We’ve got an 8:00 am flight, so we have to leave the hotel around 5:15. I scheduled two taxis last night, hoping to guarantee we’ll have transportation. Our six pieces of luggage, combined with Courtney’s luggage would overload a single vehicle. The hotel had an early breakfast set-up for people like us, and we grabbed some food before departing. The drive to the airport took about half an hour. Check-in was smooth, and immigration and security were equally easy. There were no crowds to speak of, especially at 6:00 am.
Our flight to Heathrow was smooth, and we arrived on time. As we tried to figure out where our next gate was, we saw a big crowd gathered around a white board with flight updates. Our gate had been changed, and the airport personnel at the white board were looking for people on our flight. They grabbed us and two other couples, put us on an elevator and told us to follow the instructions of the guy on the next level. Of course, no one was at the next level. There was only one direction to walk, so we headed off. About a half mile later, walking down empty, deserted corridors, we saw some guy who pointed us to an elevator that took us down to a terminal area where we caught a train to our gate area. Whew! That was a workout!
As we made our way to the gate, we were told we had been upgraded. I hoped it was business class, but it was only up to the “extended leg-room” seats (whatever the British Airways title for those seats are). It was still better than sitting in the really cramped sections, further back. I had been trying to pay for upgraded seats since we first booked our flights in January, and couldn’t figure out how to get it done. The trick British Airways has is that you can’t get an assigned seat until 24 hrs until the flight. The only other option is to pay a sizable fee to guarantee the seats, which I had done, trying to make sure we would at least be sitting together. Even paying in advance would only guarantee our seats in Economy.
Once on board, the flight was smooth, but long (around 10 hrs., watched lots of movies) We arrived as scheduled, and breezed through immigration and security using “Global Entry”. Brad picked up Judy & I. Courtney called Uber. We dropped Brad at his apartment and then drove on over to our condo. We moved our suitcases in, and began the process of unpacking. It didn’t take long for the excitement of being home to wear off, and the exhaustion of over 3 weeks of travel, touring, and jet lag to knock us out. Our “China Experience” is officially over.
This is what our packing situation looked like when we departed DFW, July 27, 2013, headed for Beijing.
This is what we looked like when we arrived back at DFW, July 14, 2015. The rest of our stuff is “on a slow boat from China”, scheduled to arrive sometime near the end of August.