So who's superstitious anyhow? It's friday the 13th and we're standing in LAX airport waiting to meet the rest of the tour group to check in for a 14 hour flight over the Pacific - hmmmm! Let's see now, we have the rabbits foot, haven't seen a black cat since we left home (Inky), stayed away from ladders, didn't step on any sidewalk cracks, so all is cool, we're ready.
A last minute bit of anxiety was created when about a half hour before we were ready to walk out the door of Tracey's house yesterday in Phoenix to go to the airport for the flight to LAX, I decided to make a last minute check of emails. We would be gone for about 8-10 days and were unsure of internet access in China so just thought that I would make a last minute check. There was an email from the Executive Director of the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce reminding everyone to not forget to bring our paper tickets, the special luggage tags, and our nametags. What???
We didn't have any of these things that I knew of and if we needed paper tickets to get on the plane we might really have a problem. We hadn't been home for a month and if these had been sent to our house it was too late now. I made a quick call back to Eleanor who was collecting our mail for us and asked her to dig through the pile of mail. It revealed that yes we had gotten a letter from the Chamber and it had the stuff in it. If the Chamber had just emailed or let us know to watch for the letter we could have been on the watch for it and had it sent to Tracey's. There were no "paper tickets" in the package however.
The next call was to the Chamber of Commerce and I was told that the "paper tickets" referred to in the email was the listing of everyone's names and their e-ticket numbers. We had gotten that in a separate mailing before we left home and had brought it along but the tour company would be upset if we didn't have the luggage tags and name tags. He would try to get some more made and send them with the group the next day. Whew, the panic attack was over and we headed out the door to the airport.
Back to Friday - A quick check at an information desk pointed us in the direction of the China Eastern check-in counters. LAX is a big place but we decided that waiting at the outside door opposite the sign below would be a good place to meet the rest of the group that would be arriving from Palm Springs by bus.
The plan worked great and after just 15-20 minutes the bus pulled up and Joe and Beverly plus the rest of the group arrived. They had our freshly minted nametags and luggage tags with them. Off to check-in we went. At check-in all China Eastern wanted was our passports and they didn't want or need the e-ticket information. The boarding passes were issued, luggage checked and we were "good to go". Then it was the usual taking off shoes, putting everything in the trays, pass through the portal and hope the alarms don't go off - yea, we passed. No liquids, nail clippers, letter openers, knives, guns, etc. to worry about. Now it was a little over two hours of waiting for boarding time.
It seems like it's always hurry up and wait but the waiting after check-in did give us time to introduce ourselves to each other in the group and chat for a while.
The scheduled departure time was 12:30PM but it was delayed a little and it was probably a little after 1PM by the time we were being pushed back from the gate. The plane was a Airbus A340-600 and configured by China Eastern to carry about 340 passengers. In the economy section that we were in the configuration was 2-4-2 across. Reviewing China Eastern online before our trip I wasn't too impressed with the reviews by other passengers. Comments were critical on meeting schedules, food, service, etc. We were pleasantly surprised and couldn't have been more happy with the China Eastern flights. The flight had very attractive Chinese stewardesses, the food was Chinese but good and sufficient quantity with two meals on the way over and everything went pretty much on schedule. The stewards did a great job but there was a little language problem but not something that created a big problem. When I asked for water I got tomato juice and when I asked for a chicken and rice meal I got beef and noodles. Oh well, not a big deal.
The flight time was 14hrs and 30min and I was glad that I had a book to read. Those last couple hours of the flight however had the part of the body that I sit on burning. I noticed on the Airbus website that Singapore Airlines has a flight from Newark to Singapore that is over 18 hours in the A340-600. That would be murder in the economy class. Actually the seats in the Airbus economy were comfortable. I think better than the Boeing 747's that we have been on.
As the plane was being pushed out the overhead monitors displayed a video view apparently from a camera mounted on the vertical tail of the straight ahead scene. This was interesting and I thought that it would be neat to see this view occasionally on the trip and during landing but once the plane was taxiing on it's own power they shut it off and never displayed it again.
We left in the daytime and eventually lost the race with the sun flying into nightime and arriving at Shanghai Pudong Airport after dark. It's a huge place with Terminal 1 where we arrived covering 278,000 square meters (how many square feet is that?) and 204 check-in counters. That's just terminal 1 but it is the biggest I think. The terminal on the second floor waiting areas is one huge open space with interesting construction. The sides of the structure are at an angle leaning out at the top as you can see in the picture below. End view of terminal 1 on the left.
Looking down the length of the terminal inside below there are what appear to be cables that go from the top of one outside wall to the other outside wall. I coined the term "clothespin construction" to describe the vertical posts that engage the cables on the bottom with slots and extend up to the roof structure. So the question in my mind still remains - do these clothespins support the roof entirely or is there some other structure that can't be seen? There doesn't seem to be any other internal support. They surely didn't put in all those cables and clothespins just for looks. I guess that my engineering mind tends to overanalyze these things but at any rate the result is a beautiful. If anyone knows the answer to this please let me know.
In Shanghai we had a couple hour wait and then boarded a domestic A340-600 for the 1 1/2 -2 hour flight from Shanghai to Beijing. This was getting to be a long day and night.
The tour bus picked us up at the Beijing airport and took us to the Crown Plaza Sun Palace Hotel arriving around midnight local time. By this time after the long flight and losing a day crossing the International Dateline we had no idea of the day or time. The room and bed below was a welcome site
We hit the bed only thinking briefly about tomorrow's trip to The Great Wall.
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