Monday, 4 September 2017

San Francisco to Los Gatos

Today, I had to check out of my hotel and travel down to Los Gatos to spend the rest of the week at Roku headquarters as part of my induction process.  I confirmed to the hotel that I wanted my 4pm guaranteed late checkout, and they denied it - and eventually consented to 3pm.  I'm not convinced that I'm actually getting any benefits from being a Marriott Gold Elite member - I had to pay for my breakfasts here too, because Courtyard doesn't participate in the free breakfast promotion!  I'll see what happens in Oakland ... which is a real Marriott ... where I don't need the late checkout as I have a really early flight, but we'll see about breakfast.

I had dinner at John's Grill and then headed to the Caltrain station, which is the next station on the Muni Metro line after AT&T Park.  I caught the "Baby Bullet" train to San Jose, which left bang on time and arrived on schedule at San Jose Diridon Station - 1 hour 9 minutes later, after the less than 50 miles trip, which Google Maps tells me would take only 50 minutes by car.  The Baby Bullet is the semi-fast service, rather than the all stations stopper which takes twice as long!

However, with my Clipper card, it only cost $9.20  I then took a tram down to Winchester station (the end of the line) for $2 and then tried something new ... I used an Uber to get from the station to the hotel.  I sent out the request and it was accepted immediately and a man picked me up 3 minutes later and took me the very short distance to the hotel.  You don't pay the driver - you pay the website and the website pays the driver.  I was charged less than $5 for the trip (which I'll be claiming back on expenses)  I'll do almost the reverse journey on Saturday, except I won't go all the way to San Francisco, but I'll get off at Millbrae and transfer to BART to go straight through to Oakland.

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