We headed from our hotel in the dark just before 4am to catch the free shuttle to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Terminal 1. We knew exactly what to do as we had had a practice run yesterday afternoon.

The shuttle starts operating at 4 am but the sign was flashing that the next shuttle would be there in 122 minutes, and it was counting down from there.

Mick was anxious as we were on the very first flight out of CDG at 7am.

I suggested we return to the hotel to get a taxi if no shuttle arrived before 4.15am, but that was not necessary.

There were very few people at the airport at that time; no shops or restaurants were open and at times we wondered if we were going in the right direction as there were no crowds to follow.

Terminal 1 must be new, perhaps for the Olympics. It was beautiful. Every seat had a power socket as well as a USB/C socket. And they were mostly empty. I left Mick for 30 minutes and did a couple of loops of the terminal to get my steps up, before spending hours sitting on planes.

We had a great flight from Paris to Istanbul. It was my turn for the window seat and it wasn’t until we were above the clouds that the sun appeared.

The most spectacular part for me was flying over the Alps, we could see them for well over an hour. We were only flying about 1000m and we seemed so close to them. Photos won’t do them justice but …

We walked swiftly once we’d disembarked from Terminal A to Terminal D. It was well over a kilometer and the sign started flashing “boarding”. But we made our next flight to San Francisco with a few minutes to spare after having our entry visas (ETSA) checked.

While on board our Turkish Airlines flight we got to taste “the world’s oldest bread”, made from grain dating back 12,000 years.

Around the same time as we were sitting on the tarmac in Istanbul waiting to take off, our friends Jeanie and Michael were in the lounge at the same airport waiting for their next flight. We should have coordinated that a little better.

This was a long flight so we both tried to sleep for part of the 14 hours, not that successfully unfortunately.

When we passed through Immigration at SFO we found it very pleasant and easy. We then went to get our bags and pass through Customs. But there was no Customs. We did not need to make any declarations or complete any paperwork on entering the US. That surprised us.

We caught a shuttle to our hotel in San Bruno where will stay for one night.

On checking in, Mick realised his wallet was missing. Unsure if it was lost or stolen, but thankfully it was only his travel wallet with two cards (one debit and one credit) and $25 AUD. We were able to cancel the cards pretty swiftly and then headed out for dinner.

That made it “1 all”!

I had lost the cashmere jumper I’d bought in Alba, Italy; discovered when we arrived in Lyon two nights ago. I had “ummed” and “ahhed” about buying it as it was expensive, but it was on sale, I had room in my bag, and it would be a memento of our trip etc. etc. Photographic evidence proved it had made it to the Northern Rhône, but after that is a mystery!

Next stop was an ATM across the road from our hotel – we had had no cash to tip the shuttle bus driver earlier and knew that was bad. We found a Chinese restaurant very close to us and were lucky to get a table.

While we were seated, the number of fish dwindled considerably. Once the guest had picked the fish it was scooped out with a net, put into a plastic bucket and after about 15 minutes it was paraded in. One family group all stood up and posed around the freshly cooked fish while the parents stayed seated. I guess they were footing the bill.

This place was ‘pumping’. Every table was filled with groups sharing meals and conversation – in Chinese.

This was a surreal experience – and we really had to remind ourselves we were in the USA.

Feeling a bit wonky, a bit jet-lagged, after departing France almost 24 hours earlier, and spending time in the air and airports, we now were in a large room where no one was speaking English.

I had only just said to Mick at the airport when we landed that we would have one less challenge on our last country for our trip – there would be no language barriers. I was wrong.

We asked about a wine list as we could see other groups enjoying bottles of red wine. Our waiter found it hard to understand me but told us it was only beer that we could buy and when I suggested I could go and buy a bottle he said he’d check with his boss. The next thing we knew was the boss brought us a complimentary glass of wine each.

The meals were huge and we didn’t eat half of what we ordered but it was a very interesting evening.

We are only staying in San Francisco for tonight. We fly out early tomorrow morning to Portland, off to explore the wines in Oregon.