12/27–The journey begins

After a lovely morning and lunch with my parents and niece Stephanie, we Uber to IAD for the beginning of our long journey to Singapore.  We are early enough that we can go to the United Lounge and use our last free visit coupons for the year.  While the food is definitely less interesting (there was at least some decent salami and good spicy mustard), at least we had a place to hang out and recharge our electronics before the flights.

The first flight to London pushed back on time, and went really quickly. We obviously had a huge tail wind, because we arrived over an hour early.  The flight itself was fine, Virgin Atlantic, decent food, good movies.  We both watched the Zoo Keeper’s Wife (book was better, but movie was ok), then I watched Baby Driver and Ed watched a Diana documentary and something else.  We decided not to sleep on this flight so we could sleep on the long one from London to Singapore.

In London we had a little snafu while waiting at the transfer desk – we stood there for over 40 minutes while the desk clerk tried to help these 2 guys who were re-routed.  She finally told us just to go to the gate, which we did (after a 15 minute walk) and got checked in and settled.

Both these flights were slam packed – but they loaded them quickly and we pushed back early.  First time we have ever seen this – but the plane was decorated for Christmas.  Very sweet!  We watched Wind River (excellent), had dinner, then tried to sleep.  I did, Ed not so much.  But overall, the flight went pretty well, and again, had some sort of awesome tailwind, because we arrived in Singapore an hour early. 

We used that extra hour waiting in line at immigration.  So frustrating!  We have no clue what the immigration officer was doing, but she was agonizingly slow.  And a few people even got turned back.  Uh oh!  When we finally made it to the front of the line, she was so nice and personable to us – we had no idea what the hold up was with everyone else.  Crazy.  But, we got through without any incident, picked up our bags – which were off the baggage belt by the time we got there – and walked out to grab a cab to the Hotel Boss.