Just Call me Santa, Cause I Flew Over the North Pole.

Did you know that's how you fly to China?

You fly over the North Pole. That's not how I pictured it at all....I pictured more of an East - West sort of thing...but there you have it. How cool is that? Proof:

See? There's our plane, flying over the world. I'm on top of the woooooorrrrrld!!!

Anyway, we made it over the North Pole, and landed in Beijing. And it was an exhausting, long 2 days. I mean, I knew it would be a long flight. but come on people.

To start with, we had a 4-hour drive to Toronto. After landing in a hotel around midnight Wednesday, we bounded back out of bed at 6 am, bleary-eyed but excited. We then rushed to Toronto airport to catch our flight back to Detroit. Now this may sound crazy to you, since I was already in Detroit. It's kind of like the time my family drove to the Mackinac Bridge at 4 am, waited in line 2 hours to be bussed across the bridge, only to walk back across it. But I digress. 

We flew out of Toronto, laying over in Detroit, because it saved us $500/ticket! For those, unlike me, who can do math, that's about $4,000 savings!! (I said I couldn't do math) So totally worth it. And it would have been, only once at the airport, we found that the plane was going to be delayed by 2 hours. With a 2 hour layover in Detroit, this left us, what...0 hours left to catch our Beijing flight. 

Pandemonium. 

I beg, I plead, I call Delta. I talk to the gate agent. I call Delta again. No other flights. No other flights unless we want to fly to Detroit at 9:00 that night, fly to New York, stay the night in New York, and then fly to Shanghai. (Wrong city, but Americans don't care, I guess) So we decide to tough it out and take our chances.

So how does this play out? 2 hours later, we board the plane, land in Detroit, push past several old people on the plane, run through the tunnel at DTW back to Terminal A (because of course, we've landed in the furthest terminal possible), and arrive last to the gate, to an irritated gate agent who grudgingly lets us on the plane. It's like that scene at the beginning of Home Alone. Only we don't leave any kids behind.

We board the plane, high-fiving each other for making it, and start unpacking our junk to settle in for the 14 hour flight. Ahhhhh....bliss.

Only an hour later, we're still sitting at the gate. After several delay announcement, it becomes clear that there is a problem with the plane, and we'll all have to get off, change gates, and board another plane due in from Amsterdam. 

Really??? We could have avoided the morning sprint through the airport.

So we deplane, change gates, and 2 further hours after that, reboard another one. At this point, we've been traveling for nearly 24 hours and haven't left town! 

Long story long, we're here. We arrived in Beijing. We've eaten squid on a stick, and seen a chopstick store. It's real now.

We're off to the Great Wall today...more to come.