Time Fly's When You Are Having Fun

Three years ago today at this time we were on board a plane from Miami to Paris where we would board another plane to Shanghai and then another to Beijing and then after a reprieve, another one to Guangzhou. We were Rosie bound. Most people don't fly to Europe and then on to China and we hadn't planned on it but Valentines day in Paris seemed like a fabulous idea.....NOT. We were booked to fly from Miami to San Fran' and then straight to Shanghai, stay overnight and then to Beijing the next day BUT when we arrived at MIA at some middle of the night time and boarded our plane it didn't take off. We sat for over an hour until the plane was deemed un-flyable. They may have said it was, out of service but it means the same thing to me. By this time we had missed the only other flight to San Fran'.

Hubby works for AA and he was panicky so he made it my job to go and sweet talk the booking agent. I calmly (hysterically calmly) explained our situation, mentioned we were meeting family from the UK in Beijing who were joining us on our ADOPTION trip and tried to ever so patiently wait as she attacked her keyboard. Finally we were booked to head to London that night and then to Shanghai, etc etc. I ran to a pay phone to call my dad and tell him to head to LHR in the morning to see us off. As I returned to the booking agent she said that didn't give us enough time to make our connection in Shanghai so she was routing us via Paris. Back to the pay phone I went.

We picked up our bags, our luggage and ourselves and headed back home. Lily was so tired as she had had to get up at 3am, so she slept whilst I washed the clothes we were wearing and fiddle faddled about. At last it was time to try again so we headed back to MIA and this time we actually boarded and took off. We arrived in Paris on Valentines day and spent the day at the airport waiting for our connection to China.

As we approached landing the flight crew came on and involved everyone in a quick workout, it was hilarious. Lily and I joined in and Jacob just looked at us, thoroughly bewildered. We grabbed our hand luggage, got ridiculously excited and headed for immigration. When we arrived the immigration lounge was full of people and we didn't have long to get through to our next flight. Finally it was our turn. I thought immigration at MIA is tough but Shanghai has that beat. We were thee for ages and questioned, interrogation style for ages until I mentioned the name of our tour group and bang, she stamped our passports and we ran to claim our luggage. We were almost to late. As we approached the area a couple was walking away with all our stuff and they were NOT airline personnel. Jacob grabbed it from them and we ran. From her perch, high on the luggage rack, LIly scoped out the gates and we arrived at gate 22 to find it empty. We ran though anyway and found hey were closing the flight. Thankfully they let us board.

We arrived in Beijing 5 minutes before my cousin. Our guide herded all of us and our luggage to a coach and we headed to the Novatel Peace Hotel. Lily crashed in the coach and didn't wake up for a couple of hours. Jacob carried her up to our room and placed her in bed. We had a suite and Andie had an adjoining room so we hung around catching up and waiting for Lily to awaken.

She finally did and we went out to find some dinner but it was so brutally cold that we ended up going back to hotel and ordered room service. We we so tired that we went to bed at 7pm and slept until 6am. And so began the trip to Rosie.