Our first flight to Japan left around noon. We had asked Dave Bell to pick us up at the house and take us to the airport on Sunday morning at 9:45 am so we had a little time to pull everything together. Each of us had a bag to check plus Chris was taking an extra bag. Add that to our backpacks for carry on and we had a substantial amount of bags to keep track of. Chris' extra bag was filled with snacks to last throughout our time away.
Dave was so kind as to drop us off at the West side Departures at the United gate. We said a quick goodbye and thanks and headed inside. The line wasn't huge but the check-in process took forever. Something about slow computers. Kristen had to use a bathroom. We first checked around the corner but realized we would have to make a trip downstairs to find bathrooms there. We returned to the check in counter to find that we weren't much closer to being checked-in. We headed off downstairs.
We waited downstairs for awhile but didn't see familiar faces and thought it best to return to check-in to see what was taking so long. As we walked up, one of the employees said to use, "That's a mother and daughter combination if I have ever seen one. She looks just like you." We said a kind thanks and joined up with our peeps. Slow.
Finally we were on our way and were able to use pre-check at security. Yay, no shoe removal. Kristen didn't actually have pre-check status, but they let her through with us anyway. At her age, she doesn't have to take off her shoes.
We hurried downstairs to the train where we just missed the first train by seconds. Oh well, we weren't really in a rush. After successfully catching the next train, we exited at "B" terminal, and there we proceeded to wait even more. The cleaning crew was taking forever. I guess we should just be grateful for a clean airplane!
At last we were able to board and had the first two rows of seats on the right side of the plane. Luckily we were able to watch the extra service in business with their nice reclining chairs, huge tv monitors, and nice-looking meals. The curtain between us was out of mesh so it didn't really obscure much of the view.
I sat with Kristen and Misha on a row and Chris and Amy were behind us. They had an extra seat between them until the last minute. Boo. The girls and I had a lot of legroom; Misha and Kristen thought it pretty cool that their tray table pulled up out of the arm rest and that the tv was on an arm that folded down in to the front of the arm rest. It got a little old after awhile when you tried to juggle everything when folding the tray away or trying to pull it out. Plus, they weren't able to move the arm rest as on other rows in order to get a little comfier when trying to sleep.
It seemed as though there was a meal coming non-stop. In reality, it was only two meals and a snack and then lots of water. I have learned to drink the water whenever they bring it. Our favorite meal was actually the snack which was a turkey sandwich on a roll with a cute little container of vanilla ice cream. Kristen wasn't too keen on the meal choices and ate very little. She was going to be one hungry little chica over the next two weeks if she was already being picky about airplane food!