Travel to/from Korea

We left for the Denver airport early on Monday morning. After a two hour flight to San Francisco, we ate some clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. When we finished "lunch" we headed to a different terminal for the flight to Seoul. We were surprised to have to go through security a second time. We were a little nervous about the timing, but ended up getting to our gate about five minutes before they started boarding, around noon. We decided to spend a little more on tickets because of recommendations to take a foreign carrier rather than a domestic one. We definitely were happy with that decision.

We flew Asiana Air, and the long-haul flight was pleasant, even for a 13 hour flight. Previously, I felt that the best rating air travel can get these days is 'uneventful', but I guess there are still carriers that are professional, polite, efficient, clean, and care about the customer. We still flew economy, so it wasn't 100% comfortable, but it was good enough. The attendants were alert, helpful, courteous, and attentive. The seats reclined farther than domestic carriers and bottom part of the seat moved forward a little as well. It still was hard to sleep, but they had on-demand movies.

The food was actually pretty good as well. They served two meals, plus snacks. For the most part, we ordered the Korean option over the American one due to some recommendations people gave us. From what we could tell, it was the better option, except for when we passed on broccoli shrimp porridge for breakfast and had the omelet instead.

Incheon airport (Seoul) is rated one of the top airports in the world. Everything from customs, baggage claim, to check-in and a playground next to our gate, were fantastic. Because we had a child with us, we were able to use the "Happy Mommy" express line for check-in. The agent saw that we had a lap child and moved us to the bulkhead seats. This was really nice because there were only two seats across, rather than the typical three, and some extra leg room, so it made the return trip much more comfortable.

Tyson flew well. The only time he cried was when I got up to go to the bathroom and we realized that he was really attached to me (more on that in another post). When he did cry/scream, two attendants were there in about 5.3 seconds with juice and candy (probably to try to keep him quiet because everyone was sleeping, or trying to). But they were really nice and helpful.

Getting through immigration in San Francisco took a little while because there were about 10 people on our flight that were immigrating and only 1 guy doing the paperwork.

Once we got through, we got our bags and found this:

We actually were in pretty good spirits and rolled with it. We'll see how it gets resolved, but our main concern was checking it back in, so we got some tape from the desk and mummified it. It was easy to identify in Denver though.

It was a long trip, the first trans-Pacific flight for both of us, but obviously was worth it with the cargo we brought home. I do have to say that I am the first Waye to visit Asia. Now I just have to beat everyone to Africa, Australia, and Antarctica.