Finalising travel plans

I’m going to travel to California late this week and stay there for best part of the next week. Yesterday and today, I have spent considerable amount of time trying to get all details done.

I had to extend my stay for one night to get enough time to accomplish all tasks during my visit. This resulted changes in both ends of the travel. The travel agency found much cheaper price for the tickets, but I have to leave already on Saturday. My mother-in-law will pay a visit in weekend and I would rather see her than travel, but there were no choices… Fortunately she arrives already tomorrow, so there is some time.

I’ll spend the first night in San Francisco and then drive a rented car to San Jose, popping in a selected commercial shrines on the way. I’ve heard that BART is extended to the SFO airport and I’ll be in the downtown in half an hour or so. The hotel is near the Union Square, so no need for taxis in the town.

I searched the hotel from Tablet Hotels and other hotel booking systems for a short while. Then I decided to give a shot and call the travel agency. They managed to surprise me — in the age of Internet booking, they provided much cheaper price for Hotel Triton. For some peculiar reason, the confirmation mail was in German; sent by a Finnish agency to a Finnish guy…

The car rental was not very swift operation either. I had decided to stick with Hertz as they have best selection of outlets in San Francisco and San Jose areas. I have three different discount codes from different affiliations. I went through all of them, just to find that the difference between them was below $2. The difference between the normal price and discounted one was huge, as the discounted price contained all the relevant insurances and it was still cheaper than the normal price.

Now I need to call the hotel in San Jose to extend my stay and tomorrow I have to print a few maps for the shopping trip.