Sunday, December 25, 2005

Paula and John in California



Paula and I spent a December week in northern California. It was a homecoming for Paula, who worked and lived there for two decades. We rode a cable car in San Francisco, went to Japan Town (multi-level shopping center with only Japanese stores and restaurants), drove up some mighty steep streets (even for a West Virginia native), visited Oakland & Berkeley, the redwoods of Muir Woods and more places than I can remember. It rained regularly.

Our trip from Cleveland Hopkins Airport was an adventure. Our flight was canceled because of winds in Chicago (Isn't that why they call it The Windy City?), then combined with another canceled flight hours after the original takeoff time. That meant we missed our connection in Chicago for Oakland, so we hustled onto a flight to San Francisco, which meant a $70 drive from San Francisco to Oakland to get our rental car and our luggage (which, it turned out, remained in Chicago). Bottom line: We arrived at our Wyndham Hotel in Pleasanton 16 hours after our originally scheduled flight from Cleveland. The trip home was uneventful, on time all the way.

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