Up at 6, at breakfast at 7, checked out by 7:40, in the cab at 7:45.  Just like clockwork.  We are at the airport in no time and standing in line to check in.  Unfortunately our bags are only checked to SFO because it is too early to check into our flight to IAD.  Oh well, not biggie, we have to collect them for customs anyway, we’ll just have to figure out a way to recheck them in after customs or haul them with us to the day room we have booked in San Francisco.  We’ll figure it out.

Immigration lines aren’t that bad this morning, and Ed makes it right through, no problem.  I get stuck behind some woman who can’t make it through the 2^nd stage of the automated process and apparently my access gets timed out.  It starts beeping error, error.  Oh crap. Here we go.  I get sent over to the “error” guy, who checks my boarding pass and passport and sends me over to another booth, where I have to wait patiently for an inspector, and then while she looks through everything.  Finally, I’m released.  Eek. This place drives us crazy!  But, we’re done with it now, so, deep breath, move on.

We wander up to one of the lounges, where the desk lady very nicely asks us if we know our gate is the last gate at the other end of the terminal. Yes.  Thank you, we do.  But it was sweet she pointed that out to us.  We don’t have much time here, just enough for a coffee and bathroom, before we have to make our way down the long, long, long terminal corridor to the last gate area in the place. Man this airport is humongous!!!

The check in agent had told us there would be security at the gate, and to arrive early.  We did, and are glad we did.  The line is already starting to form and they’ve not even started security yet.  I’m still irritated that we have to go through security and we can’t have any water – I mean it’s a 16 hour flight and I’m not going to be bothering the flight attendants for cups of water, the way I drink it!  I can go through 3 liters in that amount of time!  But fortunately there are water fountains at every gate – behind security.  Thank you whoever thought that one through! 

We hang out forever in the economy line to get though security, which is barely moving, until we figure out we can get in the other line for priority access, which is moving faster.  To our credit, they didn’t have any signs up at all when we arrive, and only put them up about 5 minutes before we figured out we could get in the other line.  Not much communications out here, but, whatever, we made it through unscathed and I leave Ed in our boarding group line while I run to the other end of the gate area to fill up our water bottles. 

That task accomplished, boarding begins and we are on the plane startlingly quickly.  We are in the 2^nd to last row in the plane – because that is one of only 2 rows with only 2 seats in them.  We don’t have to worry about anybody else bothering us or having to get out to go to the bathroom all the time.  We figure we’ll be good, and the first back there so we’ll have plenty of room to store our back packs up top – but to our horror, the seats behind us are already occupied -with a single mom and an INFANT!  NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!  Oh crap.  And every other cuss word you would ever want to hear – or not hear – come out of our mouths. 16 hours with an infant behind us? Ugh, the thing nightmares are made of.

The only thing I can say is that we don’t really want to sleep on this flight since we want to sleep at the hotel in San Francisco and then again on the overnight to IAD.  That’s a bonus, but it will just be terribly irritating to have it screaming the whole way across the globe right behind us.  Sigh.

Otherwise, all is well in our little seats back here.  We have plenty of room for our duffle underneath the other seat so we have leg room.  It is comfy back here, and there is no bathroom back here for people to congregate around the seat.  The drawback to this particular plane though is that there are only 4 bathrooms for all of economy and they are in the middle of the plane.  It is a stupid design and the lines can grow pretty long for the bathrooms – not to mention we get in the way of the attendants in their galley when we are standing in line.  We need to talk to the designers about this aircraft!

As it turns out, the flight goes fairly well.  The baby does cry and scream on occasion – as he is doing right now actually.  But overall, he’s not been that bad.  We are watching movies – Amsterdam was GREAT – and reading and blogging and watching shows we downloaded on the Kindle.  The lunch meal is good – chicken with noodles and potato salad (can someone say starch?).  The snack is, well, edible.  I’ll give it that. A chicken sandwich with 2 teeny tiny tough pieces of chicken, lettuce and tomato on a roll way bigger than necessary – and nary a condiment.  A little mayo could have gone a long way on that sandwich.  It did come with a very good chocolate chip muffin though.  And a Kit Kat bar.  Worked fine.

Breakfast is a really dense frittata type thing that I just can’t digest. Ed doesn’t mind it, but I’m happy with coffee.  I don’t really need anything else at this point.  And after that?  We land in no time and quite frankly, the whole flight wasn’t all that bad.  We’re a little stiff and sore from all the sitting, but no worse for wear.

Of course, we weren’t off the plane quite yet.  What a joke that was!  There was a gate change – for whatever reason, because we are pretty much on time – and we need to be towed into the gate. So we have to wait for the tug.  And we wait. And we wait.  It took almost 30 minutes to get the stupid tug, hook it up and then move us the 75 feet or so to the gate.  What a pain.  We’re only going to the hotel, but a bunch of people have close connecting flights which they are all worried about making.

And that was just the beginning of the CF.  The Immigration line was pretty long for folks without Global Entry.  We breezed through with only a modicum of a line.  But then we had to wait for the bags. And wait. And wait.  Another 20+ minutes goes by before we can grab our bags to take through customs, then go find the United service desk to recheck them to our final destination, because it was too early to check in when we left Singapore this morning.  That last part went quite smoothly, and we finally have our bags through to Charlotte and have us out the door looking for the transportation to the hotel.

As it turns out, our hotel has a shuttle but it doesn’t start until 5pm.  Pooh.  Oh well, Uber it is, which is super fast – the guy showed up in 3 minutes and we were at the hotel in another 20.  Yes!  We are looking forward to that bed like nobodies business!

Checked in – and pooped out!  We hit the sack for as long as we can (me 5 hours, Ed a little less – and he went to the gym – yes he did! – while I slept a little longer).  Then it was shower, check out and grab the now operating shuttle back to the airport.