The journey begins on the morning of Wednesday, March 10 with a
45 minute drive to JFK Airport.
Having arrived three hours early, we have plenty of time to kill, so we
settle down in the American Airlines Admiral Club and contemplate the
long journey ahead, preparing ourselves for it both physically
and psychologically. The trip ahead of us will end up taking close to
24 hours door to door. We board our flight in New York and take off at
11:30 AM. Next stop, Tokyo.
We arrive in Tokyo in about 14 hours. Surprisingly, the flight didn't seem
that long, and was actually quite tolerable. I suppose the fact that we were
flying business class didn't hurt. They really know how to pamper you -- Filet
Mignon and Chocolate Moose cheese cake for Lunch, Crablegs for dinner.
Once we arrive in Tokyo, we must manage to navigate to a seperate terminal
where we are to pick up our connecting flight. This turns out to be an adventure
in itself as it required us to board a bus to take us there, and it didn't
help that our body clocks were thrown totally out of whack, and we are
completely brain dead. We end up making a few wrong turns here and there
and find ourselves going through the security checkpoint more than once.
When we finally make it to our gate, we find out that the flight has been delayed by an hour. We hunker down and wait it out, trying not to fall
asleep and risk missing our flight. After about three hours, we finally
board our flight where we waste no time falling asleep.
We finally arrive in Beijing in about four hours. Local time is about
10:30 PM. Luckily, going through customs was a breeze, and our pre-arranged
guide, Helen, was there waiting for us. She gets on her cell phone, calls
for the driver, and within minutes we're in the car on our way to the Hotel.
We get there in about 30 minutes, check in with the help of our guide, and
head straight to bed.
Day 2
When all is said and done, we end up losing this day completely due to
travel time and time zone changes. Seems strange that our
journey started on Wednesday the 10th, and we'll be waking up to Friday,
the 12th.
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