Thursday & Friday, March 21 & 22, 2013

Thursday & Friday, March 21 & 22, 2013

Thursday, March 21 was the long anticipated day.  It was the day I left for my Asian Cruise Tour. We started with an early flight out of DFW.  We originally were booked with United from DFW to SFO and then on to Beijing.  Thanks to United and their schedule changes, their flight would no longer get us to SFO in time to make our connection so US Airways booked us on their flights therefore making it necessary for us to connect in PHX to get to SFO.  Not really bad except our flight now left at 6:00 am out of DFW.  This meant it would be a very early morning -- setting my clock to get up at 1:30, pick Mary P up at 3:30 and then on to the airport.  Our flights from DFW and PHX were both on time departure and arrivals.  Once arriving at SFO we had to go to a different terminal which meant riding a little bus.  It wasn't so bad because it was all done within the secured areas and we didn't have to clear security again.

Once to the United terminal we found the United First Class International Departure Lounge.  It wasn't crowded so we were able to find a seat with plugs and also near the food.  However they really didn't have food that looked very good but they did have some good fresh fruit so that was what I got.  If you are into alcohol it looked like they probably had anything you could ever want but it wasn't yet noon so I wasn't really interested in that.  

Our flight was to depart SFO at 1:00 pm so it started boarding at 12:10 pm.  As soon as they made the announcement we made our way to our gate -- Gate 102.   The lounge was at Gate 98 so we didn't have far to walk.  We quickly boarded the plane and made our way to our seats -- 1K and 2K.  This was a 747 and we were on the lower level in the nose of the plane.  The seats were roomy with lots of room to spread out.  Since I was in Row 1 there was no place to stow my carryon above my seat.  The flight attendant had me to put it above Row 4 which made it nice leaving the plane because that was the last row in First Class so I could just grab it and go.

The inflight service was ok I guess.  When the flight attendant was coming around to get our beverage choice I told her I wanted Coke Zero.  She couldn't understand me even after I repeated it 3 times.  She thought I was asking for some kind of wine or liquor that she didn't have.  She tried to offer me something else that I didn't understand. I just looked at her and said "No, Coca Cola"  That she understood.  I guess she didn't understand why I was wanting that when I could have any number of things.

I ordered Pork Chops for my main course and they were so tough I couldn't even cut it.  I managed to get about 3 bites cut off and that was all I ate of that with a little bit of side dishes, but I had already had nuts, appetizers and a salad so I wasn't that hungry.  In fact I even passed up the ice cream sundae.  After eating, I settled in to try and watch a movie.  It seemed they were showing the same movies that they had when I went to Australia at Christmas so I watched Mary Poppins!  After that was over I decided to get some sleep so I turned everything off and went to sleep.  It seemed it wasn't long before they were waking us up for breakfast before the end of our flight.  This was my favorite meal -- cereal and fresh fruit!

I forgot to mention that when we got on board, the pilot came on and told us the flight path that we were going to be taking.  He said that it would be daylight the whole flight but he would try to keep announcements at a minimum because he knew that people would be sleeping.  We were departing SFO and flying north over Oregon, Washington, Alaska and up over the Russian territories and down into Beijing.  We would not be going over any water!  Also when we left SFO we got to fly over the Golden Gate Bridge and I think I saw Alcatraz as well.

When we got near Beijing, we had to circle several times because of the air pollution.  I am not sure how late we were -- probably about 30 minutes.  Once on the ground, we had to walk 200 miles to passport control.  Once through that we had to hop on a train to go pick up our luggage.  Once we had our luggage loaded onto carts, we went through immigration where they just waved us through.  We then started looking for someone holding up a sign for us and it wasn't long until I spotted a sign that said Princess Cruises.  They were there for us.  We quickly went and got on an elevator and then out to the mini van that was waiting for us.  We are staying at the Peninsula Beijing which is downtown. The traffic was very bad for a Friday evening -- yes we left DFW on Thursday morning at 6:00 am and we arrived in Beijing around 5:00 pm on Friday evening.  By the time we got to our hotel, checked in and got to our room, it was around 7:00 pm.  We were exhausted and stayed in for the rest of the night.  The Rosga's were to be in later that night.