Thailand 2014: Cathay Pacific Lounge San Francisco (SFO)

Introduction
Cathay Pacific Lounge San Francisco
Cathay Pacific First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific Lounge The Pier Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific Business Class Hong Kong to Bangkok
Millennium Hilton Bangkok
Cooking with Poo
Overnight Train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai
Le Meridien Chiang Mai
Patara Elephant Farm
Bangkok Airways Economy Class Chiang Mai to Ko Samui
Conrad Koh Samui
Bangkok Airways Koh Samui to Bangkok
Thai Airways First Class Check-in and Lounge Bangkok
EVA Air Evergreen Lounge Bangkok
Louis’ Tavern First Class CIP Lounge Bangkok
Singapore SilverKris Lounge Bangkok
Thai Airways First Class Bangkok to Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines Lounge Hong Kong
Thai Airways Lounge Hong Kong
Asiana Business Class Hong Kong to Seoul
Asiana Airlines First Class Lounge Seoul
Asiana Airlines First Class Suites Seoul to New York
United Airlines Business Class PS Service New York to San Francisco

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We got to the airport about an hour and a half prior to departure. I’m kinda loving UberX nowadays, since an UberX from my apartment to the airport is now only $25 or so. Considering that BART is $8.50 and takes twice as long, I’m finding myself take Uber more and more frequently…

Anyway, after checking in and going through security (I’m so unused to non-precheck that I had almost forgotten what normal security is like), we made our way to the Cathay Pacific lounge. I had read mixed reviews about the lounge, particularly with regards to overcrowding, but that didn’t seem to be a problem at all the day that we were there.

The lounge is a series of rooms with a couple of different seating areas. The lounge features Cathay’s Solus chairs, which I think are pretty cool. In general, I enjoyed the decor of the lounge and found it tastefully designed. There’s no separate first class section of the lounge, but the lounge attendant did seem to be extra friendly to us when we got to the lounge and thanked us for flying first class.

Unlike typical domestic lounges, the Cathay lounge offers a decent spread of food. Since we were taking the day flight, the food spread was mostly breakfast food of things like hash browns, scrambled eggs, and congee, and there’s a noodle bar where you can order made-to-order noodles. At the noodle bar, they’ll give you a buzzer that buzzes once your noodles are ready.

I decided to order some dan dan mien since I love dan dan mien, but I was honestly pretty disappointed with it. This might have just been due to a difference between Taiwanese and Hong Kong dan dan mien, but I didn’t really recognize what I was eating and only took a couple of bites before deciding that I’d rather wait to stuff myself with more caviar on the plane.

The service in the lounge was good. There were people constantly going around to clear empty plates and glasses. There was also a short delay for our flight, and the lounge attendants went around to each person in the lounge to personally inform passengers of the delay and ask if there was anything that they could do.

Honestly, the worst part of the lounge was this crazy loud woman who spent the entire 2 hours before the flight talking on the phone. She was so loud that I purposely sat as far away as I could from her in the lounge and I could still hear her yakking away.

Overall, it’s a nice lounge, and it’s definitely much better than most lounges you’ll find in the US. There’s no point in arriving extra early to go to this lounge, but it’s a nice place to wait for the flight and the food options are pretty good. They do have showers available if you want to shower before your long flight, but there aren’t really enough power ports.