Aluminium - The ideal element for a plane

Aluminium 

So today's post is named for Aluminium or Aluminum as it is called this side of the water. 

A key element in the production of aircraft. 

Virgin Atlantic

We left the lounge at 10.20am (2:20am PST) and had a boarded the airplane and were in our seats - 22K and 22H with Orange Juice in our hand by 10:40am. The seats were on the right hand side of the aircraft, the second row back in Premium Economy. NB: Even booking in October the front row was already taken!! Still as the front row has no built in leg rests we were happy where we were. 

For any plane nerds reading the plane was a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner named by them Miss Moneypenny.

  

I've extolled the benefits of Virgin's Premium Economy before, a lot more leg room. Only 35 people in the cabin, 2 designated staff and four toilets. Perfect for a long flight. More about the food shortly. Generally it is a pleasant space, though not quite as luxuriant as the Upper Class we were upgraded to last year, I have nothing to complain about.

The Flight 

We pulled back from gate at 11:15am (3:15am PST) and lined up for the runway. The distance to our destination is, according to the Sky Map Screen - 5,500 miles.

We were in the air by 11:40 am and as the flight began I watched Sky Map and read my book.

Food

The first offering of food was pretzels and a drink at 12.00pm (4:00am PST). This was followed by Lunch at 1pm.

Cajun Pasta Salad

The Meal began was a crisp Cajun salad with pasta, the cajun flavours were all present, if not strong, and the salad was crisp and tasty. The cajun influence was less than we would have liked, but probably it was targeted at people who don't use chillies in their cooking five times a week. It was nicely cool and served on real plates, with stainless steel knife and fork, one of the advantages of Premium Economy.

Stir fried Pork with noodle and bean sauce

Drew then had Stir fried Pork with noodle and bean sauce which was tastier than it might look given my inept photography skills. It was porky good, he kept telling me. 😈

The pork was well cooked, the sauce was nice and tasty and the noodles soft. Drew was very happy with the food and even happier to mock my lack of meat.

Asparagus and ricotta gnocchi with spicy tomato sauce, sweet peppers and broccoli 

I had asparagus and ricotta gnocchi with spicy tomato sauce, sweet peppers and broccoli, the gnocchi was quite dainty with the small pieces of asparagus wrapped in ricotta and both wrapped by the potato of the gnocchi. When I first saw the meal I wondered where the asparagus was, but the surprise of finding it within the potato was a lovely treat. The sauce was spicy and the broccoli was el dente, not an easy feat, I suspect, for airline food. 

Passionfruit Slice 

Dessert saw Drew having two Passion Fruit Slices, mine and his, this was fruity and tangy. Drew said he could certainly manage two of those, which was convenient as he did 😂   <<Co-Pilot's Note: Please note dear Readers that I received said fruity slice in exchange for my bap, crackers and cheese. Someone was not hard done by!!>>

Mug of Tea

The meal was all washed down by a lovely cup of Pg tips tea served in a ceramic mug. There is something nice about tea in a mug which plastic/paper containers just can't match.

Snoozing and reading

We finished lunch at 1.30pm and it was time for a snooze. In between reading I slept (in three different stretches of 30 minutes over the next three hours). Drew also managed a snooze before beginning to watch the Films available. He first watched Bumblebee, transformers film which he really enjoyed, then Alitia, a film about androids which he was less engaged by, though he was quite tickled by the 21st Century Fox logo at the beginning being replaced by a 26th Century Fox logo - the era in which the story is set.

When I was not snoozing but to tired to read I watched bits of Fighting with my Family and Toy Story 3 on the screens of the people in front of me 😄. Toy Story 3 was easy to follow, as I knew the story, Fighting with my Family appeared to be about someone learning to wrestle, with guest appearences from the Rock and Big Show and other wrestlers I might or might not have been expected to know!! Neither 'tasters' were enough to make me turn my screen off the Sky Map. <<Co-pilot's note: "Fighting with my Family" dear Readers was co-produced by WWE and Mr Johnson and is based on the story of Paige an actual WWE wrestler who did hail from Norwich.>> 

More Food

Later the staff came along with an Ice Cream on a stick: a Walls Solero with a Strawberry Smoothie flavour, Drew had both. Where I went to the wander wall to pick up some crisps and pretzels and diet coke to keep me going.

Wander Wall - Premium Economy

The next lot of food was a Cheese and Tomato pasty and a steak pasty, oh how I wanted the steak one, but it was still before midnight BST, so I stayed with the cheese and tomato one. <<Co-pilot's note: Please note dear readers that he tried to nick my Steak Pasty until he was firmly reminded it was still Friday!!>> The pasty had a crisp crust unlike chip shop pasties, more like the crispy pancakes Birds Eye used to do (and may still for all I know!) 

On this part of the journey the Sky Map became even more fun, as having flown over Cardiff, Swansea, Ireland and the Atlantic, before coming across Greenland we were now over Canada, so below us, clearly marked on the map with places we spent time in on holiday last year: Winnipeg, Regina, Moose Jaw, Swift Current and Medicine Hat. We kept going and ended up in places we had visited in our 2013 holiday - like Bozeman, Montana; Boize, Idaho; Yellowstone and Winnemucca, Nevada.

Supper or Afternoon Tea

At 8:30 pm we were served what felt like Supper, but was in content Afternoon Tea.

Mozzarella with green pesto, slow roasted tomato and rocket in a seeded roll 

Hot Smoked Salmon with soft cheese, rocket and cucumber 

Chocolate and caramel eclair, passionfruit and yuzu macaron and a warm scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream

There was a choice of Mozzarella or Hot Salmon in the sandwiches and a sweet course of chocolate and caramel eclair, passionfruit and yuzu macaron and a warm scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream. Drew and I were like Jack Sprat and his wife, Drew loving sweet food, me savoury. So I had the four sandwiches, and very good they were too, and drew had two eclairs, two macrons and two scones. Again this was followed by a nice cup of tea.

Arrival in San Francisco

SFO Airport

The plane landed at 10:10pm BST (2:10am PST) and we got to the gate at 10:25pm BST (2:25am PST). You may be thinking why am I giving the time in BST. Well that shall become clearer a little later. It is a Friday abstinence day today (I may have mentioned it a few times) and I will have completed the 24 hours abstinence at Midnight BST. I hope my Canon Lawyer friends agree that the fast doesn't extend into another day, whatever the current clock says!

We were out of the plane, another benefit of premium at 10:30pm/2:30pm. However this is where things slowed down. While US Citizens could go through a fast track, as could people who were return visitors on an ESTA, something we benefited from last year. This year both of us have new passports, our ten year old ones expiring last September. So we were not return visitors on an ESTA for this purpose, so we had to stay in the main passport queue which was quite long.

Passport Queue - It was even longer behind us

We didn't get through passport control until 4:00pm (NB - it is now Saturday in BST tems). As ever, the officer questioning us managed to ask about our relationship, and in attempting to say, we are together, I waved my hand back and forth. I'm sure a co-pilot's note is forthcoming on this. 

<<co-pilot's note: The very pleasant women asked how we knew each other, Mr B said we were family. She asked how, to which the pilot did this rather obscure hand gesture. If you raise your right hand to three inches above waist height, take and extend your index finger and wave said hand very rapidly left to right you will see said gesture. Confused myself and Border guard Ortega. I felt I had to intervene and say ‘we’re married’ which resolved her confusion.>>

We found our bags after a little while, they were off the carousel given the time we had spent in Passport control. Mine was easily found, but we couldn't see Drew's bag which had been piled under some others, but with the help of a staff member it was found.

BART

We have travelled from San Francisco Airport (SFO) to the City Centre (or Downtown as they call it here on numer of occasions. This has mainly been a Taxi Ride with our eyes shut as the five lane highway between the two gets very exciting in a Nascar sense of excitement. It cost us $60 for this journey last time we were here and the journey took 55 minutes. I had therefore explored alternative methods of transport and the best seemed to be the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). 

For $9:15 each we were both transported from the airport to downtown in 25 minutes. We did have to ask three different information points for where the BART station is at the airport, each of them pointed us further down the airport. It will be easier next time.

We got on the Bart train going in the direction of Antioch at 4:30pm and arrived at Montgomery Street station at 4:55pm. From here it is one block up and two across (San Francisco has short blocks) to our hotel. We checked into the hotel at 5:05pm.

Drew approaching the hotel

Having checked into the hotel it was time for dinner. But that story will wait for another post.