Last night was rough. They tried taking off twice but decided against it due to an electrical problem. We taxied back to the gate but they wouldn’t let us off the plane because it was past 11pm and the airport was closed. Boarding was at 6:20 and we didn’t get off the plane until 1am. The line to get rescheduled was incredibly long and they weren’t able to confirm the flight out of Tokyo until the morning so we were stuck just going to the hotel without any concrete plans on when we were leaving.
I guess being awake until 4am when we arrived to the hotel was a good way to get ahead on jet lag.
The plan was to get a 2 hour nap in and head to the airport ahead of the rest of the passengers so we could get as quick of a flight home as possible. Matsumoto-san was the representative assigned to our hotel to help us out with the rescheduling and she was awesome.
I was pushing to get a direct flight with Delta from Haneda to Minneapolis, unfortunately it was full but they got us on another Singapore Airlines flight to LAX and a Delta one immediately after to MSP with a short layover. I asked if we could at least get ANA lounge passes and she said that would be fine.
For those who are unfamiliar with airport lounges, they’re basically an oasis from the craziness in an airport. There’s free food and booze. The key is to go to a lounge in a hub city of that airline. Lucky for us, Singapore Airlines is a partner with ANA which is out of Tokyo.
There was soo much food! Ramen fresh to order, salad, mini sandwiches, and onigiri. There was self pour beer machines and I may have helped them open and finish a plum wine bottle. What’s awesome about international lounges is that they have showers too. I basically came straight from the hotel but how often do you get a chance to take a shower at the airport?
We got on the plane a few hours later, took off with no problem, got home at 5pm Monday night, and started unpacking things right away. It basically took 40 hours to get home from leaving the hostel in Tokyo to go to the airport to arriving at my house.
I really enjoyed all the planning that led up to this trip. It was great seeing everything go smoothly and experience the stuff I had written down on paper in real life. Thank you so much for keeping up with my blog. I would say I’ve definitely improved on my photography and it was a challenge keeping a daily blog. I think this is my first time where I didn’t miss a day. I checked the numbers and I took over 2,800 photos and walked 375,414 steps which equates to 167.25 miles. Also, this blog got about 1,300 views, maybe half of them were from myself.
I hope I had interesting things to share with you while on this trip, and that you enjoyed following along the past few weeks.
I wouldn’t be a good traveler if I didn’t already have plans for the next place I want to visit. Right now I’m interested in trips next year to Australia/New Zealand, SE Asia (Thailand, burma, Indonesia, Malaysia), or something in northern Europe (Amsterdam, Sweden, Finland) would be interesting.
Thanks for reading, I will definitely keep another blog for my next trip because there WILL be a next trip.
