After our failed attempt to ‘renew’ our rental we had to decide: ‘What next?’
We had always intended to give San Francisco a miss. No real reason, we’d just been avoiding cities, but now we had this problem with the car. We didn’t even think about hanging on in San Francisco until the 23rd and to sort it out at the airport there, but why not kill some time there?
Our new friend in Monterey regional airport had given us a fairly full explanation of what our problem was and how to solve it. The biggest part of that problem was that they couldn’t even look at it until the 23rd when the current ‘contract’ ran out. His main help was telling us that National only had outlets at the airports but, he said, we could go to any Alamo or Enterprise location and they could sort it for us. I explained that we’d had a quite different experience so far. He admitted that it was probably just that they didn’t want the bother. I thanked him for his honesty. He assured us again and gave us his card, telling us just to phone him if there was any difficulty.
We left the airport in Monterey with a feeling that this hiccup was, after all, pretty minor. So, where next?
We looked for places this side of San Francisco and places the other side of San Francisco. It wasn’t just that nothing right seemed to turn up - we suddenly wondered:
‘Why not San Francisco?’ San Francisco it was, but now we now had to find somewhere to stay.
It was a bugger to find, but we eventually did find a place in the middle of Chinatown with parking and everything - perfect! We booked it for two nights to give us a day in the city. That decided, we travelled up Highway 1, hugging the coast. It was after dark by the time we entered the city.
Ever since we picked up our first car I had a fear about driving here. It wasn’t about driving on the wrong side of the road, I’ve done that all over Europe, but the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but mostly it didn’t come up. Automatic and not having to paddle gears with the wrong hand helped a lot, and learning to trust the ‘keeping you in lane’ help that many modern cars have made it all a cruise.
That was until it came to a wet night driving on a six lane freeway into San Francisco.
Dazzling lights and cars passing on every side.
For fuck’s sake!
We did eventually reach the Royal Pacific Motor Inn, even although in involved two unintended passes and a u-turn.
It was perfect. So perfect that right after arrival and settling in we went down and booked another night.
We’d decided to give San Francisco a chance!
