Travel Diary

I was nervous about my transfer, though we had ample time. I got through customs fast and found a chair to just relax for a while. The last leg was just a flight across the US, but I was exhausted. I had gotten very little sleep and it was the next day.

And wow, we were gaining so many time zones. On the flight to JFK, we departed at 5:30am and arrived at 8:30am. This layover was shorter and at 11:30am we left JFK and I arrived at SFO at 3pm.

At SFO, I exited, got my bags and headed to BART. It was still Thursday for me. No real sleep for a while. You see, I had arrived just past midnight at Gatwick Airport (London) and had to wait almost five hours for the next flight. This is not ideal. I don’t recommend such actions. I thought I had learned from my past mistakes. On the other hand, time does pass, so it’s all in the past as I write this. No, it wasn’t easy, and yet I still survived.

I was hoping to clear customs fast because I didn’t want to be caught up with the daily commute mess out of San Francisco. Since I’d be taking BART, SF was a risk. Notably, I would Uber when the fares got cheap enough. I just had to ride the BART train for a while to find out when that was.

As it turns out, I rode all the way to Pleasanton. I walked about one more mile and then summoned Uber. No use in getting too overheated (it was another hot summer day). Uber took me the last two miles and it was only about $5.

In hindsight, the extra layovers probably were not a good idea. I caught a nasty bad cold from the journey home, though I felt sick right after the first flight. So it could have been germs on the first plane, or perhaps the bus ride to the airport. I mean, how many times do people clean the bus railings?

At home, I just slept and slept. The trip was over.

But it was a fantastic one. My last Italy visit had been so long before. And now it was fresh again.

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