Off to Cape Town
Cape Town and the Winelands have long been on our travel bucket list. We loved our first visit to South Africa 18 months ago when we went on an amazing 6 day safari.
Last fall, when Emirates announced A380 service to SFO, DFW and IAH, they were generous about releasing 2 awards seats well into 2015.
And despite the seats not being visible or bookable on AS.com, good Alaska partner award agents were able to use the "old system" to find and book seats that were visible on ExpertFlyer. So SFO-DXB it is, connecting to DXB-CPT. Finding even one award seat on the return was not quite as easy and two is virtually impossible especially at this time of the year. But, with reasonable Emirates First Class fares from CPT not much more than buying Alaska miles, I just bought F tickets for our return.
Here is the line-up for the next week:
• United First Class Denver-San Francisco
• Lunch at Boulevard (or Yankee Pier)
• The Emirates Lounge at SFO
• Emirates First Class A380 SFO-DXB
• Dubai International Hotel at DXB Terminal B
• Emirates First Class Lounge at DXB
• Emirates First Class 77W DXB-CPT
• La Residence Franschhoek
• The Winelands: Franschhoek and Stellenbosch
• The One&Only Cape Town
• Cape Town
• Lounge at CPT
• Emirates First Class 77W CPT-DXB
• Emirates First Class A380 DXB-JFK
• Delta Sky Club at JFK
• Delta First Class JFK-MSP-DEN
Our recent experiences with United have been terrible. Nothing is ever on time. And today is no different. Despite Flight Status showing "On Schedule", United's "Where is this plane coming from?" tells the truth.
We arrived at DIA just before 9AM. More progress on the new Westin, scheduled to open in the fall.
OK, PreCheck accessibility is getting way out of hand.
Fortunately, we have CLEAR we jumped the PreCheck queue using the empty CLEAR lane. On the train, Mrs. SFO again decided she knew best and insisted we bypass the Concourse A Admirals Club (she had previously declared it "the crap lounge") and go to the United Club East.
Yikes, what a crowded dump this place is, with no sign of the advertised food improvements.
And obnoxious yappers oblivious to the world around them.
And an asinine Wifi log-in system that requires you to pick one of 4 ways to log in, the last of which requires you to walk around the club and find the current password.
This place was so bad that Mrs. SFO opined that "this is the real crap lounge".
With a gate change to the west side of the concourse, we headed out at T-30. Gate 20 and the now familiar chaotic United gate lice/boarding drill.
And yet a further delay.
LOL, this is the line for Group 1. Consistent with its crap First Class product, no priority boarding for First Class here. Just join the line behind GS, 1K and groupies heading back to Y.
Denver-San Francisco
United 1747
Pm CO 737-900
10:07A-12:00P (sked)
11:15A-12:55P (actual)
March 16, 2015
Seats 3AB
The good news: WiFi.
The bad news: It didn't work today.
Pleasant FAs offered open bar pre-departure drinks. Despite the door being closed, annoyed captain came on the PA to announce that "we ready to go but we are still waiting on the company for our final weigh and balance data. So you folks know as much as we do at this point". At this point, we realize that we are running out of time to go into the city and that lunch at our favorite SF restaurant, Boulevard, is not going to happen.
Another 10 minutes and we finally push and are on our way.
As this was a "lunch" flight, we took two for the photo op. Wow, this is the improved United catering? Scary. Both the chicken salad and roast beef sandwich were horrible. Mrs. SFO opined that her "chicken" was not real chicken.
Both my quinoa and processed roast beef sandwich were gross and inedible.
On the other hand, the chocolate chip cookies were excellent, as was the Sees Candies sampler that we purchased in terminal.
We touched down at SFO at 12:40P and pulled into the gate 5 minutes later, and headed for Yankee Pier for lunch before the EK counters opened 3 hours before departure.
