Airport Access Rd, California

If I have a choice for airport pickup (or flying out, for that matter) I would choose San Jose 100 times over SFO. When driving up 101 North, it is quite the challenge to actually find the proper terminal. If you do find the right place for arrivals, you likely will not be allowed to stick around for very long as the area is patrolled fairly heavily.

If you do end up in the wrong area for any reason, you have to circumnavigate the entire airport in order to get back to where you needed to be. There is one particularly confusing section of signs that may send you to the departures, rather than arrivals. There is a cell phone lot nearby, designed specifically for people who are picking up and waiting around, but it is a solid mile from the airport and is not easy to find. If you are driving away that far to park, you might as well drive in circles until your arriving passenger is curbside.

Once inside, security is definitely a bit of a bottleneck, with very few representatives for the number of departing flights. On the plus side, the food selection is fantastic and represents the city of San Francisco very accurately. With everything from sushi to Mexican to soup restaurants to bars, it feels more like Union Square than an airport on the inside. I am not sure what the International terminal looks like, but this is what one can find in the domestic terminal. Safe travels.