Year 8 Week 26 In The US: Heading Home To Leu Cat
24 June 2015
We spent our last weekend in the States in the Bay Area, visiting with our daughter, Heather and our son, David Paul and his new wife, Allison. David Paul had purchased tickets for Saturday’s Los Angeles Angels/Oakland A’s baseball game as a Father’s Day present. Since Dave and Allison live in San Francisco, they took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from near their apartment right to the ball park. We had picked up Heather at her house in Oakland and drove to the ballpark. Once we arrived we were directed right up to the front of the parking lot and given a space next to the stadium. How lucky was that! When David Paul and Allison arrived, we set up chairs and out came the beer, chips and hoagies they brought. We spent about 2 hours tailgating and talking waiting for the ball game to start. We had so much fun and the 2 hours sped by.
This was the first baseball game we had gone to since before we started cruising 8 years ago. Given that our favorite team, the LA Angels, were playing, it made for a very special day. Unfortunately, the good guys lost, 4 to 1, but we still loved being with the kids and taking in the game.
Afterwards, we went to our favorite ribs place in Berkeley and feasted on ribs, potato salad and more beer. What a great ending to a great day!
We spent Sunday at David Paul’s and Allison’s apartment watching family videos. My sister-in-law, Debbie, had converted old VCR tapes into DVDs and sent them to us at their apartment. They included a video that my brother, Del, had made of my dad’s 1989 sail up and down the inland passage of Alaska. Watching it brought lots of laughs, smiles and tears. We also watched a DVD of David Paul’s and Allison’s wedding that was held just a few months ago. It was great fun sitting back and watching all the fun everyone had.
Monday night we all got together again for dinner at Jack London Square on the Oakland waterfront. We went to a foodie’s fru fru restaurant and had great drinks, pasta and seafood. After dinner we said our sad farewells to David Paul and Allison, since we were leaving to return to South Africa and Leu Cat the next day. We delayed saying farewell to Heather since she would be stopping by our hotel the next morning to help send us off.
By noon on Tuesday our limo arrived and whisked us over across the bay to the San Francisco International Airport. We are returning to Leu Cat carrying lots of boat parts so we ended up taking 6 large bags with us. A couple of them weighed in at exactly 70 pounds, the maximum weight Air Emirates allows. Since we are flying business class this time, the checking in process, the wait in their foodie heaven lounge and their foodie heaven flight to Dubai was great! We spent 17 hours at the airport, in flight, and then walking through the massive Dubai airport before we landed at our hotel here. Since we have an 8.5 hour layover before catching our long flight to Cape Town, the airlines has put us up for the night at a very nice 5-star hotel called “Al Bustan Rotana”. We are even offered dinner but are just too full to even think about it. Instead, we will shower and take a nap. They will give us a wakeup call at 0130 hours so we can catch or 0330 hours flight to Cape Town. Ugh! Tomorrow morning, very early, we will continue on to Cape Town, South Africa, and then after a short ride to Simons Town we will arrive at Leu Cat. Yea!!!!