January 21 Monday

Leaving today! The Napa airporter car service picked us up at 12:00 noon. The driver was chatty and felt compelled to take two shortcuts (San Pablo Ave. to Gilman St.), even though traffic was not too heavy on Martin Luther King Day. We arrived at SFO at 1:35 PM. We had to wait until about 3 PM for the Virgin Atlantic counter to open to check us in. After check in, we went to the Virgin Atlantic “Club House” lounge, which was unusually pre-security. We had a few glasses of wine with peanuts and chips — all table service, the left at about 5 PM to go to our gate for a 6:55 PM departure. The flight was very nice, the “cubicles” were not as spacious as we have seen on other airlines, but we both managed to get about 4 hours of sleep. We landed shortly after 1 PM London time. Then we took the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station and then a cab to our unit. No troubles.

The remainder of our day involved shopping at Sainsbury, then dinner at Sergio’s — fantastic rigatoni with meat sauce and meat balls — big portion, preceded by rocket and parmesan salad with a Montepulciano red wine from Abruzzo, Italy.

Then to bed at around 9 PM.

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