Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Vacation begins. Day 1 of the Spain trip. Medium bowl of oatmeal with milk, flax meal, cacao nibs, sliced and toasted almonds, dried cherries; hot water. Made preparations to leave. At noon we rode Uber to SFO. We lunched at Boudin Bakery: we shared a sesame ginger chicken salad and a tomato Parmesan soup. Aranciatas to drink. The ordering process was annoying. You could only order by screen, and Apple Pay failed. Apple Card worked. The food was good. We waited near our gate. The boarding process was disorganized and blocked pathways for others to get by. We sat in World Traveller Plus in 67A and 67B. Our seats included two extra storage areas under the windows which also provided lots of shelf space and which we were grateful to have especially since other seats had none or only one such compartment. Our seats each included a pillow and blanket and over-ear headphones and comfort kit. The comfort kit was a small zippered pouch that included socks, eye mask, lip grease, toothbrush, toothpaste, and a pen. Our Airbus A380 was very old. We knew this because it provided USB-A ports, RCA jacks, and had really thick displays. Upon seating we were offered and received orange juice (Patrick) and sparkling wine (me). After takeoff, we received beverages and sour cream and chive mini pretzels. Patrick had nonalcoholic beer, I had a gin fizz. Later: dinner: we both wanted beef filet but because we were in the last row of the cabin they had run out by the time they reached us. Patrick received veggie curry which was spicy. I received bbq chicken which was not spicy. Both meals came with bottled water, pearl barley salad, dinner roll, butter, panna cotta, crackers and tillamook cheddar. Patrick again had non alcoholic beer. I had red wine. In the row in front of us the under-window compartment got stuck in the closed position and a flight attendant and a passenger failed to open it. Eventually a male steward was called over and he resolved it by pressing harder on the lid. Later the lights dimmed and most people slept. We began listening to the audiobook of Glory Days by Simon Rich and read by John Mulaney. I had fallen asleep a few chapters in after the Mario part which impressed me because he kept up the fake accent for so long. Patrick was in and out of consciousness throughout. He woke me to ask me to access something in our under-window storage, and we stopped listening at chapter 9. I took trash to the gallery at the end of the plane. A flight attendant there let me know I could have also used the bathroom trash but I thought it would fill up too quickly if everyone did that. Our seats were adjacent to the bathroom, and we could hear flushing now and then, but the proximity did not disturb us as much as we might have guessed, and it was convenient to have it so close. We tried sleeping but could not even though we both felt at least a little tired. Later I slept and Patrick tried but was unsuccessful at sleeping very much at all.