On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 02:55:39 GMT, "PTRAVEL"
wrote:
>
> Arrived at SFO early
>> afternoon, then stood in a long queue at immigration as they
>> fingerprinted and photographed everyone.
>
>I'm curious -- how long were you made to wait? I'm not particularly happy
>with the way we are treating our foreign guests.
Unfortunately we got into the wrong queue, our guy was taking ages to
process people and I suppose it took him about an hour and a half to
process us and the 8 or so groups of people ahead of us in the queue.
We could see our suitcases going round and round on the carousel
behind him and by the time we got through ours were the only bags
left!! Still, we didn't mind too much -- we were on holiday!
>
>> However, we all had a great
>> laugh at the US immigration guys' expense. After a bit of a grilling
>> from him he asked me what I did -- computer programmer, nice and easy
>> and then he made the mistake of asking my wife. She said I'm a vicar,
>> a priest! His jaw fell open and he completely lost it! He got all
>> flustered and handed us our passports and waved us through. He
>> completely forgot to fingerprint and photograph us!
>
>Good for you!
Yes, he obviously hadn't come across a female priest before and for
some reason it really surprised him especially as we had 2 kids. He
even asked our youngest whether we were his parents, our son gave him
a really black look and said "yes, of course we were"!
I'll tell you about our experiences flying out of LA in another
message!
>That's Lombard. You were very close to where I live.
Looked a very nice area to live in. I'm not a city person myself
although I did live in London for 8 years during the 1980s, but I
really liked SF -- one of the best cities I've ever visited.
>
>> the streets were empty,
>> Ok it's a bit hilly but was a bit surprised that we were about the
>> only people walking in that part of SF on a Saturday morning!
>
>The shops don't open until 10:00, and you were in a residential
>neighborhood. If you'd walked three blocks south to Polk, you'd have seen
>lots of people visiting the various coffee shops and markets.
I think it was about noon by the time we got to Lombard.
>> Walked down to Ghiradelli Sq. Brought 4
>> AAs for the camera, had lunch - nice clam chowder. Thought about
>> taking the cable car back up to Lombard Street but the queues were
>> enormous so we walked.
>
>The trick is to walk up two blocks to the next cable car stop. No queue.
>
We didn't mind, we'd had our cable car ride earlier and we're all very
keen walkers -- that was one of the main reasons for this trip, to go
and do some hiking in some of the national parks, so the SF hills
posed few problems for us!
>
>I hope you and your family had a nice time.
>
>
We certainly did!
Cheers
Mike |