Last Things First

We're Home!

Since I wasn't able to post anything from China (their government blocks blogger.com), I'll catch up now that we're home.  And since our journey home was pretty eventful, I'll start with that, and then go back to the beginning.

Tuesday morning after breakfast, I got a text from United that our flight from Shanghai to Chicago was delayed and would be departing an hour and forty minutes late.  That shortened our connection time to 89 minutes, one minute less than a "legal" connection.  Still, we felt confident that we could make the connecting flight, and since we had purchased trip insurance, we'd be compensated for any costs related to a travel delay (hotel room and meals in Chicago).

Our flight boarded at its newly scheduled time, and we settled into our comfortable business-first seats as the flight attendants rushed around getting everything ready for departure.  I knew something was up when we were not offered beverage service as soon as we boarded.  An announcement was made urging everyone to be seated quickly as "we need to get this aircraft airborne by six pm or we won't be leaving."  (I'll explain in later posts about the Asian economic summit that was taking place in Shanghai during our visit, but it appears a VIP was landing, and the entire airport would come to a grinding halt when he, or perhaps she, landed).  So off we taxied, and taxied, and taxied...around in a big circle.  The pilot announced that we had "lost our slot", and would be taking off in ten or fifteen minutes.  About an hour after we boarded, we finally took off.  At that time we were sure we would miss our connecting flight in Chicago.

During dinner we encountered some turbulence.  Trays were crashing in the galley, and we were struggling to keep our wine from spilling.  The turbulence continued on and off throughout the entire flight.  Mind you, we're at 40,000 feet, where weather is rarely a problem.  I'm guessing every thirty minutes or so the seat belt light would come on, we'd bump around for a while, the pilot would change altitude, things would smooth out, and then the cycle would repeat.  This made it difficult to get much sleep.  It's a fourteen hour flight.

Upon arrival in Chicago we cleared immigration quickly with our Global Entry status, and went to retrieve our luggage.  Even though our bags were tagged priority, they took about half an hour to come off, and by the time we got down to the baggage re-check and customer service area there were a lot of people ahead of us.  I had gotten a text confirming us on a flight out Wednesday morning, but we needed to confirm that and have the airline arrange our hotel.

In the past two weeks I learned that the Chinese culture is vastly different from ours, and many passengers on this flight were Chinese.  They have no concept of "personal space", don't understand waiting their turn in line, and have no problem pushing someone aside to ensure their needs are met.  Those of you who know me will understand that I would not tolerate that well.  Understatement of the decade....

We have our flight, we have confirmed seats, but there are no rooms in Chicago.  Period.  There's a restaurant convention taking place and every single hotel is booked solid.  We get a voucher for $74.10 for a room at Rodeway Inn.  Those of you who know me know that I'm not a Rodeway Inn kinda gal.  Still, we head outside to wait for the shuttle, which the United agent had confirmed was on the way to pick us up, and would be there in about twenty minutes.  I get a severe thunderstorm alert for ORD on my phone.....

After standing outdoors in the thunderstorm for about 40 minutes, I called the hotel (or maybe the Rodeway Inn is a Motel?), and am assured that the shuttle is on the way...please be patient.  Twenty minutes later, still no shuttle, and the Hyatt Regency shuttle pulls up and picks up some of the other people who were on our flight....WHAT?  I get Rodeway Inn and there are rooms at the Hyatt?  The driver asks us if we want to go to the Hyatt, and I said if they have a room, sure!  He says that they do, so we go.  After all, our trip insurance will pay anyway, so who cares about the airline voucher.  I jump off the shuttle at the hotel and head to the desk while David retrieves the luggage.  I explain to the desk clerk that I don't have a reservation, but that their driver said they have rooms and I need one of them.  No....they have no rooms.  None.  Zero.  Nada.

Back downstairs.  David has a "conversation" with the transportation manager for the Hyatt, who agrees that the driver shouldn't have told us that rooms were available and offers to take us back to the airport.  Whoopee.

We decide to check in for our 6 AM flight and spend the night in the United Club lounge.  It's reasonably comfortable and I can get a glass (or 8) of wine there.  After waiting in line for about half an hour we get our bags checked, get through security, and head for the lounge.  The automatic doors don't open.  A receptionist appears and whispers that they close in eight minutes, pointing to the sign that says their hours are 4:30 AM to 10:00 PM.  I won't say that I cried at this point, but it was really close.  Remember, we've been up since 5:30 AM Tuesday, Shanghai time, which is 4:30 PM Monday, Chicago time.  It's now 10 PM Tuesday, Chicago time.

So....we spent the night walking the terminals.  We'd walk for a while, then sit for a while, then walk for a while, then sit for a while, then...well, you get the idea.  Everything in the terminal closes at 10 pm.  We managed to get two glasses of wine to go at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant right before they closed.  Starbucks is the only thing that stays open 24 hours, and we got a great salad and sandwich there.  We were certainly not the only stranded passengers, and later in the early morning we decided we'd get a latte.  When we arrived at Starbucks the line was ridiculously long.  It took us ninety minutes to get our latte.

Wolfgang Puck's restaurant opens at 4:30 AM, so we go there for breakfast;  they have a decent breakfast pizza.  Then we head to the gate for our flight to Raleigh.  After a relatively uneventful flight (I think I slept about an hour), we land, exit the plane, and find our dear friend, MJ, who was in Raleigh for business, waiting for us at our arrival gate.  I have never seen a more beautiful sight!  We had a nice, although much too short, visit before our shuttle arrived to take us to our car.

And now we're home.