Day 0ne
Thousands of miles and 24 hours later we reached our destination of Kawagoe Japan.
The day began at 3:30am in Austin,TX with a shuttle van ride to the airport. Our plane was on time and our seats were fines.
However after pushing back from the terminal and taxing for awhile our plane parked off to the side of the taxi way where we had a minor delay while they shifted the contents of the baggage for better balance. A first time for me hearing that.
Americana- a shot of the American flag in front of The heart of Texas ( Austin, Tx).
Our flight flew across parts of the southern US with our first stop at San Francisco. Below our some of the images captured from the plane.
The Grand Canyon along the Arizona - Nevada boarder.
Las Vegas Nevada
California's Sierra-Nevada mountain range
Dublin, California - our old home.
A 3 hour flight from Austin to Dublin felt much better than our previous 4 day drive. :)
And begins the first part of our real adventure. Being delayed by the previous plane balancing luggage issues, our one hour layover became much much less.
When the wheels touched down in San Francisco, we only had 25 minutes to reach our international flight. However, that is not the end of the story. Our current plane did not have an available gate to Debora's, so we sat 100 yards in front of it. Precious minutes passed as we waited.
Finally our plane reached the gates. We then continues to wait for the doors to open. Then with only 5 minutes before our next flight, we got off our flight.
Bags in hand, we sprinted through the domestic terminal. Dodging people, pausing only to catch our breaths. As we sprinted towards the international terminal, we relied on my previous knowledge of the airport and with lucky guesses we reached the internaltion terminal without incident.
We had to pause to find our gate number and then we were off sprinting down the terminal. A few close collisions and down a escalator we with within sight of our gate. Devoid of passengers but luckily two airline people we clipboard in hand waiting.
They called out a name, but it was not ours. Fortunately for us, they were waiting for some business class passengers and were holding the door open.
We reached our seats, out of breath and tired but we made it. The rest of the flight was uneventful.
A hour and half bus ride awaited us once we reached Haneda airport.
After traveling down the highway for a few miles, we went into the longest tunnel I have ever experienced. For 45minutes we traveled underground beneath Tokyo towards our destination. Once we emerged we were greet to a fantastic sunset with Mt Fuji off in the distance.
So the day ended and so did our 24 hour traveling. We reached family and talked into the night.
Thank you and I hope to share more of our trip tomorrow. (I apologize for any spelling mistakes, on only a few hours of rest, will fix soon)
