I Left my Luggage in San Francisco!

You know how some people leave their hearts in San Francisco? I left my fishy smelling luggage in San Francisco 😁 Literally. (I love being able to use that word correctly!).

In their infinite wisdom someone packed frozen fish in the cargo of my plane… then I’m assuming that package of frozen fish ended up on top of my bags… and then the ice started melting… and the melted fish water ended up all over my luggage. Gross right? Luckily my bags had a plastic lining inside the fabric outer lining, so none of my clothes smelled like fish. The bags had to go as soon as we got in the hotel!

Let me back up. The King and I were planning to save money because we start our next year off adventure at the end of June… but then I got an email on a rainy dark December day. A perfectly timed Spring Break cruise for only 649 (Canadian dollars!!) per person down the coast of California from San Francisco. Hmmmmm.
The timing is right.
The price is right.
We loved the coast of California last March.
San Francisco was on my list of places to go to
We had enough Alaska points for Steve to fly virtually free and for me to fly half price.

It took approximately 3 seconds to convince the king we should do it! 😁 Many friends told me we needed to stay in Union Square. I looked at hotel prices and had a small heart attack. But I”m a persistent girl! I did my research and ended up bidding for a room on priceline (for almost 30 days in a row) before I finally got my 4 Star hotel in Union Square for 165 a night… US dollars… which is still CRAZY. I don’t even want to talk about how much it was for three nights when it was converted to Canadian dollars. Still I think it was a pretty good deal for San Francisco in Union Square.

Fast forward to March 11 and we head out. The lovely Jennifer offered to drive us to the airport (thanks Jen!). We connected through Seattle, where we continued with our tradition of having a Payday Bar (you can’t get them in Canada) and then headed out to San Francisco. I have to say that Alaska Air has a new service we enjoyed. If you bring your own computer you can watch movies for free in-flight. Steve was quite thrilled the new X-Men movie was a choice, so we watched together (I was not as thrilled, but watched it anyway, because I like the King😉) The flight was uneventful and so fast we only got half way through the movie!

This is a photo from my window on the plane... if you ask me that plane is a little too close!

When we landed, we quickly got our bags. When we picked the big bag up we noticed it was a bit wet on top and smelled somewhat fishy. Steve thought we should stop at baggage services, but I didn’t initially think it was that bad. Turns out I was wrong. It didn’t smell that bad because we were in a gigantic airy room. As soon as we got in the cab I knew the bag was ruined. At that point I didn’t want to turn around because we were already in the cab, so decided to phone the airline from the hotel. I didn’t actually think they would do anything for us, having had not so stellar experiences with airlines before. 

After a long and expensive cab ride (around $60 U.S.) we arrived at our hotel Sir Francis Drake. They had a fancy doorman all dressed up as a “Beefeater”. What the heck is a beefeater??? All I could think about was getting my clothes out of that bag. Imagine arriving on vacation with a suitcase full of clothes thinking they were all soaked in fishy smelling water. We checked in. The front desk staff were lovely, no one complained about our ridiculous smelling bags even though the lobby was very beautiful and shi-shi! I asked for directions to the laundromat thinking that I would be headed there shortly. We checked into our room (which I assume is the priceline special room) which was quite small, but workable, and lovely. It is clean, beautifully decorated and well… small 😁

The Handsome Man starts ripping clothes out of the bag to discover that it has a plastic lining inside. Thank goodness. Not one item of clothing was infected by that fishy water! As soon as our clothes were out Steve took the bag downstairs to get rid of it. When he came back there was still a faint fish smell. Steve discovered the other bag also had fish water on it… less water, but fish water nonetheless. He quickly took those clothes out too and got rid of the suitcase. Okay, so now we are leaving on a cruise in 3 days and are suitcase-less…
I phone Alaska Airlines on the slim hope that they will do something for me. I’m feeling frustrated at this point, and can’t even get the phone to work. Luckily Steve is with me and teaches me to push the “on” button before I dial 😉 Okay, focus, Lisa!
I phone the SFO baggage services but it just keeps ringing busy. Eventually I discover it is because I have to put a 1 in front of the number… now I start hoping that the hotel is not charging me for making long distance calls. I attempt to figure out if the cell phone company or hotel will have bigger long distance charges, but am too flustered and can’t figure it out 🤷 Okay this is turning into a long story… long story short. I can’t get a hold of anybody at the airport, online, or at the national office. Steve and I agree it will just have to wait until the morning.
We head out to find some food.. this is where we make a classic mistake. The Cheesecake Factory has a big sign out front of Macy’s. I like cheesecake I think… and in we go. We waited over an hour for our table. Conveniently the restaurant is in Macy’s so we wandered around a bit and looked at luggage… not cheap… especially when you factor in the conversion. We finally got our table (at this point I’m almost asleep standing up… those of you who know me well, know this is absolutely possible) which ends up being outside on the patio. Very nice. Heat lamps, lights of the city… I can live with this.
We order our food. Mine ended up being quite gross. Would you believe a California Cheesesteak is a greasy piece of bread with ground beef and onions? Steve’s was okay. I barely ate any of mine, which ended up being okay because I had more room for Cheesecake. Steve and I couldn’t agree on which cheesecake to get so each got our own. I got the toasted marshmallow s’more and Steve got some peanut-buttery thing. They were both quite spectacular and we enjoyed theme immensely even though we were unable to finish them.

The nice waitress offers to box them up, but we’re pretty sure we don’t have a fridge in the room (the mini-bar items are in the top drawer of the dresser!) so decline.

We walk back the few blocks to our hotel and crash for the night.

Wise words found in Union Square

Side note: The sidewalks in the area where we are staying, Union Square, appear to be all sparkly. I’m not sure how they did it, but I like it! ❇❈❇❈