Flights to Kunming

We ran a stopwatch from when we pulled out of the driveway until we arrived in our hotel room. 27 hours, 3 minutes. The trip was long but smooth. We made it to our connecting flight at the Beijing airport thanks to it being very orderly. We had been told our bags had been checked through to Kunming, but we had to pick them up and recheck them in Beijing (for customs). We figured it out. We were getting rather impatient and irritated (especially since we could not understand the flight announcements if there were any explaining the delay) when we had to sit on the tarmac from just after 7pm until 9:30pm - just sitting. (Clarify - just sitting on b*tts that had already driven from Elk to Spokane, flew from Spokane to Seattle, and from Seattle to Beijing and were nearly to permanent disrepair!) But we made it to Kunming, and our guide and ride to hotel was still waiting for our delayed flight. Whew!

Only one mistake - I took off my shoes for more comfort during the flight. My feet swelled up like balloons, and I could NOT get shoes back on. That was painful. I put my feet on Michael's lap, and he rubbed some of the edema out as much as he could so that I could shove my feet into my shoes (ow!) and hobble off in Beijing. A little walking, and all was fine again. Note to self: Slip on shoes are great for USA airport security theater. Shoes that lace have a lot more flexibility if you need to make them bigger!

This little map is fun to watch on the plane until you decide that the little plane icon is just a tease and the flight will never really end. lol

Another picture for you, Cameron, so you can see how high the plane flies, how fast it goes, and how cold it is up there with that much speed. You can see that when we took this, we'd been flying for 6 1/2 hours and still had almost 2000 miles to go - to our first stop.