Farewell USA – see you next year …

We had the usual packing to do today but not before Jenny wanted to visit the nearby Walmart and do some final shopping before heading back to Oz. I gave her an hour while I did some local geocaching but Jenny had more luck than I did with the geocaching.
 
While waiting for her to return, I had a craving for a calzone for lunch so after a bit of research, there was a pizza bar in Benicia that had a good reputation for them.
 
A quick stop off at Napoli Pizza Bar and we soon had 2 calzone made on the spot.They were good too.
 
With the packing finished, it was time to have a few final drinks with Joanna and Jiana before Paul turned up with our Bay crab dinner. With the clam chowder that Joanna had prepared, it was a great send off dinner from San Francisco.
It wasn’t long before we needed to be on the BART to San Francisco Airport.
 
Joanna dropped us off and we bit farewell to our hosts, took up a heap of room in the carriage with our pile of luggage and we’re on our way for the hour and a quarter ride to the airport.
 
We were sure that the luggage would go overweight and all the bags tipped 23 kg plus but we were surprised when they didn’t ask us for overweight fees. No arguments here.
 
The TSA checks went well but soon we realised that we were on the wrong side of the checks for the American Express lounge. Oh well, means we will just have to bump it in the normal waiting area.
 
The plane loaded early but we didn’t get away early. In fact we took off an hour late due to some passengers not turning up and their baggage needed to be found and unloaded. Happy to wait that extra time than have something happen over the Pacific Ocean.
 
We farewelled San Francisco in rain with next stop Sydney.