Boston to San Francisco

This time, I left the hotel in plenty of time and took the express bus to the airport, which was very quick, what with it being the very early hours of a holiday Monday morning!  This flight, I didn't get the fast-lane access, but I did get to join the normal queue near the front.

The breakfast was OK but nothing special, but there was no more food on this 6 and a half hour flight except for a freshly-baked cookie just before we arrived in San Francisco!

I was able to reload my Clipper card for the journey to Oakland on BART, except there was a closure of the transbay tube that runs between San Francisco and Oakland, so we had a rail replacement bus service - albeit quite a complicated one.  We were directed out of Embarcadero station's emergency exit so we didn't have to tag-out and then tag-in again in Oakland (to avoid getting charged for two journeys), then had to walk several minutes down two blocks to the bus station.  However, there were BART employees every hundred metres of so to encourage people, saying things like "nearly there!" - although after we'd gone past 4 or 5 of them, the lady I was chatting to and I suspected the first one was lying.

Unlike rail replacement buses at home, there was a constant stream of buses.  People got on one and if there was a gap in the stream of people arriving at the bus station, the bus left and the next one was right there to take the next group of people, with virtually no waiting at all.  My bus only had a few people on it.  It didn't take all that long to get to Oakland 19th Street, where I went in the emergency exit and went one stop south to my hotel.

Very conveniently, the Marriott is just next to the BART entrance, and just across the street from where I stayed at the Courtyard Marriott many years ago.  Also, there's a free bus (but not on Labor Day!) that runs down to Jack London Square, where many of the restaurants are.  I had to pay today.

Out of the places I had listed for dinner, I chose Kincaid's for dinner, which was fortunate, because it is closing for 2 weeks for refurbishment the day after next!  Sadly, that meant they'd run out of many menu items, as they'd stopped ordering deliveries.