39 - End Game in San Fran.

When we landed it was urgent that we get some hot food into us and so we did. Needless to say our native conditioning then called for satisfied hunger to be supplemented by satisfied thirst and we spent some time "relaxing" again, with a good view in the opposite direction across the Bay, but this time from a warm and warming enclosed spot. The rest of the afternoon was spent searching for jeans to bring home. Shopping ain't my cuppa tea at all, so I'll say no more other than the mission was eventually successful. Afterwards the bould Ber decided she'd "get her hair done" and we went scoutin' back up to Little Italy for a suitable quiffer. This we found and an appointment was duly made for the morrow at 10 am, she being used to "early" mornings by now. This called for a few more scoops before headin' back to the flophouse. We went out for a meal later and of course a few more drinks in another bar near the hotel before tiredness once more caught up with us. We finished the night with a final few bottles in the room and watching "Saving Private Ryan" on the TV, partly to see if we could spot.anybody we knew in the Free Clothing Association ranks on screen.

And so on our final morning. The Boss toddles off bright and breezy like, as they say in Cork, to the Eyetalion Hair Shop while I slept in (for a change) and promised to pack, which I did after a brief kip. I got both the hotel bill and a lift to the Airport all sorted out before venturing amach in the direction of Chez Coiffure. About half way there I bumped into Ber sauntering along and feeling "mortified". Turns out she was 15 bucks short for the hairdo. This was a problem because we had gotten very short on dosh by this time. In fact we had barely enough left in the kitty to get a trolley at the Airport. Luckily one of the lady barbers was from Dublin and had sympathised with honest Bernadette and didn't leave her half made over. It's a small and often great world, isn't it? A brass neck of course had nothing whatsoever to do with this "adventure".

Afterwards we had about an hour to kill before lightin' out for the plane park and we scraped together enough to share one cup of tea in the open air square of a shopping centre. This turned out better than it sounds because it involved a folk group from Peru playing there for free, and really good they were too.

Nothing of note happened this time in the Airport, unless we'd regard as noteworthy the red faced embarrassment of not having any tip for the minibus driver, and tips in the good ole US of A are like a bleedin' religion. And so we boarded the skybird for the last long haul segment of the great odyssey - 11 hours San Francisco to London. This flight is mostly a faded memory for me because we seem to have dozed/slept a lot of the time. We did have some delay when we approached Heathrow due to a lot of "backed up" traffic and we found ourselves circling for more than 40 minutes awaiting clearance to land - a "hitch" which afforded an opportunity to lazily view the world's busiest air traffic "freeway" and marvel at the precision of it all.  

We caught our last flight to Dublin two hours later and at last set foot again on Irish soil almost 54 days after we had departed, with feelings a little like what Phineas Fogg may have had.