Our layover was uneventful. The Seoul Incheon airport was big and filled with shops to buy high end products and perfumes. There were tons of places to eat like Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins and then more traditional ethnic foods. You could really have found anything your heart desired.
On the way to the lounge to rest we saw people opening up hundreds of packages of products and couldn’t figure out what they were doing. We wondered if they were buying duty free products to resell...
There was a bunch of robots roaming around the airport which was pretty cool. They would take your picture or you could take one with them. It was entertaining.
There was also what looked like a family that were maybe stuck in transit as they appeared to be living in a corner of the airport with over 40 suitcases. Erik had flown ahead of us through Seoul and then onto Vietnam and he said he had seen them when he flew through weeks earlier. Very sad to see people stuck like this.
We found the layover lounge which had great facilities and free showers. Another first for me. It felt great and was super clean. I would definitely plan for that again in the future. I have Leo to thank for that tip about having a shower during a layover - despite all our travel over the years I had never considered looking for showers in airports in the past. Will be doing that again for sure.
The second flight was tough. Our departure was 6:40pm Seoul time which was around 2am our time I guess. While Asiana Airlines was clean and had great service, the seats didn’t recline much and the armrests didn’t move, the legroom was also very tight. Always tortured by these long legs!! Iwas finally in need of sleep but felt absolutely jammed in my seat by the armrests, very upright seat and seat back in front of me. Very uncomfortable! I felt happy to have my travel pillow with me at least. This flight was almost 7 hours long. Like flying to Europe, except we’d already flown for 11hours! We tried to sleep as much as we all could.
We arrived into Almaty at 9:50pm local time. Gaining us 3 hours back. This time travel stuff is so cool! Passport control went fine and we picked up our bags and exited the customs area and were greeted by the hotel drivers. Thank you for arranging that fine detail mom...or was it Bruce?!? We decided that given we were getting in pretty late and after such a long journey that we would avoid an Airbnb in case it was confusing. I’m glad we did as it was nice to be picked up and to just get to a hotel. It made life simpler for all of us. Getting into new countries and figuring out the currency, the cost of taxis and getting to your hotel is a stressful enough endeavour as it is, so making some things simpler is an easy win. We are at the Holiday Inn and it’s clean and comfortable and serves food and is supposed to be pretty central.
Our drivers took as straight to the hotel and it was a lovely temperature outside and a smooth drive. The city was really lit up with cool LED lights on lots of the buildings. There were a number of discotheques and restaurants that kind of looked like casinos. The air felt almost tropical which doesn’t bode well for the temperature tomorrow. At least the evenings seem to get cooler.
After a late pizza snack and for some of us a few beers in the bar it was time to try to go to sleep. After over 26hours of steady travelling I was confident we were all going to get a pretty good sleep despite our catnapping on the last flight.
We are so excited to check out the City of Almaty tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment