China – Day 0: To Beijing

We got to the airport without a hitch. Dan even had enough time to pick up breakfast sandwiches from Parisi bakery (ham and egg on a roll) for us. I have to confess that I am an over packer. My giant suitcase was 10 pounds over weight. Good time Simon was also an over packer and had enough room in his carryon to stuff 10 pounds worth of my crap.


Power adapter FAIL: we called a day early to get premium seating. They don’t cost extra, you just have to call. I called and requested an aisle seat with power. Little did I know that you need an adapter for power on airplanes. They don’t rent the adapter either. Nope, if you want it, you have to shell out $125 for it. We didn’t need power bad enough to justify the $125.

I’m too pampered by JetBlue and their fancy on flight DirectTV. For some reason, I came on this flight expecting to watch about 8 hours of FoodTV or Travel Channel. There was no FoodTV, no Travel Channel, no DirectTV; only the few preselected movies on crappy screens. I kept the screen off during the flight. I did manage finish the lectures on Chinese history, read a couple of chapters of the book I got for this trip “It must be something I ate” and sleep.


The food on this 13 hour flight was mediocre at best: the beef was dry during dinner but had a sweet sauce that made it ok, the burger was mushy, and the omelet was kind of gross. At one point, I asked the stewardess what she recommended and she replied that she brings her own food.
What was super awesome about this flight was the middle seat between Simon and I was empty. It wasn’t a packed flight so most of the middle seat in the middle column were empty.