Hello America

Well we've made it.

Yesterday was a very long day. Up at 5am to get to Heathrow for 8am. Traffic bad so arrived by about 8.30. Checked in and got one of the last two pairs of seats available - between other people. Yes - why didn't you use internet checkin I hear you say.  We wanted to but because we got a round the world ticket which was based on an Air new Zealand one we couldn't do online checkin for the Virgin one. Hopefully we will be able do online checkin for the remaining flights.

Flight very crowded, rather uncomfortable and long. Watched a couple of films and listened to music. We're going to check seatguru.com in future to see which are the best seats on an aircraft. Rather bumpy as we came in towards San Francisco.

Immigration friendly - took all 10 fingerprints from us. Bags took quite a time to arrive. Customs scanned our bags because we owned up to having sweets and branston pickle in them. Took the airtrain to get to the car rental place. Peter from Tawian gave us a satnav and told us to choose our car. A Mazda 5 or a Kia - we went for the Mazda, switched on the satnav and headed out. Highly recommend satnav if you have no idea where you are going. Went over the Golden Gate bridge. Weather bad - raining heavily for most of the 2 hour journey.

Arrived safely at Zac and Diana's house and the twins Iain and Isobel came out to meet us. Zac told us they've had 6 inches of rain here recently and some houses have been flooded.

I crashed early as not feeling brilliant after the flight. 5pm here is about 2am in the UK. Chris managed to stay awake until about 7pm.

A couple of phone calls and texts during the evening/night. Some people didn't know we were away.

Feeling much better this morning. Had breakfast with the family whilst the children got ready for school. Zac built this house and moved in about 18 months ago. It's great - high ceilings, wooden floors and light and airy.

Hoping to go out for supper with Zac and Diana to meet my friend Melissa and her husband this evening. Diana recommends a bistro in Sebastopol and will organise a babysitter after she comes back from yoga.

More tomorrow....