V-Flyer

Flights down from San Francisco to San Diego are few and far between, and rather than give ourselves too short a connection time (given the different PNRs involved) we opted for a 4 hour wait for our United flight down to southern California. This didn't prevent us asking for a standby on the earlier flight though, and the helpful check in agent even told us that our bags would definitely be on the earlier flight.

Now, at the risk of exciting the attentions of our friends in the TSA, doesn't this seem like an obvious security hole to you? Fail to use the standby ticket and have your explosive-laden bags travelling on a different flight from the ticket holder, so sparing him or her all that tedious being blown up nonsense.

Grasping our original boarding cards and our standby vouchers we managed to get through the shoe fetish carnival that characterises all US security these days, finding ourselves quickly at the gate for the standby flight and straining to hear our names being called. The in-bound flight was late, but as we were starting to flag, a standby seat would be most welcome.

Happily The Kitten's surname (or something almost completely different, but close enough to pique our interest) was read out over the tannoy, and we lunged for the desk to grab our real boarding cards for the earlier flight. Two middle seats unfortunately, but as The Kitten was quick to point out, in the Economy Plus section of the plane with rather better leg room than the back of the United 737.

Inside, my travelling companions in 4D and 4F had to put up with not only my broad shoulders but my travelling stench of the previous 15 hours, so heartfelt apologies to both of them now. Economy Plus on United is normally reserved for their frequent fliers, having a welcome four or five extra inches of leg room for my six foot one frame. Service was just the same as economy though, so that meant a soft drink and nothing else.

Given the late in-bound flight the crew turned the plane around with commendable despatch, giving us an arrival time only ten minutes later than scheduled. The one-wheel landing was quite the worst I've experienced since a fog-bound automated landing at GLA some years back, so much so that at first I thought we must have burst a tyre. But we managed the brief taxi to the terminal (despite missing the first taxiway) safely and were soon trekking through the airport to domestic baggage retrieval.

I suppose complaining about domestic baggage handling in the USA is as futile as arguing with an NRA gun nut about the so-called 'right to bear arms', but it felt distinctly painful to have travelled thousands of miles to a small airport only to have to wait at least 30 minutes for a few bags to come off the carousel. By this time we were yawning capaciously in unison, so it was a relief to get into a cab and head for the W Hotel downtown.

Three nights in San Diego gave us the opportunity to rid ourselves of the UK time zone, go see the Graham Nash photography exhibition at Balboa Park and take the ferry across to Coronado where The Kitten had to suffer a full day of my 'Tony Curtis does Cary Grant in Some Like It Hot as filmed at the Coronado del Mar' accent. We also had a couple of good meals in Little Italy, an evening on the fake beach bar of the W, sipping martinis in front of a fire and warming our tootsies on the heated sand.

But an all too short a time later we were grabbing a cab outside the hotel to begin the next stage of our itinerary to Mexico.

Baja in February itinerary
London to San Francisco
San Francisco to San Diego
San Diego to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to Loreto
Loreto to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to San Francisco
San Francisco to London