San Francisco 2006 travelogue, part I

As briefly mentioned in the previous entry, I’m currently in San Francisco — I’m writing this at the top floor (48) of Mandarin Oriental hotel, and the views are magnificent from the working desk. We have a city view room, so the vista is not so grand as on the other side of the hotel that has views over Golden Gate and the bay.

We arrived already on Thursday, but I’ve been so busy and jetlagged that I haven’t got enough free time to write to you. Better late than never.

Flying with an toddler is a feat itself and when a flight takes more than ten hours, it can be a real drag. We got to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport early to have enough time to stand on various queues. EuroBonus gold card opened the business check-in for us, but there is no fast lane concept in Finnish airports. After standing half an hour in the security queue, we were inside the international area and walked directly to the SAS lounge to access Internet and have something to drink.

In the Lufthansa plane to Frankfurt we got to hear that Aapo is not going to have an extension belt to parent’s safety belt, but we just need to hold him in our lap. Really strange compared to Finnish policies, but fortunately there were enough space to have him an own seat. He is sturdy enough to sit there.

We were warned by the cabin personnel that Lufthansa insurance does not cover situation in which an infant is sitting belted to a seat — but having just arms around him is ok. The next surprise was that there were no food for Aapo. We kindly asked whether we could get a bun, and the stewardess promised to come back after everyone has been served. She provided us a full tray and said that this is really an exception. Nice way to serve paying customers, Lufthansa.

We had ordered a baby bassinet for Aapo for the next flight. I had bought my tickets through Lufthansa and the cross-Atlantic flight was with United, so Lufthansa couldn’t arrange the bassinet. I ordered and got it through United’s phone service.

I checked the reservation in Helsinki, and they said that they cannot find it nor change our seats for bassinet rows. We should get in touch with transit in Frankfurt. The people in transit desk told us to talk with United sales, as they were working for Lufthansa. In United sales we were immediately redirected to United check-in that instructed us to handle the case in the gate.

Meanwhile we entered United’s Red Carpet Club in terminal C, and I continued with the bassinet case. The lady in the reception checked our reservation, found the bassinet and assured us that everything is ok. We checked this on the gate, too, and still everything was ok. On the plane we found out that there was no way whatsoever to fit the bassinet near our seats. The cabin staff could not help us, there were no seats in business (or at least we were told so), and all bassinet rows were booked.

So, instead of having a bed for Aapo, we had to sleep him on our laps. He got an own seat, as there were some space left on the plane, but that was not good for sleeping. Somehow we managed to get him to sleep a few hours.

Finally we arrived to San Francisco, queued some time in passport control, picked up our luggage and noticed that United had broken Aapo’s stroller. We got extremely rude service from a United clerk in baggage reclaim. She stated that United has no liability on the case and all claims have to done in the domestic terminal. There were no phone service, but you should use Internet instead. No URLs were given.

In other words, United failed to provide a bed for our boy, and instead broke his stroller. I could understand one mishap, but not two on the same flight. Fortunately Aapo didn’t understand his misfortunes.

We took BART to San Francisco downtown, found our hotel after minor hassles, and quite fast dozed off. As said, the views are nice, and the room itself is very big and nice. We were upgraded to a bigger room with no extra cost. Thank you, Mandarin Oriental.

Friday and part of Saturday was spent mostly on business. As we were jetlagged, we woke early and had some time to spent going around the city in the morning.

Today we were going to SfMOMA, but were there one hour too early and decided to go shopping instead. After we hours in new extension of San Francisco Shopping center, we were happy owners of a lot of such stuff that we never imagined buying here.

The next week is partially business and partially leisure. We’ll go to San Jose on Wednesday, spend Thanksgiving there and then have last meetings on Friday. Our flight back to Europe leaves in Saturday evening.