It might be a lovely city to visit, and I have done that, with nice weather and friendly people it is NOT, repeat NOT a place to change planes if you are flying Southwest. Since I am headed to Tampa, it was obvious that I was going to have to change planes somewhere. It is easy as pie to walk to my local bus stop and admire my neighbors fence while waiting for the bus –
which kind of takes away the pain of finding you have missed the 65 which heads down the hill every 20 minutes in the middle of the day by about… oh, let us say … 5 minutes which results in a rather long wait. Once on the bus, getting to Berkeley and BART to Oakland Airport is easy. Being gifted again with TSA pre-check, I sailed through security and had plenty of time to fix my lack of coffee while waiting in the terminal. Boarding – no problem.
And then there is San Diego. Gates 1 & 2 are physically separated from the rest of the gates used by Southwest. And by separated I mean you go OUT past security and baggage claim, past the checkin counters and have to run the gauntlet of TSA once again to reach Gate 6. There is no short cut, there is no pass by (which is routine at most airports where you have to go from one quasi-connected terminal to another). Even Frankfurt deals with this. Heathrow? Just one more of the reasons that I avoid Heathrow at all costs.
But where was I? Oh yes, going through security once again and hoping that I wasn’t going to miss my boarding position.
Then onwards to Tampa where I rounded up my luggage, finally tracked down the hotel shuttle (how was I to know that RED had both an area 1 and and area 2 pickup zone?) and checked in to the hotel. I felt like I had lived through each and every minute of those missing three hours of time zone change. Exhausted, I crawled into bed. Then couldn’t fall asleep……
