8–10 October 2014: Getting there, an adventure in itself

Wednesday morning, I played nine holes of golf. David would have joined me, but on our way to last Saturday's football game, he caught his foot while stepping off a curb and managed not only to injure the foot but to wrench both his right hip and his back at the same time. He wanted to give those problems one more day to clear up.

For once, our taxi arrived on time—early, in fact—and got us to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so we grabbed a snack in anticipation of a late dinner. David had one of those yogurt-fruit-granola parfaits now ubiquitous in airports, and I had hummus with pretzel chips.

Our 6 p.m. flight to Atlanta was delayed by 20 minutes (good thing we decided to fly up the night before rather than booking that itinerary that involved a 35-minute connection in Atlanta), but went smoothly, and even made up some of the lost time, once it finally got going. David got upgraded to first class; too bad it was for the shortest leg of the trip. He'd also gotten TSA Precheck, whereas I had to go through full security. Fortunately, in Tallahassee, where the advantages of precheck are pretty minimal, the only difference was that I had to take off my shoes.

In Atlanta, our luggage appeared promptly, and we caught the half-hourly shuttle provided by the Motel 6 Airport North, where we had reservations, but by that time, it was after 8:30 p.m., so rather than hiking to the Renaissance Concourse Hotel (which has a restaurant of prentension), we just walked to a nearby cluster of fern bars. Spondivits, some sort of Atlanta institution, apparently, was hopping. Its music was already too loud where we stood, across the street, and they were making amplified announcements to people on their waiting list. Ruby Tuesday, on the other hand, seemed a little too dead. We settled at Malone's, a steak and seafood place that's part of a short local chain—all four links have different names.

Uncharacteristically, we both ordered, and thoroughly enjoyed, the 8-oz sirloin steak with garlic mashed potatoes and Caesar salad. (I ate most of mine before remembering to take the photo.) I would have preferred the rib eye, but it came only in the 24-oz size! For dessert, we split an excellent caramel-pecan cheesecake, made at another of the chain. Some cheerful person in the kitchen had used caramel sauce in a squeeze bottle to write "Enjoy your treat!" around the rim of the plate.

Friday morning, we caught the 7:05 a.m. shuttle back to the airport, where, this time, I got prechecked but David didn't. Neither of us got upgraded. Atlanta has a real precheck line, where you can leave everything in your carry-on and just empty your pockets.

The best breakfast menu near our gate was at Tap, but alas, it was also a smoking lounge. Atlanta Bread Company came through, though, with surprisingly good options despite not doing eggs over easy (the only way you can get them in a restaurant these days where they aren't overcooked). I had a very good bagel sandwich with eggs, cheddar, and sausage, and David's bacon and Swiss omelet was tender and had a little fluff to it, despite being, inevitably, overcooked. The grits were outstanding—very salty and buttery.

The flight to Detroit was smooth and on time, so we were there about noon, in time to pick up some lunch to eat on the flight, which promised "dinner" as its first meal. I got a turkey, bacon, lettuce, and ranch-dressing wrap (pretty dry; good thing I bagged some little pouches of mayo for it) and a little of bag of crunchy Cheetos, of which I am (embarrassingly) fond. David chose a cup of "home-made" (and pretty good) rice pudding and a chocolate chip cookie.

The flight was delayed, but finally, they loaded us up for the 14-hour (!) direct flight to Beijing. Delta must run a lot of its Chinese flights out of there, as much of the signage was bilingual. Because I prefer aisle and David window, and the plane was so big that the shortest row was of three seats, we had a nice Chinese lady between us the whole time; the rest of her family were in the row behind. She spoke no English and I no Chinese, but the sort of communication you need in that situation is mostly pantomime anyway, so we got along fine.

As soon as we got to cruising altitude, landing cards were distributed. I had my passport and boarding pass to hand, so I was able to fill mine out easily, including "visa number," but when I came to "place visa was issued," I was stumped. That line on the visa was filled out only in three Chinese characters! Did they say "Capitol Visa Services"? "Chinese Embassy, Washington, DC?" "Houston" (did CVS really send all the stuff there from Silver Spring)? I had to wait until the Chinese stewardess came around with drinks; she assured me at a glance that it said "Houston." So now I'm intrigued. CVS was categorical that I should send all the materials (fat stack of papers, passports, photos) to Silver Spring, even though I pointed out that we live in Florida. So do they have an agent in each of the half-dozen U.S. cities with Chinese consulates, to whom they periodically dispatch FedEx packages of accumulated applications for presentation to the authorities? Or do they periodically send a courrier on the rounds, flying from city to city with a suitcase full of documents and stopping for a day or two each place to have them processed? The FedEx envelope that brought us back our passports said "Silver Spring," but maybe they just have all the airbills printed up there and send them to/with the agent/courrier with the materials? Or all the processed passports are then shipped/taken back to Silver Spring for return to their owners? Interesting!

They served us "dinner" pretty promptly, actually—about 3 p.m. The choices were chicken, pasta, beef. I took the beef with green curry sauce— pretty good. The Chinese lady across the aisle from me, having read the Chinese version of the menu but having to order in her limited English, kept asking for noodles, which the American stewardess kept insisting they didn't have—I finally had to point out that she clearly meant pasta, which in fact turned out to be long noodles rather than the usual Delta tortellini. Everything came, of course, with a fortune cookie. Mine said something like "wouldn't it be nice if everybody could just get along?"

At midflight, they came around with little sandwiches of turkey and cheddar, mayo on the side, and green, semifrozen bananas (David slept through it), then before arrival we had a choice of pasta with shrimp or "bbq" pork. I chose the latter, which turned out to be a passable pork stew with rice. Meanwile, I read until I finished my book (which was from the public library and would disappear from my Kindle in a few days), then went back to the Balzac novel I had interrupted to read the other. When I got bored with that, I watched three movies: Maleficent, which CJ and her family had recommended, then Thor: The Dark World and The Bourne Identity, neither of which I was likely to come across anywhere else.

As 14-hour flights go, it wasn't bad. The attendants passed through the cabin frequently handing out half-liter bottles of water, so I was able both to stay hydrated and to accumulate a good supply of empties toward implementing my water-management plan.

Once on the ground in Beijing, we went through the usual routine: (1) stand in line for passport control, (2) reclaim bags and wheel them through the nothing-to-declare lane at customs, then (3) recheck our bags and acquire boarding passes for our connecting flight. Only the last proved complicated. A guy was standing in the middle of the doorway to the bag-recheck area reading each passenger's baggage tag and redirecting some of them. He redirected us "back that way, second floor, China Eastern Airlines." We followed those directions and checked in with China Eastern, which apparently flys that route for Delta and the Skyteam Alliance, and headed for security. We had debated buying some Chinese currency in Atlanta but decided to wait, as it's always cheaper in the destination country. We walked by an exchange on the way to China Eastern but decided to get security out of the way first. Security turned out to be just like nonprecheck American security except that you had to get out all your electronics but could keep your shoes on. Their metal detectors were really touchy, though, so virtually every person was tripping the sensor—the rivets on jeans, a couple of coins in the pocket, metal glasses frames, belt buckles, the metal zipper up the back of one girl's dress, etc.—so the two wanding stations were so constantly busy that they were the limiting step holding things up. Everyone involved seemed a little shocked when I walked through and the alarm didn't sound! (I'd started to wonder whether the fillings in my teeth would trip it, but they didn't.) We looked out the airport windows at the smog, which was truly impressive. Glad we didn't have to go out in that!

Next order of business was changing money, but unfortunately we were, as we discovered, in the domestic terminal, and no money-changing service was available. The lone ATM accepted our debit card and its PIN, then cogitated mightily before spitting the card back out and flashing "Transaction is no peromit." Twice. We found a bank and offered them an American Express traveller's check, but they wouldn't have anything to do with it. Drat. So there we were, without a cent of Chinese money, with nothing to drink (we'd had to empty our bottles at security), and with several hours to wait. We were just considering buying some water with a credit card when we came to a public water cooler—we'd been warned about public drinking fountains, but this was an old-fashioned water cooler with a big glass carboy on top, clearly labeled "purified water." I chanced it (filling one of my several empties), and it was apparently fine. About that time we fell into conversation with a young couple who had been on our previous flight (a Chinese woman and an American man on their way to her home city for their engagement party), and something they said made us realize our watches were wrong. They, too, had heard the steward on the flight state the local time as we were landing, but unlike us, they were thought it sounded wrong and had a smart phone, so they'd checked. Sure enough, we were two hours slow. Our flight would be boarding in half an hour, not two and a half hours! Time to head for the gate; boy, would that have been inconvenient!

On the ground in Qingdao, we once again set off in search of a currency exchange—we had been assured that the city was a major tourist destination—but once again there wasn't one. Not even an ATM this time. Drat again. We were equipped with a handy slip of paper saying, in Chinese characters, "Please take me to the Huiquan Dynasty Hotel," but how were we going to get a taxi there without any Chinese money?!

I addressed myself to the nice young woman at the desk labeled, in English and Chinese, "Information Center." She couldn't pronounce English comprehensibly, but she could type phrases into her smart phone and show us the result (I don't actually know whether she was typing the English or typing in Chinese and getting the phone to translate). I asked where we could change money. Incomprehension. I asked if a taxi would take take a credit card. Incomprehension until I put a credit card on the counter and pointed back and forth from it to the word "Taxi" prominently posted on her booth (turns out that was one of the information center's services, arranging taxis). She asked where we were going. Shown our handy "take us to" slip, she supplied the exchange rate for dollars and told us how much the ride would cost. Only when David showed her his wallet full of nothing but dollars did it finally click what the problem was. I went off to the ladies' room, while David continued to negotiate. In the end, he gave her $25, which she wrote out a careful receipt for, then personally conducted us out to the parking lot (she carried her phone—a desk model with separate receiver— under her arm, as she was still manning the information desk) gave the driver instructions and some sort of chit, and off we went, delivered to the hotel's door about 40 minutes later. The car didn't seem to have a meter; maybe she just paid her boyfriend to drive us to the hotel . . .

At that point, I relaxed. I have great faith in the ability and willingness of hotels to take care of people in travel difficulties and to surmount language barriers. Unfortunately, this one's a little short of English speakers, and when we tried to check in, they couldn't make our credit card work. Drat again. In the end, after a long consultation among the three clerks and multiple attempts to scan and otherwise read the card, they told us it was okay and issued us room keys. We asked when the lobby's currency exchange would be open and were told 24 hours, but when David proposed to change money, they put him off until the next day.

By this time, it was 10 p.m. local time, and we were reeling and starving. We made the rounds of the hotel's eateries, only to find that the last one closed at 10 p.m. We could drink any of several places, but the only food available was room service. On the way, though, we found a pair of ATMs, the first of which refused our card but the second of which cheerfully issued us our first 500 yuan, about $100.

We adjourned to my room, where we were relieved to discover that the one competent English speaker in the place is the one manning the room-service phone. We split an order of "chicken in a basket," which was served not in a basket but on an ordinary plate—sort of a creditable chicken schnitzl—with French fries and a slice of quite good Sachertorte (though I wouldn't have guessed that that's what it was if it hadn't had "Sacher" written in white frosting across the top).

All in all, a very long day.

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