My Chinese friend said we could fly business class, but all business class seats were sold well in advance, Elaine was told by the travel agent. In any case, economy was only about $1600 each, while business class was over $5K each. I wouldn't feel right spending that! So it was economy class for us.
The day before we left, I got an email from United saying that I could go on a website and choose my seats and print out a boarding pass. On the website, I found out that, for $125 more each, we could have seats with 5 inches more space between us and the seat in front. For a 14 hour trip, I thought that worth it and paid the extra money —only for the Chicago-Beijing flight.
In Chicago, at the counter I show our passport-visas and our boarding passes and the guy takes the boarding passes and gives us new ones. I asked how I could tell from the boarding passes that we had seats with the extra space. He said, well, you have business class seats, so you should have enough room!
And indeed, we had business class seats. When giving the boarding passes to attendant at the gate, we asked the lady whether these were really business class seats --were we in the right line? She said yes, there were empty seats and she saw us and bumped us up. Maybe I am looking too old?
In any case, our seats lie almost flat, and Elaine is now sleeping. I slept for an hour, and I am now typing up this little adventure. We had a nice meal --they got our vegetarian meals from the economy class (we had ordered them) and spruced them up to business class quality. Too bad we don't drink much wine!
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Such an upgrade happened to me once before. In the 1980s, Finish Airways (or somebody) was supposed to send my tickets to Ithaca for a trip to a workshop in Finland. They didn't, and I telephoned and faxed and so on and they wrote me a note saying they were sorry and my tickets would be at JFK when I got there. They were there, and because of the mistake, they had upgraded me to first class.
When I left Finland on the return trip, it was 40 degrees below zero —Fahrenheit-Centigrade, it doesn't matter which because they are the same at -40. So cold that the plane couldn't get startedm and they had to bring in another plane. But this new plane didn't have enough first-class seats. The lady was so apologetic when I got my boarding pass! "We'll have to give you a business class seat instead. But to compensate, we'll make sure the seat next to you is empty, and here is a $100 bill."
That was alright by me!
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I just changed the battery in my Macintosh. The other one drained faster than usual because I attached Elaine's ipod to it to charge the ipod. Through the USB port. And now I am going to work on my lecture.
This trip is NOT free. It's taking hours and hours to prepare my lecture.
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We got to the hotel about 5PM Thursday. Walked around a bit, then ate at a chinese restaurant. After that, we went to Tianeman Square. Supposed to be a 15 minute walk. After 5 minutes, this guy on a bicycle with two seats behind asked us whether we wanted a ride. So we did it. He went through back alleyways --we did not know what was happening-- but he ended up at the Square. No big deal --well, it IS big. On part of it is the oldest part of the gate to the old City of Peking. It was dark. He bicycled us back to our hotel.
Tomorrow, we take an all-day tour of the Great Wall.
David
Thursday, May 31, 2007
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