Around The World, Part One

The home page of our Round The World trip is here.

This is a tale of our journey around the world.  It was inspired by the fact that the family talked Snookums’ sister Judy into taking a 3-year deployment to India to help her company run an outsourcing operation doing American tax returns over there.  Plus, we don’t really need much of an excuse to drop everything and head out for parts unknown.

Snookums did her usual research, and came up with a deal where we could stop at eight cities around the world for a cheaper air fare than a Kansas City-Hyderabad, India round trip ticket would have cost.  But, of course, you have to go to those other cities to get the cheaper fare.  Oh, darn!  (he said, with feigned concern).   So, after a bit of negotiation, our round-the-world trip was set.  We would visit, in order, Tokyo, Bangkok, Delhi, Hyderabad, Dubai, Cairo, Prague, and Dublin, over 37 days.  As it turns out, the month October is the best month to visit, well, everywhere.

So, let’s get started!

October 2, 2007 (Tuesday, Day 1, Leaving Kansas City for Tokyo via Chicago)

We left our house at 8 AM and arrived 45 minutes later at the KC airport to find out that the flight to Chicago was delayed due to fog.  We boarded the flight only about 15 minutes late, but then sat on the runway due to a ground-stop of flights O’Hare.

American Airlines MD-80 at KCI
American Airlines 777 at the gate at Chicago

The ground-stop lasted about 50 minutes after which we took off for an otherwise uneventful flight to Chicago.  We landed at 12:30 p.m. and saw that our flight to Narita was still listed with an on-time departure of 12:50, so we hustled to the gate.  Filbert boarded the plane and Snookums went off to buy bottled water.  She was starving and also bought two club salads for us to eat on the flight.  She had a  bad experience a few years ago on a flight to Tokyo where she didn’t get enough to eat and so was hungry the entire way.  That would not be a problem this time, as we will soon see.

We settled in our seats on the American Airlines Boeing 777, and the flight departed right on time at 12:50 p.m.  We opened up our salads soon after takeoff.  They were big, good club-type salads with a slightly sweet dressing.  Just as we were finishing the salads we saw the cabin crew beginning to serve a hot meal.  We shrugged and ate that, too—a choice of pork and rice (which Filbert had) or chicken and rice (which Snookums had).  So, we finished our own personal extended meal service about two hours into our 12.5-hour flight.

Alaska Glaciers
More Alaska Glaciers

Along the way, Snookums ended up watching 4 movies and Filbert mostly sat and stared out the window the entire time while listening to an audiobook of “Lord of the Rings”.  Neither of us slept since that is Snookums’ trick to combating jet lag.  Over Alaska, Filbert spotted some glaciers and snapped a few pictures.

We weren’t done eating.  About the same time we passed Anchorage, Alaska—about half way through the flight—we were served snack boxes with a sandwich, small candy bar and raisins.  How could we turn that down?  Somewhere over the Bering Sea a few hours later Snookums was a bit peckish so she picked up another snack box and got one for Filbert, too.  The small Twix candy bars had somehow  vanished from these boxes but we ate the sandwich and raisins.  Once again, as soon as we were done, we saw that another hot meal was being served.  Needless to say, when we landed on time at 4 PM, finding a restaurant was not an immediate concern.

October 3 (Wednesday, Day 2, Tokyo)

Welcome to Japan, Snookums!

We zipped through baggage claim, Customs, and Japanese Immigration, and went to the bus counter.  We knew the Limosine Bus to our hotel left at half past every hour and we were hoping to make it to the 4:30 p.m. bus. We didn’t even go to an ATM or the bathroom in the airport since we were really trying to make the 4:30 bus. We obtained the tickets and went outside, just as the bus was pulling up.  The ride from Narita to Roppongi Hills in Tokyo went smoothly.

Grand Hyatt Tokyo

We arrived at the Grand Hyatt around 6:15 p.m. and were upgraded to a deluxe corner room (which we could have reserved for these same dates at $620/night plus tax!).  Our room was pretty large at 645 sq. feet.  The normal room that we should have received is 452 sq. feet ($439).  Compared to our corner room type, the next biggest room is a suite that is 914 sq. feet so we were quite satisfied with our accommodations.  We also have full access to the Regency Club which means free breakfast and evening snacks.

Toilet instrument panel (Note the very illustrative Butt-tons)
Japanese Techno-toilet

We dumped our luggage in our room and discovered the wonders of state-of-the-art Japanese toilet technology.  Features like bidet, light wash, regular wash, and deodorizer, and heated seat grace these units, to the surprise of the unsophisticated American toilet-user.  We decided to check out the lounge and were pleasantly surprised at the cute individual servings of appetizers.  Every item was in its own little dish.  We ate “shot glasses” of pumpkin soup, pork medallions with tuna sauce, smoked scallops, tomato caprese salad, various nuts and sesame sticks, baby carrots, baby radishes, various little desserts, champagne, beer (Filbert decided he likes Kirin better than Asahi) and other beverages.

We decided we needed to find an ATM so we went to the connected Roppongi Hills shopping mall and got some yen.  We got back to our room and showered, did a little bit of unpacking, and turned the lights off at 9 p.m.  (We also lowered the motorized blinds and had fun playing with all the light switches on our nightstands.)

The journey continues in Part Two.  The home page of our Round The World trip is here.