Tag Archives: #long flights

Been Busy!

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I’ve been so busy! I left the ship (LATE). I finally got off on Thursday, got to Luanda around noon. Had just enough time for lunch at the hotel and a beer out by the pool with a few of my shipmates. YES! First beer after 2+ months tastes soooo good! 🙂

Headed to the airport at 1500. Got on the plane at around 1800. Had about a 10 hour flight to Dubai, a 4 hour layover there, and a 16 hour flight to Houston. Instead of my previous flight with KLM through Amsterdam which was much shorter AND I paid for an upgrade to business so I would have been able to sleep, I was stuck flying coach in a packed full plane for 2 days. Talk about tired!!

I got home about 9 PM Friday night. Fell asleep immediately.

This crew change was SO screwed up! Because I got home so late on Friday, I couldn’t make any of the phone calls I needed to. Like try to set up appointments for Monday, etc. I was WAY too tired to wake up Saturday morning to go sailing that afternoon, so those plans were ruined.

All I managed to do was to catch up on sleep a little bit and get through the humongous piles of mail!

I had a bunch of errands to run today, phone calls to make and get ready for my vacation tomorrow. I sure hope it goes better than the last few days have been going.

I tried to get a rental car today to take to the airport so I wouldn’t spend so much money on parking. Even with the huge rip-off charges for ‘drop fees’ (when I bring the same car back and forth every month), it’s still cheaper to rent a car to and from the airport than to park my car there for 3-4 weeks. So, I tried to get a car this morning.

They called me back around noon (when I was supposed to get the car) to tell me they didn’t have any cars yet. They expected them by closing. I had so much to do and couldn’t wait around til closing, so I figured I’d go ahead and use my truck (even tho it needs some work right now). Couldn’t get it started. 🙁

I had to rummage around for the battery charger, clean up the battery and let it charge for a couple of hours. I finally got it started and was able to run some errands.

Good thing too, since they never did come up with a car they could give me today. Maybe tomorrow they said. Lot of good that’ll do when my flight leaves at 0800!

I should be somewhere in Nicaragua by this time tomorrow. 🙂

Almost Gone!

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I’m almost gone! I’ll be leaving the ship today and heading home. That is, if the helicopter makes it out here. We’ve been haveing a lot of thunderstorms lately and they don’t like to fly through all that (I don’t blame them).

crew change by chopper

crew change by chopper

I’m due to fly out of Luanda at 2300 tonight. Will be due to arrive in Houston at 1500 tomorrow (Thursday) and should be home by 1800. I just hope everything goes smoothly and maybe I can catch a few zzz’s on the plane.

It takes 8 1/2 hours to fly from Luanda to Frankfurt and then another 11 hours to fly from Frankfurt to Houston. I hope the planes aren’t stuffed full so at least can have a little bit of space.

Will be home soon and able to start catching up with things on here once I get caught up on some sleep (MUCH needed). 🙂

I made it!

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Well, after over 40 hours of traveling, I made it to my hotel in Korea! 🙂

This is just going to be a quick post since I am totally EXHAUSTED!

I left the house at 0400 yesterday, left Houston at 0730. I made it to Washington DC with barely enough time to catch that flight. Flew from there to Beijing (China). Again, I had just barely enough time to catch my next flight (and I never would have made it if I hadn’t asked to cut ahead and go in the ‘fast track’ line).

If you ever go through China, be sure to put ALL your cords in a separate bag. I have no idea why, but the security wants to see all your electrical cords (phone cords, camera chargers, kindle chargers, computer cords, etc). It delayed me quite a bit digging all that out! Oh yeah, they don’t like cigarette lighters there either (they confiscated mine).

So I got to Korea (Inchon airport for Seoul) at about 1830 tonight. I had an easy time getting out of the airport. It was all very modern, English signs for everything, information booths everywhere.

I decided to take the airport train into town. I had to get a transportation pass first. I asked the lady at the tourist information booth at the airport and she was very helpful. I got a pass for 10,000 won. It should last me for a couple of days at least and I can charge it up when I need to. I ‘think’ she told me it was good all over the country, city bus, metro, etc.

Easy enough to take the train into town. I can’t beleive how helpful everyone was! I found the train at the airport and started talking to a Korean man who was just coming home from working in Japan. He helped me figure out which stops I would have to get off and transfer. He even gave me a bag of chocolates from Japan!

I made the first transfer OK, but the 2nd one was a little more difficult. Lucky I only brought fairly small roller wheeled luggage! This station had stairs, stairs and more stairs and no elevators (at least that I could find). A very nice lady helped me, she just grabbed one of my bags and started walking up the stairs.

The tourist information lady had called my hotel for me so she could tell me how to get there (which was what I had originally asked about there), they said I would spot it right away when I came out of the station. OK, I wandered around for an hour and saw no sign of it.

I tried asking people. No one had any idea. One very nice man called them for me. Turns out, I had exited the wrong side of the train station. He took it upon himself to make sure I found the place and led me back through the train station (NOT as simple as it sounds, it’s a maze)! He had the lady from the hotel meet us at the door coming out of the station.

Wow! What amazingly helpful people! I got to the hotel and the lady gave me my key and right away showed me my cute little room and where everything was. It’s called the Fox Hotel and now that I’ve seen it, I have to say it’s really a pretty good deal.

It’s small, but it’s cute and it has everything I need. There’s a little fridge, with bottled water and cans of coffee and something I haven’t figured out yet. It has a picture of a lady in a cornstalk on it. Any clues?

I’ll be here in Incheon for a couple of days. I think then I’ll head down towards Busan. I haven’t really decided yet. Maybe I’ll learn something while I’m wandering around here tomorrow to give me some ideas. 😉