Tuesday 18 December 2012

Welcome to the Hotel California

Long distance travel is tedious and tiring.  Even the thought of describing the journey makes me shudder.  We left our Dublin hotel at 10am Irish time and got to my sister's house at 10pm California time, nineteen hours later.  'Nuff said.

A warm welcome from my sister and her family helped to ease the pain and we all kept going gamely until we crashed simultaneously.  Jet-lag kindly woke us up at about five in the morning (2pm French time), the LSH got up to work, and I got myself a nice cuppa (Barry's of course) and went back to bed for a while.
Shortly after, I discovered that my Kindle was missing.  GAH!  I'd left it on the last plane.  Even as I put it in the seat-pocket in front of me, I had thought "I'm going to be really tired when we get to San Francisco, I hope I don't forget it," but that wasn't enough to jolt my memory as we got off the plane.  In hindsight, I should have said it to the others, but I didn't.  Damn, I though, I'll have to ring United Airways asap, and we'll have to make a run to the airport to collect it - I was quite certain someone would have handed it in.

I was surprised to see sixty emails in my inbox when I got up a while later.  It turned out they were mostly from Amazon, telling me about the purchases I had been making since the night before.  Aaargh.  So much for getting my Kindle back!

A quick phone call to Visa to report the fraud, and a simultaneous internet chat with Amazon later, and it was all sorted.  Unfortunately, my card has been cancelled, which is a nuisance, but Amazon were very efficient and said they would cancel and refund all the purchases.  It's been a bit of bother, but not the end of the world!

We did very little on our first day, we had a short walk in the morning and a brief trip to an outlet mall in the afternoon.

I was surprised to see that it's still autumn here!  There's quite a few red-gold trees around, amongst all the evergreens and Christmas decorations.
These two strange men got in the way as I took this photo!
I'm going to walk around the neighbourhood some evening and take photos of the Christmas decorations.  Until then, here's a photo Cinnamon sent me.  She said she has established herself as a person of importance in this household.  I hope this doesn't mean that she's giving the cats a hard time!

7 comments:

  1. Martine, Welcome to California! What a trip you had! Glad the Kindle/Amazon ordeal is working out. Wishing you a wonderful holiday with your sister and family.

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  2. Glad it all worked out with Amazon. Hope you get your Kindle back. Welcome to the States. Hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family. The weather should be nice!

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  3. San Francisco ? But that's too far away for a visit! If you make it down to Southern California, let me know.

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    1. Maybe next time Annette! My niece lives near LA, that could be an excuse for a visit :)

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  4. Ah, the joys of travel and the kindness of strangers. I hope that all the bad is gotten out of the way and you have a great trip. Merry Christmas!

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  5. So sorry you left your Kindle on the plane! That sucks (for lack of a better word). But good on Amazon for sorting out all of those purchases for you.
    Enjoy your Barrys and Happy Holidays! :)

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