Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Finn Conlon as always did an excellent job for which I am very grateful.
Not aware that Palm Springs car rental at Alamo did not open until we had to check-in. Checked their website and found their advice about checking in early morning.
Always keeps us up to date on all of our travel arrangements.
Everything went to plan. Had a wonderful time with my family and seeing my grandson graduate from university.
For the many, many years I have dealt with DAF and Ewan and his team, they have never let us down, and our recent trip was perfect as well. Thanks DAF for being just a 100% perfect company to deal with.
Disappointed not to have adjacent seats from Sacramento to Dallas. Suffice it say we will never fly BA again. Got our lost baggage back last night.
Peter looked after my trip from beginning to end, thank you
Everything went like clockwork - very nice resort
Excellent contact and communication. Clear information on flights and good choice of hotel. Probably need to inform customers about hotel tax!
Very polite and efficient service
Have dealt with Christian for many a year and would not organise a trip through anyone else. Superb as always.
Everything was perfect thanks. Great seats on the plane. Great car. Excellent connections. Thanks.
Mason has always helped us with travel plans superbly and the app from DialAflight is really helpful.
I know someone is looking after me from booking to arriving back home. Makes my trips stress free
As always perfect in every way, great holiday, fantastic hotel recommendation, caring communication - pre hols and post hols checkin.
The car hire arrangement was just what I wanted - thank you
Gino gave great service and even booked us upgraded seats for the best price - a nice touch and much appreciated
A bit more clarification re US time zones would be good.
All good thank you
Thank you for the ongoing support, even whilst we were on holiday and needed to call! Des was great right from booking through to the travel date.
Philippa was great throughout the whole process - thank you for your help!
Would highly recommend. Thank you Steven Merralls and team.
Always a pleasure to book with DialAflight. Very professional and efficient. I look forward to the courtesy call 24 hours before I travel . Professionalalism at its best.
We had a problem with our hotel room. One phone call and all sorted! Thank you
Shelley has been fantastic and I’ve already asked her to start looking at options for NZ next year
Gary always does a great job … I don’t go anywhere else for travel
Ashley and his colleagues very helpful and found them very competitive.
Always a good service.
You booked me return flights with BA but they became AA flights, not such a good airline. The Miami transition was a nightmare. Don’t use that airport unless you have to. Only just made the flight, and wouldn’t have managed but I had to jump the line several times. Lots of muttering and savage looks, but I did it.
Plane was diverted to JFK. Navigation down. Put on another plane.
Sitting on San Francisco's famous Pier 39, sauce-stained children slurp huge bowls of clam chowder. In the background, Alcatraz's forbidding, mist-shrouded silhouette rises from the ocean.
The nearby gift shop is doing a roaring trade, churning out striped underpants and replica prison-issue toiletries bearing the tag line, 'don't drop the soap', all to a soundtrack of the pier's famous blubbery, barking sea lions.
WHERE TO FIRST
But the waterfront – with its many fresh crab restaurants – will soon look very different. The green-fingered team behind New York's urban High Line has now turned its attention to the Presidio – a beautiful, sprawling park overlooking the bay.
The tunnels burrowing through it will soon form the base of a spectacular, 14-acre park known as Tunnel Tops. When it opens in 2019, there will be beautiful views of the bay and meadows filled with fragrant wildflowers.
During 1967's Summer of Love, pier workers fought their way through crowds of garland-waving hippies who gathered here to shout about the Vietnam War.
THEN AND NOW
Now, more than 50 years on, hipsters have replaced hippies in Haight-Ashbury. A handful of psychedelic shops filled with tie-dye are squeezed between boutiques and organic cafes.
The closest encounter I have with a possible hippy is when I crouch down to take a picture of an enormous rainbow-themed piece of street art and accidentally disturb a dreadlocked local dozing in a doorway.
At Pork Store Cafe, a 40-year-old Haight Street institution famous for its huge breakfasts, I meet Amanda, a local, who tells me how the area's beautiful, Victorian, pastel-hued houses are being snapped up (and lovingly refurbished) by dotcom billionaires. She complains that prices have rocketed.
As I cycle towards the city centre, a smiling skateboarder shouts his encouragement and speeds past me – uphill. I realise his skateboard is battery-powered. I recall my chat with Amanda and wonder if it's Mark Zuckerberg or someone similar.
MOMENTARY ESCAPISM
On the recommendation of a friend, I stop by Hotel Zetta in downtown San Francisco. Since last spring, it's been home to the world's first hotel-based virtual reality room. It's free to try – those in need of a moment of escapism (without the mind-altering drugs) can simply walk off the street into the padded room and slip on the headset.
I do so and find myself standing atop a shipwreck, one of several colourful worlds to be explored.
VIRTUAL SIGHTSEEING
Neon fish swarm around me and when I turn around, I'm face-to-face with a huge, blinking whale. The next moment, I'm in a mountainous valley (apparently it's modelled on the landscape of Washington State).
Despite being just metres away from the rumbling trams, I can wander to a cliff edge and peer into a valley so deep that my stomach flips.
On my final night, I check out China Live, one of the city's newest restaurants. The walls are lined with hand-painted tiles showing local landmarks, such as the Transamerica Pyramid.
CHINATOWN
I sit at one of the communal tables and try jellyfish for the first time (it's salty, rubbery and delicious) with a potent, dragon fruit tea-infused cocktail.
Chinatown borders North Beach, a bay-side neighbourhood with a huge Italian community. I cycle home past Italian flags painted on lamp posts and delis blaring opera music.
In a nearby park, Chinese women perform perfectly choreographed tai chi routines near students making the most of California's decision to legalise marijuana. Suddenly, that Summer of Love doesn't seem quite so far away.
First published in the Daily Mail - May 2018
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