US visit after 2 years

I went for a one week business trip to US (San Jose) during the second week of June. It was almost 2 years ago, I returned from US after a good long stay. And it was my first trip to the west coast.

I flew by Lufthansa. Not the greatest of the experience, but not bad. At least better than Northwest and Air India. I had flown by Lufthansa before when I returned to US after my marriage. The travel time was less with direct flight from Bangalore to Frankfurt and then to San Francisco. There was only 1 hr 40 min gap at Frankfurt.

I reached SFO (San Francisco Airport) on time at 12:15pm. Since I was told that the best way to get to San Jose was by taxi, I hired one. Taxi was pretty costly. There are other modes which are cheaper and more interesting (like the local train). I would have rather rented a car which would have been cheaper and convenient. But I was not sure if I can drive in US after the gap of 2 years. That was proved wrong when I ultimately decided to rent a car during the end of my trip.

I was staying in Staybridge Suite. Not a big brand, but it had pretty good facilities. It was a kind of full service Suite with complementary breakfast, dinner, laundry, Internet with all other amenities one would expect. The complementary dinner is something I have not seen anywhere else. The hotel is walkable from Cisco campus building 24.

It was spring time in US and the evenings were long. The Milpitas Ranch area was near to the hotel and it had all those shops I used to visit when I was in US. I went to Walmart, Ross, Best Buy, Micheals and refreshed my memories. It is true that in this part of the world every city looks same and very little difference I could feel between Charleston and San Jose when it comes to shopping and restaurants. Did some purchases and also had Chalupa (one of my favorites on the road) at Tacobell. I did not get chance to eat outside since the hotel was serving dinner and we had business dinners the other days.

By Friday when the business meetings were over, I rented a car with Hertz. I booked a compact (to be environment friendly) but they gave me a mini van. After a brief familiarization drive within the city, I drove to San Francisco. The car had "Hertz never lost" GPS system. It is the first time I am using one and it turned out to be a very good experience. It had voice prompting and is very precise in giving directions. It made the trip like a cake walk. Indeed you would never get lost with such a facility. I went to the Bay area and visited Pier 39. The Bay bridge was good. City was less crowded compared to what I had expected it to be. It was very cold there, bit different from San Jose. I wondered how the climate could change so much in 60 miles. The climate was dull and not a good day to take photographs.

On Saturday, I drove the car to SFO airport and caught the flight back home. It was good to be back home.