Asian Adventure: Roof of the World Tour Overview
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific B777-300ER Business Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific Lounge Review: The Cabin at HKG
Asian Adventure: Cathay Dragon A330-300 Business Class Hong Kong to Beijing
Asian Adventure: Regent Beijing Hotel
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Dongcheng District
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Great Wall
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Run-ze Jade Garden
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Legend of Kung Fu
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Tiananmen Square
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Forbidden City
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Hutong Tour via Rickshaw, Tea Tasting, Flying to Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Hotel Shangri-La Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Qing Dynasty Terra Cotta Warriors
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Tang Dynasty Dinner and Show
Asian Adventure: Xi’an Wrap-Up, Flying to Lhasa, Lhasa Home Visit
Asian Adventure: Shangri-La Hotel Lhasa
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Jokhang Temple and Barkhor Market
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Canggu Nunnery and Sera Monastery
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Potala Palace
Asian Adventure: Leaving Lhasa and Flying to Chongqing
Asian Adventure: Viking Emerald
Asian Adventure: Shibaozhai Temple
Asian Adventure: Cruising the Three Gorges
Asian Adventure: Three Gorges Dam
Asian Adventure: Jingzhou City Walls Tour
Asian Adventure: Wuhan - Hubei Bells Performance and Provincial Museum
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Shanghai Museum
Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Old Shanghai and Yuyan Gardens
Asian Adventure: The New Otani Tokyo Hotel
Asian Adventure: Tokyo - City Tour
Asian Adventure: Mt. Fuji and Hakone Tour Returning by Shinkansen
Asian Adventure: ANA Suites Lounge Review, Tokyo Narita
Asian Adventure: All Nippon Airways B777-300ER First Class Tokyo Narita to Houston
It was the first week of October and our tour would officially begin on Sunday, October 8th so it was time to start making our way to Beijing. For those of us who did not buy our air from Viking, we had to be sure we were there on time as Viking would not make accomodation for us if we were late. So we had all arranged to arrive in Beijing on Saturday, which would have left us with time to handle any flight delays or cancelations. As it turned out, none of that was necessary as our flights were on time.
Since the flight over the Pacific would be such a long one, M decided he wanted to break up the trip a little so he flew to San Francisco on Monday with the intent of spending a couple of days with friends in the area. Since I could not find an AA award flight to connect with our flight on Cathay, I flew out Wednesday evening after work, arriving in the wee hours of Thursday morning - giving me plenty of wiggle room in case of flight cancelations. Our friend J, who was able to get an award ticket all the way from Nashville to Beijing, left Nashville early Thursday morning and arrived early Thursday afternoon. So M and I took the train to the airport and helped J bring her bags back to the hotel where they allowed us to store all our bags until it was time for our flight. We had a leisurely afternoon having a late lunch and wandering around a nearby mall until it was time to go to the airport.
We had planned to go to the lounge at the airport so we had the shuttle driver drop us off a little after 8 PM even though our flight wasn't until 12:50 AM. Unfortunately the Cathay counter doesn't even open until 8:50 PM so we had a little bit of a wait. Once the counters did open, M sailed right through the check-in process for the first class folks because even though there were two flights' worth of people checking in, there are only 6 first class seats on each plane so it doesn't take long to process them!
J and I waited in the business class line which was significantly longer but still moved more quickly than the economy line. And before too long we were checked in too. Our next stop was TSA screening and while there was a separate line for premium cabin passengers, there were a number of flights on several different airlines all going through the screening process at the same time. Add to that non-native English speakers trying to understand what they needed to do and it started backing the line up quite a bit. Fortunately that was enough for them to open up the old-school metal detector and I got to jump over to that line rather than having to go through the newer nude-o-scope, which was nice.
Once we were all through security we made our way to the Cathay lounge. It was fairly crowded so I decided not to take any photos. The food selection was not that great. I wasn't really hungry and knew we'd be getting fed on the plane so perhaps that's the reason for the small selection. I did nibble on a salad just to take the edge off hunger and prevent a headache. I'd spent the afternoon walking between the hotel and the mall and then walking around the mall so around 10 PM I decided to use one of the lounge's shower rooms. I wish I'd thought to take my camera with me because these rooms were well thought out. Some lounge shower rooms are quite small which means they get steamy and it's hard to keep your clothes dry and to keep from sweating as you're putting your clean clothes on. But these were nice and large and the steam dissipated fairly quickly. It's amazing how refreshing a shower and shampoo will make you feel.
