The husband is still asleep beside me. At 1540hrs I woke up with a snap. It is about 0611hrs now but our time, 1540hrs is me waking up a bit late to head to work in an hour or so.
So I'm awake. As the Husband snores beside me, I'll write up yesterday's action.
Everything went pretty smoothly.
We left the house in plenty of time. We got to the airport around 1000hrs, which was the plan. Our flight was laving at 1250hrs but we wanted to make sure we had time to get a good meal. I'm glad we did.
We parked in economy and caught our buss. We made to to make lot and bus stop numbers down in our phones for later reference. The last thing we want to do is loose the car. Because the Husband was upgraded to first class we got to use the super short line at the airport. There was also a herd of boy scouts making an international flight somewhere.
As we entered the airport, a man had exited and was turning around trying to figure out which deck he wanted to get on. This TSA lady is leaving and she bellows in this horrible, bitchy SNARLY voice, "WRONG DOOR" to this poor guy. What the hell? There is almost no one around and people get confused at the airport. I have no clue if I'm using the right doors or not at Narita. They all have exclamation points and open for me so who knows.
Anyway, we grab a wonderious lunch at Fudruckers. They have just opened and the guy doesn't know how to use his credit card machine. So, I pay and give the receipt to Tim to expense later. Yay for cash.
We go to the business lounge. The guy tells Tim, "Sir, you can use the First Class Lounge" but we were meeting with some of his co-workers. This lounge system is interesting. Lots of chairs and places to charge your stuff with people hanging around trying to shove alcohol and snacks down you.
We didn't stay for long because they started boarding the plane almost an hour early. I ran and grabbed a pretzel and some lemonaid for the flight and we boarded. This was the second rude Dulles employee I've met today. Maybe it was early, maybe I wanted everyone to experience the warm excited blur I was in. He's probably just tired of herding people he can't communicate around. I dunno, but the plane is loading and this one group is hanging back and he just starts yelling at them to get moving. I think they didn't want to cut in line but I wanted to give dude a Valium.
The Husband is swept away to his little area. I find my seat and sit down. Only its not my seat. I thought that I seemed one seat back but I was in a happy buzz. So, when a guy asks me, 21B? I go... 20B... and get up to ask the kid in front of me... 20B? and he goes 19B? To ask the guy in in front of him who is the true cause of it all being one seat back and in an isle when he should have been in a row. As we are sorting ourselves, a steward goes 'Everyone needs to get seated' and the kid goes 'We're sorting it out, thanks'.
So we sit. My seat mate is a quiet Japanese man who naps most of the trip. There are a ton of kids around me, but I'll give the parents credit, they worked hard at trying to keep them quiet.
The flight wasn't bad. I was in Economy Plus so I had plenty of legroom. They fed us (nasty stuff) and gave us snacks, liquids, and such. There are TVs in the seats. I wasn't allowed to go visit the Husband but he was allowed to come back and slum. He was blocked the first time he went back for a moment until he convinced them that he did belong up there. He wound up sending me a cookie at Dinner and feeling a bit lonely. There were only three other people in first class and he discovered that he wanted to sit with me more. We're trying to arrange that on the way back and I'm not going to argue the business upgrade for me. Not that he'd listen to me again on that anyway.
We arrive at Narita. I'm excited. The flight took us up to the arctic circle and down across siberia. I really want to see a map and trace the flight path on a globe. But we are here and we get off the flight and the airport is HOT.
WTF? Its around 1530hrs, 90 degrees outside and the airport is burning up. We're all sweating by the time we reach customs. They gave us customs forms on the plane to make it all easier. We hang them over, have our index fingers scanned and a photo taken and we're done.
We're still sweating.
We stand at baggage and wait and wait and wait and none of our groups baggage shows up. Finally, a porter asks us if we were on this flight and we say yes. As we look up and down the baggage carousel we notice something down at the end.
Our bags. All taken off.
I guess becuase they had priority stickers on them.
So we collect out baggage. Collect our missing group member who took a different flight, and off we go to find out about taking the bus. Because, of our missing member we have to wait for the bus that leaves at 1750hrs. We hang around, buy some soda and stuff. I got some onigri. Rice balls are tasty. They had fish or something that was tasty inside.
The trip wasn't bad. The seats are small and we were hot and the Husband tired so some grumpyness set in. It was about two hours to the hotel with traffic and all. But we made it. We got dropped off at the hotel and checked in.
Most of the group decided to hit the sack. The Husband wanted to get food and so did I. We showed and changed. I wasn't smelly from the flight, but 2 hours in the non air conditioned airport and I was stank. I was tired but the 13 hours forward had moved me into my night schedule so I was ready to eat and go to bed. We wandered for a few blocks until it got really bright and neon.
We found a place with plastic food on display and energetic staff members moving people inside. I peeked in and saw a busy but heavenly smelling interior if you ignored the cig smoke. We decided to make the attempt. The exterior menu had enligh on it, as did hte interior. We got these big salads with beef on them and some fried chicken pieces and two sodas.
Everything was very tasty. Service was prompt. It was noisy without being irritating. We eat, were able to pay by card and headed back to the hotel.
We stopped a at convince store, found something that said Milk and had a cow on it, a box that had white grapes on it, and some cola flavored mentos.
Back to the hotel room to set up the internet, and zonk out
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