Crazy California

So Friday the 4th was our last day in SF – which we realized late Thursday evening.

What? We’re checking out the 4th? But the check-in in L.A is the 5th…

Pause for head scratching

…so we don’t have anywhere to sleep the night between. And we need to get to L.A somehow.

Dutch roommate couple;

“You should take the Greyhound!”

So 9.30pm we got on what was gonna be our combined transport and shelter for the night.

8 hours later, we crossed the finish line and got our reward; The Ritz! (thanks boss)

Don’t think we need more comments on that, we’ll just show you some pics and leave it at that.

But too much luxury is not good for our image so 7am next morning we got in a cab that was gonna take us to the Amtrak station, 5min away according to the Hotel staff…

…35min later we started wonder if we were heading to the right station. Cabdriver assured us we were. Another 10 minutes later he drops us off at a shuttle-bus stop by the airport and tells us to get on a bus, cause that will take us to the Amtrak.

???

He unloads our luggage and even has the courage to ask for tip. I try to push aside my suppressed anger and bring out my Swedish perliteness to explain that “No sir, I’m afraid you have failed to bring us to the correct destination. Therefor I can not possibly give you tip” And then a Colgate smile for comforting effect.

Well the shuttle bus was wrong as well. We ended up taking the metro all the way back to Down Town (where we came from). And when we finally got on a train to San Diego we had missed our first interview – thank you cab man!

Well, no need to be angry. Maybe he just had a ruff morning. Anyways we changed course to our second meet up; Ernesto Ramirez

This is the guy who has a treadmill where others have computer chairs. But no he’s not running marathons every time he writes an email. He don’t won’t to walk around the office all sweaty. While I’m testing my multitasking skills on the treadmill Ernesto suggest we meet with his colleague Larry Smarr. And what did Larry have to show us? His intestence – in 3D.
And it’s not the movie 3D we’re used to see. He gave me a tour inside his body by grabbing a 3D “stick” and twist and turn the virtual version of his insides. Crazy! I wish we could have filmed it in 3D as well.

Ernesto is one of the organizers of the San Diego QS Meet ups and this year he’s also helping out at the big QS conference in September in San Francisco. We’re kind of hoping for leftover tickets. Since so many of the people we’ve met are coming to the event, we’d really like to go and meet everybody again. Fingers crossed you guys!

The train back from San Diego arrived in L.A around midnight and when we got to the new hostel we were up for a surprise;

Guy in reception

“I can’t seem to find your reservation”

At this point it’s 1am.

“And we have no other rooms available”

We try to explain that we only need somewhere to sleep for 5 hours (and maybe borrow a shower) cause we leave for Taiwan early in the morning.

“Ok, there is one room. We normally don’t allow guests to sleep there but I’m gonna make an exception just this once. Ok? I’m gonna let you sleep in the movie room.

And so we got one sofa each.

/ Amanda

P.s Ville is very confused after the last days intense traveling, currently he’s trying to find himself on google maps.