Our first day was a getaway flight. The kids got out of school and I had scheduled a Lyft for right after they got home and my last work meeting of the day. By that time I couldn’t wait to get my meeting over with so we could start our long-awaited vacation!

To the Airport

I had scheduled the Lyft the previous day to arrive at 3:00, which gave us a window of 3:00-3:15. Due to traffic, the ride arrived closer to 3:15 which was a bit disappointing, but traffic is traffic.

We were able to fit both big suitcases into the trunk along with our backpacks. On the way to the airport, we hit a few pockets of traffic but it wasn’t too terrible considering the time of day and the holiday season.

At the airport, we got dropped off at a new drop off/pick up location in central parking. This turned out to be a lot faster than getting dropped off at the terminal. JetBlue is in Terminal C in Logan and it can be a madhouse since the drop off area is so small. The line was probably a quarter-mile long waiting to drop people off. We stayed left and drove right past all of them and got dropped off in just a couple minutes. It was only a short walk to the terminal from the parking area.

We checked in on the kiosk to print out bag tags, tagged both checked bags and dropped them off on the conveyor. That took less than 15 minutes from when we were dropped off from the Lyft. The terminal wasn’t the madhouse I was expecting.

Free Dinner

With our bags checked we wanted to get a good dinner before our evening flight. There is a Priority Pass restaurant in the JetBlue terminal outside of security. It’s a sports bar type of place and we’ve been there several times before and enjoyed the food.

With my wife and my Priority Pass cards, we each get $28 in credit plus a second $28 in credit for one guest each for a total of $112. While prices at the restaurant are typical airport prices, that was more than enough for us to eat a filling meal. It really hit the spot and we even had enough money left over to get a couple of desserts to share! We left a solid cash tip as the credit can’t be used towards gratuity.

From there we made our way through security. We have TSA PreCheck so we can go through as a family, but there was a line to allow us to get to that line. There was an agent checking everyone’s boarding pass and keeping people without PreCheck from going in that line. She was also reminding people that they can’t bring full-sized suitcases as a carry-on. There were multiple people in the line that seemed new to flying. I guess this comes with the holiday season!

Delayed Flight

On the Lyft ride in we had gotten a notification that our flight had been delayed about 30 minutes. I had checked my FlightView app on my phone to see where the incoming flight was coming from. It was coming from our destination (San Francisco) and had taken off about an hour later than scheduled. It looked like they would make up some of that time but would still be running late.

Knowing this, we had taken a more relaxed dinner and didn’t rush to get to the gate as we knew we’d be waiting there. As it turned out, our flight boarded about an hour later than it was supposed to but we took off about 45 minutes later than scheduled. We ended up landing about 20 minutes late, so we made up some time (or the schedule had a lot of buffer in it).

In the end, the flight was uneventful and barely had any turbulence. As we get towards the winter months, the winds from west to east can create some havoc, especially with JetBlue. Boston to the west coast is towards the limits of the range of their aircraft. If there are strong headwinds, it means it takes more fuel to fly to the west coast. If the winds are strong enough they may have to divert to refuel. Going in the other direction, it means you can have much shorter than expected flights, though. It can often mean more turbulence in both directions. Luckily we didn’t experience much of that.

Lyft and Checkin

We were all pretty tired when we arrived. Our bags came out relatively quickly and it was pretty easy to find the location of the Lyft pickup area in San Francisco. It was in a different place than the last time I had been in that terminal, but there were lots of signs and it was clearly marked. The ride came within 5 minutes of when I hailed it and we were at our hotel within 30 minutes as there was no traffic at that time of night.

There were no other guests checking in at 11:30 pm at the JW Marriott Marquis in downtown San Francisco. There were multiple agents helping us get checked in and offered us some Ghirardelli chocolates as treats. YUM!

Since we had two reservations they were able to combine them such that we could stay in the same room. We would have to check in again the next day to get new keys but we wouldn’t have to change rooms.

We quickly got our keys and headed up to our room on the 18th floor, about halfway to the top. The room was a decent size given what is typical in the city. It was big enough to have two queen beds which is a big bonus for us.

We found the room had a white noise generator which we used every night. I haven’t ever been to a hotel with one before and I’m not sure why it’s not a more common feature. With it on you couldn’t really hear any outside noise from neighbors or traffic on the street. It was great.

The room also had a ton of USB charging ports, some drawers and a bunch of storage space. It was obviously recently remodeled and looked really nice. It did seem to be relatively dark and seemed as if it was missing some lights. Either that or we were too tired to find the right light switches! (Note, we found some more lights in the following days)

We quickly got ready for bed and all of us were out within a few minutes. It had been a long day but we were in California and on vacation!