{"id":3796,"date":"2015-08-03T01:46:13","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T18:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=3796"},"modified":"2015-08-03T01:46:13","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T18:46:13","slug":"homeward-bound-71415","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=3796","title":{"rendered":"Homeward bound! 7\/14\/15"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve got an 8:00 am flight, so we have to leave the hotel around 5:15.\u00a0 <\/span>I scheduled two taxis last night, hoping to guarantee we\u2019ll have transportation.\u00a0 <\/span>Our six pieces of luggage, combined with Courtney\u2019s luggage would overload a single vehicle.\u00a0 <\/span>The hotel had an early breakfast set-up for people like us, and we grabbed some food before departing.\u00a0 <\/span>The drive to the airport took about half an hour.\u00a0 <\/span>Check-in was smooth, and immigration and security were equally easy.\u00a0 <\/span>There were no crowds to speak of, especially at 6:00 am.<\/p>\n

Our flight to Heathrow was smooth, and we arrived on time.\u00a0 <\/span>As we tried to figure out where our next gate was, we saw a big crowd gathered around a white board with flight updates.\u00a0 <\/span>Our gate had been changed, and the airport personnel at the white board were looking for people on our flight.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>Of course, no one was at the next level.\u00a0 <\/span>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!\u00a0 <\/span>That was a workout!<\/p>\n

As we made our way to the gate, we were told we had been upgraded.\u00a0 <\/span>I hoped it was business class, but it was only up to the \u201cextended leg-room\u201d seats (whatever the British Airways title for those seats are).\u00a0 <\/span>It was still better than sitting in the really cramped sections, further back.\u00a0 <\/span>I had been trying to pay for upgraded seats since we first booked our flights in January, and couldn\u2019t figure out how to get it done.\u00a0 <\/span>The trick British Airways has is that you can\u2019t get an assigned seat until 24 hrs until the flight.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>Even paying in advance would only guarantee our seats in Economy.<\/p>\n

Once on board, the flight was smooth, but long (around 10 hrs., watched lots of movies)\u00a0 <\/span>We arrived as scheduled, and breezed through immigration and security using \u201cGlobal Entry\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>Brad picked up Judy & I.\u00a0 <\/span>Courtney called Uber.\u00a0 <\/span>We dropped Brad at his apartment and then drove on over to our condo.\u00a0 <\/span>We moved our suitcases in, and began the process of unpacking.\u00a0 <\/span>It didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 <\/span>Our \u201cChina Experience\u201d is officially over.<\/p>\n

\"13.07.25.Departure<\/a>

This is what our packing situation looked like when we departed DFW, July 27, 2013, headed for Beijing.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"IMG_0770\"<\/a>

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.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve got an 8:00 am flight, so we have to leave the hotel around 5:15.\u00a0 I scheduled two taxis last night, hoping to guarantee we\u2019ll have transportation.\u00a0 Our six pieces of luggage, combined with Courtney\u2019s luggage would overload a single … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3797,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions\/3797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}