A Review of San Francisco, California
My husband and I are very simple people. That is not to say that we don’t have money; we just like to keep things simple and enjoy the little things in life. When considering places to go for our honeymoon, we thought it would be nice to see the west coast (as we are from the east coast). We enjoy culture, fine dining, and wine. We don’t feel the need to go to clubs or party it up like we’re teenagers. We made the decision to go to San Francisco, stay at a five star hotel and take day trips around the city and to Napa Valley. We researched the area using the Internet and books, and created an itinerary of events for the week. We booked a room at the top-rated hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, and made car reservations. We would be brining a lap top to make any further itinerary changes. We called the hotel the morning before we were to leave to confirm our reservation, again, and to ask about the parking situation, as we were going to have a rental car. We were informed that it would be an additional $45.60 per day to park our car in their lot, which had not been disclosed to us when we booked the hotel through Expedia. We went ahead and called Expedia and canceled our rental car, deciding that it would be cheaper to take taxi’s and the municipal rail everywhere around the city, and we could take a limo or shuttle to Napa when we went.
The trip was a disaster from the beginning, and perhaps the events leading up to our departure gave us a negative outlook on the city. When we arrived at the airport and were waiting to board our plane, two of my co-workers appeared to be awaiting the same plane. I should add that these two co-workers are not my favorite people! When we boarded the plane, there was a young girl sleeping in one of our seats. Rather than make a fuss, we sat ourselves in the other two seats in the row. My co-workers were across the aisle; one was two rows behind, the other 6 rows in front. After a few hours in the air, the captain came over the intercom to let us know that we would be making an emergency landing in Denver Colorado because there was a storm coming, and our radar went out. As we sat on the grounded plane for an hour, people were beginning to get stir crazy, the air was rancid and the seats were uncomfortable. The captain came over the intercom again, to let us know that we could get off the plane for 30 minutes and that the plane would take off again in about and hour. We, being smokers, went into the airport seeking a smoking lounge. We went in and lit our cigarettes and the bartender came to us and informed us that there was a one drink minimum to enter the lounge, so my husband ordered a $5 beer. The bartender then came to me, and said, “that means you too.” So I ordered a $5 beer. Neither beer was touched, as we sucked down our cigarettes and contemplated renting a car and driving back to Virginia. We went to the plane and asked how we could get our luggage if we wanted to get off the plane, and were told that our luggage would proceed to San Francisco and we would have to file a claim to get it back, which could take several weeks. We decided, that because it would be more inconvenient not to continue to San Francisco, that we would just go.
When we finally landed at San Francisco International Airport, three hours late, we got our luggage and caught a taxi. As we drove through San Francisco at 90 miles an hour with a Cobbie that didn’t speak English and didn’t understand how rude it is to fart with the windows up and two passengers in the back, I kept thinking that we would get to the nice part of town any minute. Looking around, the city looked dirty and creepy. The houses looked like they belonged in the ghetto. When we got off the highway and into the downtown area, the roads were riddled with potholes and the sidewalks were littered with prostitutes and homeless people. Still thinking that we would get to the nice part of town, I saw the sign for our five star, really expensive hotel room, with a homeless man and his shopping cart full or garbage bags posted outside. Our first question to the concierge was if we would be able to get any of our money back if we checked out in the morning, and they informed us that we would have to go through Expedia.
We proceeded to our room on the Th floor, the room was average to say the least. Our “complementary tea service” arrived and was a nice arrangement of a tea kettle and two small cups in a wicker basket, along with two almond cookies. When I went to pull out the two cups, they were absolutely filthy. There is no way anyone would not have seen the crap that coated the inside of these cups.
I plugged my laptop in to do some research as to how to get out of this city and get back home and after a slow start up, a message came up on my screen that the Mandarin Oriental would be charging our room an additional $12 and some change to access the Internet. In room Internet access was listed as an amenity on the Expedia website when we booked the hotel. Caring more about getting home to try to enjoy our honeymoon, we accepted the fee. We were able to book a flight for the next morning. I then called Expedia to let them know that we were cutting our stay short and they said that they would have to get authorization from the hotel to issue any sort of refund.
Hungry, we decided to order room service. We ordered some dim-sum, a cheeseburger, a steak sandwich and two cans of ginger ale. The total tab came to over $100! As I said before, we are not poor by any means, but $100 for that? The dim-sum was absolutely disgusting, and the cheeseburger was just a cheeseburger. The ginger ale’s alone were $5 a piece!
We then asked where we could go to smoke a cigarette and they said that we would have to go outside and down the street. Did I mention that there were homeless people parked outside? Does my cigarette smell worse than a man who hasn’t showered in 10 years? Anyway, no smoking for us.
We checked out the next morning and went to the airport. We got a crossword book and sat and we worked on them together for the entire trip home. That was probably more fun than going to Alcatraz island or anything else that we would have done in San Francisco. We came home and took our wedding gift money and the refund money and bought the plasma TV that we had been looking at as well as an X-Box 360 and some games. We bought a bunch of good food and alcohol and basically vegged out for the rest of the week. It ended up being the best honeymoon that two regular people could have dreamed of!
