I memorialized each day of our trip in a "journal" that I posted online for those who were following our journey. I invite you to follow along for the next couple of weeks as we take a walk down memory lane. . .
Journey to Carly - Day 1 - March 30, 2005
We're here!!! We are in Hong Kong! Hooray! After a very long day of traveling, we are thrilled to have finally reached our destination! Our flight actually arrived about an hour early, but we made up for that hour when trying to figure out how to arrange for a shuttle to take us to our hotel. We checked into the Marco Polo about 45 minutes ago, or 8:00pm Hong Kong time. The flight was long, but really not that bad. Most importantly, we arrived safe and sound.
Here's a recap of the day:
Whew! After the whirlwind of activity in the last two weeks, I thought today would never get here. As I tucked the boys in last night, there were big hugs and even a few tears, and heartfelt “I love you’s, and I will miss you’s” exchanged. My head hit the pillow somewhere around 9:30 pm. I saw 10:30pm, I saw 12:30am, I saw 1:30am, and at 2:30am, I finally decided to get up. I gave the kids and Mike each one last goodbye hug and kiss and at 4:20am, I pulled out of the driveway. As I made my way to my Mom and Dad’s house, I had a giant lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. Wow. It is really happening. The trip of a lifetime is about to begin.
Our first “issue” was my overweight luggage! We had to open up one of our suitcases and find 5 pounds of “stuff” to take out and put in one of our other suitcases in order to keep the weight of each below 70 pounds. So that caused quite a little scene at the ticket counter at the Bloomington airport at 5:00am! We were successful, and we now have luggage that is all within the permitted weight limits. At least for international flights, that is. Still not sure what will happen when we are traveling within China and my bags are anywhere from 10 – 26 pounds over the 44 pound weight limit! Time will tell on that one.
Our flight to Chicago was uneventful and we exited the plane and immediately stumbled upon a Starbucks! So that started our morning off right! We leisurely strolled through O’Hare to the C Concourse, and once we found our gate, we proceeded to walk back and forth and back and forth for the next several hours. We arrived in Chicago a little earlier than planned, so we had roughly 5 ½ hours to burn before our flight to Hong Kong was scheduled to take off.
We were unsuccessful in our attempts to get an upgrade to the Economy Plus section and, after boarding the plane and passing by the seats in Business Class and Economy Plus, I can see why it is a much more desired place to sit!!! Let’s just say that there isn’t a whole lot of room in the good ole’ Economy section of a 747! Fortunately, the flight wasn’t completely full, and we scouted out an empty couple of seats on the other side of the plane that we were able to convince our seat mate to move to shortly after takeoff! So, at least Dad and I had three seats, with the empty one in between us, which gave us a little more space.
As I’m writing this, we are roughly half way to Hong Kong. That means we’re about 7 hours into the flight. The scheduled flying time was 15 hours and 45 minutes, but before we took off, the pilots told us flying time would only be 14 hours and 9 minutes! YES!!! The Schmidt’s and Jennifer’s Dad, Robin Martin, and her son Casey are on the same flight as us! It has been great knowing that we’re all here together. So far, I haven’t been able to sleep for more than about an hour. Too excited, I guess! They’ve shown 3 movies and are promising more. The GPS screen comes up once in a while and shows our flight path. It looks like we flew way north and were near the Arctic Circle. Right now, we are over Siberia. How cool is that?! We’re so high that we can’t see much out of the windows, but we were able to see some of the frozen ocean below. I’ll write more when we arrive in Hong Kong!
Checking back in from Hong Kong. The second half of the flight went by much faster than the first. In total, though, I only slept maybe 3 hours. I thought I would sleep much more than that. Needless to say, I figure I'll get some good shut eye tonight. We're very excited to explore Hong Kong tomorrow. I haven't posted any photos yet, but we did take a few today, so I'll try to upload them tomorrow.
That's all for now! Considering I haven't been to bed in about 28 hours, that's where I'm headed now.
Good night from Hong Kong!
We're here!!! We are in Hong Kong! Hooray! After a very long day of traveling, we are thrilled to have finally reached our destination! Our flight actually arrived about an hour early, but we made up for that hour when trying to figure out how to arrange for a shuttle to take us to our hotel. We checked into the Marco Polo about 45 minutes ago, or 8:00pm Hong Kong time. The flight was long, but really not that bad. Most importantly, we arrived safe and sound.
Here's a recap of the day:
Whew! After the whirlwind of activity in the last two weeks, I thought today would never get here. As I tucked the boys in last night, there were big hugs and even a few tears, and heartfelt “I love you’s, and I will miss you’s” exchanged. My head hit the pillow somewhere around 9:30 pm. I saw 10:30pm, I saw 12:30am, I saw 1:30am, and at 2:30am, I finally decided to get up. I gave the kids and Mike each one last goodbye hug and kiss and at 4:20am, I pulled out of the driveway. As I made my way to my Mom and Dad’s house, I had a giant lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. Wow. It is really happening. The trip of a lifetime is about to begin.
Our first “issue” was my overweight luggage! We had to open up one of our suitcases and find 5 pounds of “stuff” to take out and put in one of our other suitcases in order to keep the weight of each below 70 pounds. So that caused quite a little scene at the ticket counter at the Bloomington airport at 5:00am! We were successful, and we now have luggage that is all within the permitted weight limits. At least for international flights, that is. Still not sure what will happen when we are traveling within China and my bags are anywhere from 10 – 26 pounds over the 44 pound weight limit! Time will tell on that one.
Our flight to Chicago was uneventful and we exited the plane and immediately stumbled upon a Starbucks! So that started our morning off right! We leisurely strolled through O’Hare to the C Concourse, and once we found our gate, we proceeded to walk back and forth and back and forth for the next several hours. We arrived in Chicago a little earlier than planned, so we had roughly 5 ½ hours to burn before our flight to Hong Kong was scheduled to take off.
We were unsuccessful in our attempts to get an upgrade to the Economy Plus section and, after boarding the plane and passing by the seats in Business Class and Economy Plus, I can see why it is a much more desired place to sit!!! Let’s just say that there isn’t a whole lot of room in the good ole’ Economy section of a 747! Fortunately, the flight wasn’t completely full, and we scouted out an empty couple of seats on the other side of the plane that we were able to convince our seat mate to move to shortly after takeoff! So, at least Dad and I had three seats, with the empty one in between us, which gave us a little more space.
As I’m writing this, we are roughly half way to Hong Kong. That means we’re about 7 hours into the flight. The scheduled flying time was 15 hours and 45 minutes, but before we took off, the pilots told us flying time would only be 14 hours and 9 minutes! YES!!! The Schmidt’s and Jennifer’s Dad, Robin Martin, and her son Casey are on the same flight as us! It has been great knowing that we’re all here together. So far, I haven’t been able to sleep for more than about an hour. Too excited, I guess! They’ve shown 3 movies and are promising more. The GPS screen comes up once in a while and shows our flight path. It looks like we flew way north and were near the Arctic Circle. Right now, we are over Siberia. How cool is that?! We’re so high that we can’t see much out of the windows, but we were able to see some of the frozen ocean below. I’ll write more when we arrive in Hong Kong!
Checking back in from Hong Kong. The second half of the flight went by much faster than the first. In total, though, I only slept maybe 3 hours. I thought I would sleep much more than that. Needless to say, I figure I'll get some good shut eye tonight. We're very excited to explore Hong Kong tomorrow. I haven't posted any photos yet, but we did take a few today, so I'll try to upload them tomorrow.
That's all for now! Considering I haven't been to bed in about 28 hours, that's where I'm headed now.
Good night from Hong Kong!
At the gate in Bloomington
Our arrival in Hong Kong (approximately 24 hours later)
