Jewels of the Orient - Day 3, 18 Oct 2019 - Flying to China

OK, the day has arrived, we're off to China! After our brekky at the hotel we grabbed out suitcase and headed for the shuttle bus to take us to the international airport. There were quite a few people on board and as we found out one of the couples that were on our China/Japan tour also stayed at the Ibis.

The bus dropped us off and we headed into the terminal to look for our check in counter which happened to be right where we'd walked in. Check in was easy and fast so it was nice to be without our suitcases as soon as we'd got to the airport. Always a pain having to drag a suitcase around. It didn't take us long to get through customs and border security. Our flight left at 12pm so we had a couple of hours wait before boarding and our 9.5hr flight to Shanghai (our final destination is Beijing, Shanghai is just a stopover).

Checking we still had all our paperwork, boarding passes and passport (we were always paranoid about losing them or misplacing them). Boarding was called and off we went to our China Eastern Air flight. We had seats in the centre row which worked out well as it meant we didn't have any random needing to get passed us to go to the bathroom. We didn't mind not having a window seat as you couldn't see anything and it was a daytime flight. Not long after take off we had lunch, beef with mash, and then plenty of time for movie watching and game playing. I did finally get to see Toy Story 4. 3 stars out of 5, my least favourite Toy Story.

Thankfully we had an uneventful flight if not long and economy leaves not much room for stretching. I don't know how tall people handle sitting in economy for so long!

We made it to China!!

Wow, we lost count of the amount of times we had our bags scanned and our bodies frisked (some were very friendly frisks too!) and our finger prints taken. Considering we were just transferring to the domestic airport so hadn't left the airport to get anything I don't know why they kept scanning us. We hadn't been anywhere to get anything!

We finally made it through all the checks and found our gate. Unfortunately what was meant to be a 1 1/2hr stopover ended up being a 4hr stopover. Such a big delay meant we didn't end up getting to Beijing until about 3am.

We were ALL super tired and just wanted to get to our hotel. After collecting our bags and following the exit signs we met up with our lovely Cruise1st guide Jasmin. She had a looooong day too! Once everyone was accounted for we headed for our coach and then our 1 hr drive to the hotel. zzzzz

Check in was pretty quick, we'd all been given our room numbers on the bus so just listened out for this to be called once we were at the hotel, grabbed our keycard and headed for the lift and our room.

So close to our beds, so close but our keycard wouldn't work. I nipped back down to reception and explained the issue. She pressed a few buttons, rescanned my card and thankfully it worked. We had to be back on the coach by 9.30am so not much sleep before our first big day in China.