Cape Town: December 2019
Woke up at 3:00am local time before arrival in Frankfurt, to a surprisingly decent (!) pancake breakfast. Landed sometime around 5:00am, and then realized just how far north Germany is when the sun didn't come out for another three hours. o_0 At least the Lufthansa Senator Lounge had a surprisingly good quality, if basic, hot breakfast.
Boarded a United 777-300ER for flight 59, Frankfurt to SFO (FRA to SFO), for the next leg home. Had some beautiful views on the flight, from the Germany countryside to the Northern Territories in Canada, to layers of clouds over Northern California. The views made up for the downright terrible appetizer, although the main course (poached cod) was actually pretty okay, and the pre-arrival meal of pizza was, much like the pre-arrival meal on Lufthansa a half a day before, shockingly not-mediocre-even-maybe-good for airplane food.
Bad weather up and down the west coast meant flying circles due to a weather hold over SFO, and a further delayed flight for the final leg. Worked out for the most part, was able to get dinner at SFO and get more work done in a vain attempt to stave off the deluge that was waiting for me on the return to work the next day...
In all, this trip was another truly unique experience on the inaugural flight to Cape Town for United. While it fell a little short of the inaugural LAX-SIN flight, it was still worth experiencing, and it's always fun to chat with travelers who are orders of magnitude more crazy than I am!