i spent two weeks and two days in South Korea and enjoyed every minute. i’m looking forward to visiting again some day in the future. however, it was time to leave so lunato and i packed our bags and boarded the United airplane heading to San Francisco, USA. lunato had really wanted to visit the Golden Gate bridge so we had arranged our flights so that we could have a 5 hour transit in SF.
immigration was annoying. first we were selected for “extra interrogation” and had to go to their security offices and spent about half an hour there. second, once we were past immigration, the customs officer searched all of my luggage and even went through my laptop. i’m a canadian citizen and have travelled/visited the States more than 5 times in the past 4 years (and each time had to undergo some “extra” checks) but i still had to open my hand carry, my two suitcases, and then log into my laptop and let him search through it for more than 10 minutes. i’ve no idea what he was doing.. i wasn’t allowed to look at the screen >:( finally, when he was done with all my luggage, i started to lift lunato’s suitcase so i could put it on the table and open for him but he told me, “It’s ok. She can go.” bah! canadian citizen vs south korean citizen. oh well, at least we got to see the Golden Gate bridge… and it was really beautiful :)
we took the BART train from the airport to the Civic Center station and then a cab to the Golden Gate bridge. you can see the Alcatraz island from the bridge. the 1996 movie, The Rock featured this prison and since i really liked that movie, i was really excited to see it with my own eyes.
after spending half an hour on the bridge, we barely made it back to the airport and we were the last two to board the airplane :P when we boarded the airplane, we heard the air hostess tell the pilots “ah, they are here!.” unforunately, during the rush to the airplane, i forgot to pick up my wrist watch from the small box i had put it in while going through the security checkposts. doh!!
from SFO, we took an Air Canada flight to Toronto and apparently from this flight was considered a domestic flight and not an international one. that is part of the reason we were so late to get to the boarding gate. we were looking for the gates in the International Terminal instead of the Domestic Terminal. so, in case you’re traveling between CA and USA through SF, either be smarter than us and ask someone beforehand which terminal you should be leaving from OR remember this post!