penn Station at the bottom, underground, with another level of restaurants and entrances for the station on the "ground floor", with Madison Square Garden arena on top of it all.

I had the slab bacon to start, which was large cube shapes of gammon, with maple syrup sauce.  My server suggested black pepper improved the taste too, and I think it did too.  The filet mignon was the most expensive part, but was done as it should have been.  I just had a cookie and coffee for dessert and they came to $15 in total as well.

San Diego Padres @ New York Mets (game 2)

The final game of my holiday was this Wednesday evening game.

This time, I arrived  just as the game was getting underway, although I didn't get to my seat until the bottom of the 1st inning, as it took several minutes to get up to the Excelsior Level in the lift and then queue to buy a bottle of water.

I took my hat and coat - which turned out to be a waste of effort, because it was warm throughout and no sign of the drizzle that had been lingering most of the day.  

Today, there were plenty of innings with zero or one run scored - until Manny Machado hit a grand slam for the Padres in the middle innings.  The Mets managed to keep it tight and were gradually eroding the lead one run at a time, but in the end fell short and lost the game 7-4.

As a reward for being at the game where the three million attendance mark was passed, I should be receiving an email containing a discount voucher for a game next year.  It will be interesting to see what restrictions it might have.

After the game, I remembered that you have to go to the wrong platform at the subway station!  For a lot of its length, the 7 line has three tracks: updown, downtown and then an express line whose direction changes depending on the time of day.  If you go to the signposted platform for downtown-bound trains, you get stuck on a local (all stations) train, but if you go to the uptown platform, you have access to the express line's platform.  Not only that, but they run a "super-express" service that calls at even fewer stations than a normal express service.  It only takes 25 minutes to get you back to Times Square in Manhattan, whereas it took 40 on the local train, as there were only 3 out of the dozen or so stops in Queens.

Final full day

Today, I had planned on going to the beach for a relaxing day on Long Island. 

However, it is raining.  It may also be raining for tonight's game, which would be a nuisance, as obviously, I wouldn't be able to attend a rescheduled matchup - and it would be rescheduled, because the Mets are in a tight race for the final wildcard spot, and the Padres are in the wildcard race too, although more comfortably off for now.

There's not a lot to do except update my blog and go for lunch before heading up to Citi Field this evening.

I found that I'm staying literally around the corner  from my company's New York office.  That's after finding I was a stone's throw away from our Chicago office earlier in my holiday.

The office even has the company name lit up on the side multiple times, in big purple letters! 

San Diego Padres @ New York Mets (game 1)

This was a strange game.  As I was a little late, having forgotten that I had a ticket for tonight's game, I missed the first 2 and a half innings, arriving during the bottom of the 3rd.  It could have been worse, but I asked Google Maps how long it would take from my hotel to the stadium and it said only 36 minutes, and it was about right - the subway entrance for the 7 line is very near my hotel.

On the down side, this game finished 8-3 in favour of the hometown Mets, but I only saw 1 of those runs score, as the Mets scored 5 in the first inning and 2 in the second.

I was on the Excelsior level, which is not the top Hyundai Club section, which I've been in before and is extremely nice and, when the Mets are competitive and able to sell it out, very expensive.  We still have lots of comfy chairs and tables to sit at around the concourse, which makes it a very pleasant place to come.

I was still feeling a bit tired, so I just had some chicken tenders to eat for my "lunch".

It was very noisy - there was unnecessary music between each pitch it seemed, and it wasn't really relevant to the action.

In the end, the part of the game I saw had some good pitching and good defence, although the Mets catcher suffered a nasty-looking injury when he was hit by a pitch on his hand and he left the game.

A Mets victory is the last thing the Giants need, unfortunately, so I'd like the Padres to knock them off tonight if possible - and I might get a commemorative gift if there are more than about 26,000 people on Wednesday, as it'll push the season total attendance to over 3 million.

New York arrival

I didn't sleep all that much on the flight, although it was maybe a couple of hours, and I did sleep through breakfast and coffee, which was irritating, as I was woken up to get my seat back upright for landing.

I had a breakfast at a place in the airport terminal before exiting, as most of the food places are on the airside of security.  I've checked into my hotel, but check-in only starts at 3pm, so that's 7 hours after landing.

I got to New York Penn station at about 11.30am, and then walked around the train hall wondering whether to buy lunch or not and then decided to just go up to the hotel anyway and see if I could at least drop my bags off, as I didn't want to be lugging them around for hours, and I was still a bit tired.

I got to the hotel about 1pm, as it's only a few blocks away from Penn Station, so I'd walked up there.  Then it got a bit strange, because I was informed that my room wasn't "available" until 3pm, although I could pay $50 for an early check-in, because the room was ready.

The guy at the check-in desk said that he couldn't waive the fee, but he could for new Hilton Honors signups, so he suggested that if I had another email address not associated with my HH account already, I could "sign up" and then he could let me into the room straight away, and then he said I could close the second account after I'd left.

So I now have a second HH account with my work email address.  I'm wondering whether this is a thing or whether he's on an incentive to sign up as many new members as possible!

The view from my room (taken the next morning) is OK - I had paid extra for a city view, so I'm on the 30th floor, just one below the top.

I wasn't sure whether I'd stayed here before, but now I'm sure that I have, as I remember the breakfast room and the three lifts, which always take an age to service all the floors, as there are so many of them, even though there's only half a dozen rooms on each floor.

As soon as I got in I decided to try to catch up on some sleep, and woke up a few hours later, only then realising that I was still thinking it was Monday, when in fact it was Tuesday, so I had a game to go to which was due to start in 5 minutes time!

Proper sunset

Using the Waymo to get to the wharf was worthwhile, because it got me there before the sun had finished setting.

This is a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, taking from Pier 39, when the sky was at its reddest.

It does look very red in the photo, but it was really that colour.

There are so many good viewpoints, that you can find a clear spot for photos, although it was quite windy which made it chilly, even with my coat on. 

As night fell, the seals were swimming around in the water and the sealions were being quite noisy.  By this time, it was getting quite tricky to see them, though.

I didn't eat anything at the pier tonight, as I'd only just had my dinner.  I tried a crepe a few days ago and that was quite nice, although I wish they'd supply a knife and not just a fork, because it was awkward trying to cut it with a side of a fork.  Perhaps you're supposed to use your hands.

After a while, I decided to get the cable car back to my hotel to pick up my baggage and head to the airport.

At the cable car stop, I met some German tourists who were trying to work out the ticket machine and asked me for help.

It's not surprising, because I found it hard to operate the ticket machine too - I never buy single cable car tickets, as I  always buy a Muni passport instead ($47 for a week, for as many rides on buses, trains, streetcards or cable cars as you want, compared to $9 for a single trip on a cable car!)

Only the lady really spoke much English at all, so they were in luck, as I was able to speak with them in German to explain it, for which they were very grateful, and they told me they were flying home tomorrow and that they'd enjoyed their time in San Francisco, but wanted to ride the cable car before leaving.

The trip to airport took about half an hour, so I was at the airport in plenty of time, although I've never been on a BART that went backwards - as we got to the junction for the airport, it seems that we were on the wrong track and had to reverse a bit to let the ongoing train switch to the other track - since it was on an incline, it felt like the driver had just left the brake off to let us drift backwards for a bit! 

There weren't many more flights due to leave after mine, so the airport was less busy than usual.

We took off over San Francisco, and then turned east for the overnight trip to New York.