The following morning we woke, bafflingly unaffected by the pitchers of margarita the previous night, checked out, left our luggage at reception and made our way on foot to San Francisco’s Sweet Maple. I’ve been a huge fan of bacon my entire life, and I think it’s fair to say the experience of millionaire’s bacon changed my life. This is millionare’s bacon:

It’s free range bacon, baked with brown sugar, cayenne, red and black pepper, the restaurant is famous for it and rightly so. It was unthinkably delicious and made the 11/2-ish mile walk (which was pretty interesting) even more worthwhile. We arrived later than planned so faced a formidable queue, but the restaurant provided us with free filter coffee and managed the queue very efficiently. It was a chilly morning, so most people were eager to eat inside, but we decided the rewards more than merited the slight discomfort and skipped to the front by volunteering to eat outside.

And for our sacrifice I was rewarded with this:

I had the morning tacos: avocado, scrambled egg, chicken mango sausage, bacon, coriander, mild cheddar and Parmesan. There were also sides of roasted salsa and pico de gallo, and I accompanied them with a killer Bloody Mary:

And accompanied by millionaire’s bacon it amounted to the most memorable brunch I’d ever had (and it really wasn’t that cold out):

Before long it was time to head back to the hotel and then the airport. We did however have a chance for even more of a walk, this time down California Street to Embarcadero and the Ferry Building. By that point the morning cloud and fog had burned off and the great views were there to be had. A favourite of mine has always been the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge:

It was a bit of a shame we couldn’t stay longer – there was a farmers market we didn’t know about, in full flow around the Ferry Building. We were in a hurry to get to the airport though, and everything went smoothly, from the taxi ride to the first class check in for Virgin America. Given the regular queue we were surprised more people hadn’t tried to travel first class – it didn’t cost that much more than steerage.

We had a little wait in the domestic terminal, and enjoyed watching the planes take off uncommonly close. Unlike British airports SFO had good, free wifi provision and multiple device charging points that actually worked (Gatwick I’m looking at you). When the time came to board we were stunned at how comfortable the plane was (not to mention other aspects of the flight, but I’ll talk about them in the next post), and we were offered complimentary wine about as quickly as we were on the British Airways flight.  

The first class seats on the Airbus A320 were extremely comfortable, and the in-flight entertainment system was good. We barely got to use it though because the flight was so short. There was literally no cloud on the western seaboard after leaving the Bay Area, so we were treated to views like this:

Very shortly after the last picture we landed at PDX – the airport which contains so many memories for me, so many years of returning to my home town for Christmases with the Wantlands, the family my parents were friends with long before I was born. Our arrival continued a lifetime of happiness and excitement heading into Portland, and for me it had the added excitement of sharing the city with my husband for the first time. We’ve spent years visiting his home in Yorkshire, and my family home in Guernsey, but I’m not from Guernsey – happily for the first time in years I started to accept I’m once and for all from Portland, and almost on cue we were greeted by Mt. Hood.