March 2, 2009

March 2, 2009 – We made it to Beijing after a long, long trip again. This time was interesting though, I think apparently our ticket agent at the airport must have felt sorry for us, or maybe thought we deserved a little extra room because of Floyd’s Premier status, but whatever the reason was, she upgraded us to Economy plus. This gave us a little more leg room on our flight to San Francisco which was nice. The really nice part, and surprise, came when we got on our plane to Beijing! Our seats were in economy, but there was so much leg room in this particular side row that while seated with my back scooted to the back of my seat I could lift my legs straight out and not touch the seats in front of us. It was actually so much room I almost felt embarrassed, please note I said almost! It did have its downside though…we had to unbuckle to get anything out of our carry-ons…terrible, huh? LOL

It was a good flight with only a little turbulence, but way too many hours…three movies, three meals and a long nap to put things into perspective. We found out a day or so before we left Idaho that the driver for the company could not pick us up at the airport this time so we were on our own. We thought that couldn’t be too hard. But when we got all our bags, 4 large checked-in bags and 4 carry-on bags and headed out to get a Taxi we found it not too easy. We tried to convince one driver that we could put some bags in the trunk, some in the seats inside the taxi as well as some in our laps but the drivers just looked at us, shook his head and spoke Chinese to us, which we think they were saying they could not fit all of our bags into their taxi by the sign language he used. We finally wound up going in a van-taxi which cost a great deal more than a regular taxi. We had no choice though, walking was definitely not an option!!!

We are looking forward to whatever this trip brings to us. Keep watching, we will try to post each Monday with what has happened that week.