bt3.com/Baz's 1992 USA Holiday
California and the Golden West.

Where and how?

Day 1: Wednesday September 23

The USA. As I mentioned at the time you clicked the link to this page?

To be precise, a fully escorted coach tour, starting in San Diego CA and thence stopping in Phoenix Arizona, Williams AZ, Las Vegas Nevada, Visalia, Merced, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo before finishing the tour in Anaheim near Los Angeles (all California).

Marvellous.

No, better than that, the Holiday of a Lifetime.

Do yourself a favour, and navigate through this holiday using the hyperlinks scattered throughout the text. If you want to go back to the start, or feel a need to go to my site homepage, well, by now you should know what to do? :o)

This morning, the first of our holiday, we arose at the unnatural hour of 4:45, to be greeted by a cold, grey, miserable sort of day. The next two hours saw the final marshalling together of all the things needed for the following two weeks holiday. The taxi arrived for the Town Hall at 6:40, this location being the meeting point for the transport to Manchester Airport. We waited in the cold until 7:05, when the minibus arrived.

We arrived at the airport at 8:00, to be greeted by the Titan Hitours representative with tickets and instructions to stand in the queue for the check-in desk. Whilst in the queue, an American Airlines representative asked questions relating to previous travel and about the contents of hand and check-in luggage. After clearing the check-in formalities, I went for the obligatory freshening up session, followed by a brief rest in the main concourse, then the walk to the departure lounge. On leaving the shopping area, we was asked to present passports and pass my hand luggage through an X-ray scanner. The walk to the departure area wasn't as tiring as the distance suggested, there being a series of moving walkways for a large proportion of the way. The time in the departure lounge was spent, for the most part, looking out onto the airport apron and chatting to fellow travellers.

After boarding the American Airlines Boeing 767-223 'LuxuryLiner' aircraft and finding our seats, mine 30C, to the port side of the central section of seats, we settled down for the flight to come. The scheduled departure time of 10:30 stretched to 10:57, whereupon the aircraft pushed back from the gate. The taxiing out to the runway for take-off seemed to take an age, but, at 11.23 we lifted off. The flight across the North Atlantic, the cabin announcement informed us, was estimated to take 7 hours 11 minutes, arriving at 1:34pm, Eastern time, and at a height of 37,000 feet. The in-flight catering was quite excellent, the meal starting with a salad, my main course comprising roast veal and mushrooms with mixed vegetables. The dessert, pear mousse with mandarin oranges, was followed by coffee and iced water.

The descent, after the transatlantic flight, into New York, John F. Kennedy Airport provided a view of the city which surpassed my expectations, the Empire State Building and the twin towers of The World Trade Center being immediately recognisable. After an uneventful flight, during which we had to complete visa waiver forms, to allow entry to the U.S.A., we arrived at the gate in JFK airport at 1:40pm, just slightly later than scheduled. After deplaning, we had to pass through immigration control, this at 2:00, and collect and transfer the checked-in luggage to the connecting flight to San Diego. The transfer went comparatively smoothly, apart from the immigration officer pointing out a missing item of information on the visa waiver *I'd* filled out. Eventually, we were able to find the departure gate area and rest.

Until 4:30, when we were required to check in for the transcontinental flight, the time was spent talking about the first stage of the journey, watching the loading and unloading of aeroplanes, observing the airport service vehicles, the arriving and departing aircraft and airport shuttle helicopters. Again, after finding our seats, mine being 42A, a port window seat, near the back this time, the scheduled departure time came and went, however at 5:15 the flight crew announced that the aircraft was awaiting a control surface actuator for the port wing - not exactly a confidence-inspiring statement. We pushed back from the gate at 5:37 and taxied out towards the runway, following a long snake of aircraft.

Eventually at 6:10 the 'plane took off and we passed over the environs of New York, with the numerous baseball grounds and surprisingly abundant racetracks, en route for San Diego. As with the transatlantic crossing, this flight, heading west into the night of the North American continent at an altitude of 39,000 feet, was largely uneventful, not to say boring, and eventually meal time came to relieve the monotony. This time, after the salad, I had the grilled chicken followed by chocolate whip yoghurt, then coffee and iced water. The flight plan routed us first to Chicago, followed by Kansas City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and, finally our destination, San Diego. To see the lights of Las Vegas, a city I had only seen on TV, and knowing that soon we were to visit, brought home to me that we were really flying over the United States of America!

The descent into Lindbergh Field Airport, San Diego, in the dark, showed the beauty of a city skyline at night, the twinkling lights gradually resolving into roads, and the roads becoming streets and houses, shops, work places and the like. At 8:20 Pacific time, three minutes in advance of the changed schedule, the aircraft arrived at the gate, and we began the disembarkation, which this time was eased by to the lack of immigration formalities, already being in the U.S.A.

After passing under the "Welcome to San Diego" sign at 9:00, and retrieving our luggage from the carousel, we headed to the airport exit to be greeted immediately by the Titan Hitours courier, who introduced herself as Hilary, and the driver Marvin. These two were to be with us for the full holiday. The progress out of the airport was disconcerting until I realised we were on the right-hand side of the road. Once out of the airport boundaries, the volume of traffic on the way to the hotel slowed our progress somewhat, but we arrived finally at the accommodation, the Travelodge Sports Arena. When we reached our beds after retrieving our luggage, it was 10:00pm Pacific time, 6am British Summer Time, which meant that, apart from a couple of naps on the 'planes, we had been on the go for twenty five and a quarter hours.

To Day 2

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