As you may know from my previous blog posts, I won a Google Code-in 2017. The Grand Prize was a trip to San Francisco, to Google headquarters and some fun activities. Here I want to sum up all of my experiences from this trip so far.

Just for the record, I have extended my staying here to one day before and two days after the GCI events were happening.

Beginning

Okay, so my journey began in GDN airport, at Gdańsk. I met with my friend (being the winner too), Grzegorz Stark there. We have boarded our plane before the 6.00AM. Flight didn’t take long, it was only two hours. After arriving at Amsterdam-Schiphol we’ve just moved to our terminal and waited some time. And there it was, my longest flight in my life (it was my 6th flight though).

Transatlantic flight experience

When we (me & my dad) sat in our seats, we immediately came to conclusion that the Embraer seats were much more comfortable. Everyone has received KLM’s blanket and pillow as well as ear headphones (which looked like some cheap chineese stuff, which they most likely were) so that we could hear movies or music if we wanted to. Because as you may or may not know, the Boeing 747–400s have screens in front of each seat to watch some stuff or track the plane.

But after some disappointment by the comfort, I can say now one thing.

No one ever has taken such a great care of me in gastronomic means as did the crew on the plane.

They even had whiskey, wine or beer speaking of drinks if you’d want one.

The whole flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco took about 11 hours.

Airport

Once we were at SFO, after we got off the plane we headed to the border security control, police officer asked us what is the reason we are in the United States, where we will be staying and how much money we had.

After that, we got our luggage and drove to the Hyatt Regency San Francisco by a taxicab van.

Hotel

Hyatt Regency San Francisco, view from the Embarcadero

Okay, I must tell you that the interior of the lobby has impressed me. I talked to some guy at the reception and received our hotel cards after giving them my Payoneer card for a moment (they put $480 on hold for this stay, you should know that if you’re going there too). Our room was quite nice. It was cozy, beds were big, our view maybe wasn’t the best, but I like city landscapes and my view conformed that.