Day 1: E-ville to Bogota

 Dec 5: Emeryville to Bogota 

Manufactory Food Hall: does this mean you can get Tartine bread to supplement or replace the meal on your flight? Is so, THB will be flying COPA way more often and getting to the terminal before the place closes or runs out of bread.

More art in the international terminal at SFO:

Your big break: a large piece in SFO...with no attribution

Hung Liu

How much is that dog in the carry-on? THB is not sure, the guy said $500 to bring on board and multiple trips to different agencies with fees, etc. Sandy isn't jealous, she's boarding with her trainer Shay and Shay's 4 dogs

How early did our flight to Panama City leave on Sunday morning? Just after midnight, and the 7 hours in transit did not make for much of good amount of sleep. However the timing was great to get a good aerial view of the Panama Canal. THB and DB have never been to Panama and there is a bit of disagreement about whether staying in the airport is the same thing as being "in" the country or not getting to count it on THB's countries-visited list. Since we have a 6+ hour layover in Panama City on the way home, THB's is considering whether it counts as visiting Panama twice!

Stay Safe: MASKS UP - all your masks!

Panama Canal

There's a queue....NEXT!

Panama City

This pic is from our second flight on COPA in biz class. On way from E-ville to PC, the same seat (different plane) had a malfunctioning seat. On this one the screen didn't work. The row 1 jinx?

Airport is shared between commercial and military aircraft

ATM in airport...the conversion rate here is large, so they have to put "000" on the input screen

Just outside one of the terminals, sculpture by Betancourt

It takes our driver ages to get into downtown Bogota from the airport. All on surface streets (and not particularly good ones). Our room at the Four Seasons is terrific with one exception: no bathtub. To upgrade to a room with a tub: you have to take out a home equity loan in pesos (add 3 zeroes)

The fireplace works! Not needed, the weather is mild now in Bogota

How are THB and DB doing with the time change (it's 3 hours earlier in Bogota than E-ville). Not too bad...OOOPS, we forgot to sleep on the flights down. What were we thinking?

Dinner at 5 downstairs in the casual dining room: paella for DB, 1/2 chicken with nice salad and some sort of mushroom melange for THB, a glass of vino and a cerveza (Colombian lager), TWO HUNDRED TWENTY SEVEN THOUSAND pesos. AHA, a peso is .00021 of a US dollar. Phew, dinner was a very reasonable $45. And food was way above average. 

THB was too tired to remember to take pics, mostly because he was too tired to remember to take his phone with him to dinner. 

Book Review: The Founders, The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, Jimmy Soni: Four chaotic, intense years from the late 1990s to early 2000s when a few extremely young (mostly) guys were soon to be famous and wealthy as they built a start-up into a multi-billion dollar behemoth. Easy to follow with lots of snippets of interviews done years later by Soni. How many nights did this group sleep under their desks? Many! Oh, and Elon Musk got booted out at a key moment, not that it slowed him down at all.  Highly Recommended