Thanks to Ty’s endless search for the best flight deals around, our Thanksgiving plans included spending the week in Shanghai, China. Also fun with this adventure, my mom decided to join us.
Fun (not really) side fact about traveling to China, is their visa approval is super restrictive. They only issue visas from certain Embassies across the US, and the one assigned to Alaska is in San Francisco. So you can either go in person, with a very specific set of paperwork, or you can hire an agency to submit the documentation for you. It was actually cheaper for my mom and I to fly to San Fran for the weekend, than to pay for 5 of us to get visas. Crazy! So our motto is, we will be back to China, to make these 10 year visas worthwhile!
We left Anchorage, on a 6am flight to Seattle. Flying Delta is not something we’re used to, and the leg room was definitely tight. However, other than that it was just fine.
Layover in Seattle for a bit and then we were on our way in Comfort+ for a 13 hour flight.
Our plane was having some sort of mechanical minor issue so of course after we boarded we actually sat on the ground in Seattle for another two hours. Because 13 hours wasn’t going to be long enough. 🤪
Total coincidence though, a flight attendant came up and started talking to R. It was one of her classmates Grandmother! Her granddaughter had just happened to mention her friend R, was going to Shanghai. The grandmother, just happens to be a flight attendant on this route for the airline we were flying. The world is truly small in moments like this. She was lovely too, continuing to check on us throughout the flight, even though we weren’t in her area. It made it extra special.
Both kids got a decent amount of sleep, but I don’t think the grown ups got more than an hour or so.
We landed around 6pm Shanghai time. Got through customs just fine, and found our driver.
It took about an hour to go from the airport to the hotel. It was about 8pm by the time we got there, and got settled. We couldn’t see much but were so thankful to arrive and to lay down in beds again. We went to sleep quite early, however, we were sure the time change/jet lag was going to play havoc on our sleep.
Hooray for China and my family who puts up with my travel obsession