Grand Adventure 2017 Day 1 & 2: Crossing into the Starting Line
And so for the final time in 2017, we begin one last adventure. You might call it our grandest adventure of the year, and I wouldn't blame you. This morning we woke up before the sun ever came out, I went for a run at 4:30 AM, while Jenn finished up her last minute packing and got ready. We spent most of this past weekend planning, packing, and preparing for today, and so we were ready. Our Uber picked us up at 5:45 AM and drove us for almost an hour and a half to LAX.
At any time of the day I prefer a quiet Uber ride, but that just didn't happen this morning. We spent the majority of the ride talking about what its like to drive for Uber/Lyft, her whole backstory, and the upcoming game seven of the World Series with the Dodgers and Astros. Luckily it did help to pass the time in what was a long drive.
When we got to LAX at 7:30 AM it was empty in the Tom Bradley International Terminal. A huge difference from when we were flying to Peru in August. Because we booked Premium Economy seats for this leg of the journey we walked right up to the counter to drop off our bags and were off. Security was easy and we were off to get some food. We had Mexican (probably the last time in the next 3 1/2 weeks) and both had breakfast quesadillas. I also stopped by Starbucks and got a blonde coffee.
We spent the remaining time walking laps around the international terminal. When you know you're going to be sitting for 12 hours, it helps to get as many steps in as possible. We had priority boarding and were on the plane at 9:45 AM for a 10 AM departure to our first stop Tokyo. This is our first time taking Premium Economy. After being spoiled with business class seats to Amsterdam last year its been hard to sit in coach, the experience just isn't comparable. We were relieved to find Premium Economy to be at least a nice step up from economy. The extra leg room, the fact that you can stretch out and lean back was really nice. We had the back row of Premium Economy so we never had to feel bad for leaning back.
The next twelve hours went by pretty quickly. We started off with some Champagne and assorted nuts and were served three decent meals throughout. Jenn spent the majority of the flight sleeping, watching Jurassic Park & Kong Skull Island, and playing games on her new iPad Pro. I spent the flight watching The Circle and Suicide Squad as well as playing a couple of hours of Super Mario Odyssey on the Nintendo Switch. I think we've done so many of these long flights that they just don't phase us much anymore.
We arrived in Tokyo a little after 1 PM on November 2nd an entire 27 hours after we departed. We flew through customs, our bags were waiting for us when we got through because of our priority tickets, and we were off. For each leg of the Grand Adventure 2017, we booked the hotel to pick us up at the airport. Today when we walked out our driver was there ready to take us to our hotel, The InterContinental The Strings Tokyo. The ride in was beautiful. We were both struck by how green Tokyo is, it sort of reminded us both of driving in from the airport in Seattle.
Although the hotel warned us we might hit a lot of traffic, the expected 90-minute drive actually took less than an hour. When we arrived they took our bags and we went up an elevator to the 26th floor. The concept of The InterContinental The Strings Tokyo is sort of neat. The hotel starts on the 26th floor, below it is 25 floors of office space. The hotel just takes floors 26 and up. When you get out of the elevator and into the lobby its sort of disorienting because you know your 26 floors up but it feels like your on the ground level of any hotel lobby.
I've heard that Tokyo rooms can be tiny, and although our room isn't huge, its plenty big enough. We have a gorgeous view of the skyline of Tokyo and a beautiful king bed and bathroom. Once we put our stuff down we recorded our infamous room tour and started planning out what we wanted to do. Originally we were just going to stay in for the day. The weather was calling for a lot of rain today and tomorrow but that's all but out of the forecast. We decided to take the subway to Shibuya crossing a 15-minute subway ride from our hotel.
One of the big perks of our hotel is that its connected to the train/subway station. We had a little trouble locating the station and buying tickets. There's quite a bit of English text on signs throughout the area but it wasn't overly clear on directions. We had to rely on instincts and trusting our vague knowledge of maps to get us there. Plus I've got Jenn the best navigator I know. Once we figured it out we suffered through buying tickets and were off. We've been on busy subways before, but the one to Shibuya was packed but oddly quiet. It was one of the quietest subway rides I've ever been on.
We arrived at Shibuya a half hour after leaving our hotel. Having just been in New York and staying near Times Square it's easy to make the comparison. There's just a ton of people, shopping, and food all crammed into one big section. We walked the infamous crossing a couple of times and even stumbled on the Taco Bell that Jenn worked on a couple of years ago.
After taking in the nearby area we jumped back on the subway, dead to the world, and made it back to our hotel. We decided to eat at the hotel's restaurant for convenience. Jenn had a glass of Merlot and I had a Japanese beer. I'll be honest usually I take a picture of the menu or write down what we order, I was way too tired to even think of doing that, so my descriptions will be slightly vague. Jenn started off though with the soup of the day which was a potato soup. For our entrees, Jenn went with a steak and I had pork chops. Both were good, not great. But they hit the spot for two people that were on the verge of falling asleep at the restaurant.
We made our way back to our room at 7 PM local time. We both took showers to get the grime of the 12-hour flight off of us and passed out a little before 8 PM. Today is only the beginning of 27 days of adventure and I'll call it now, it's going to be a grand time.
