We easily boarded our flight and, for the first time in a while, I could put my backpack right above my seat. For a while, in fact, I thought the bin would only be visiting with my backpack, but close to when we departed a woman crammed her larger suitcase in. She couldn’t quite get it to fit so her husband pulled my bag out and fit hers first. I was a bit concerned that they were going to move my pack, but they did manage to shove it in. (I’m glad my camera was in a protective case, though!)

Being in Polaris seats one first has to figure out how to deal with two blankets and two pillows. Oh the suffering! (JOKING, I promise.) We were in row 9, though, which are bulkhead seats (and I’m now realizing I use that word but don’t even really KNOW what a bulkhead is. Hah!). And since they are lay flat seats you still can store your personal item in front of you, and there is MORE room both for our feet and for things to store on a bit of a shelf and pillows and blankets went there for a time. Some people say row 9 is bad because it’s close to the bathrooms and kitchen. I actually like it and would happily choose the row again. So hooray for us.

I was surprised, though, to see signs on the bathroom on my side:

I figured INOP meant “inoperable”. The door was locked, and I thought, “So much for THAT bathroom.” Welllllll … what it really meant was, “You can’t use it, but all the flight attendants will.” Go figure. Still, no worries using the bathroom on the other side, and Dan implied they deserve their own bathroom. (I just always figured they HAD their own somewhere on the plane.)

Dinner was served. It was “meh”. We’ve decided that, from now on, we might just eat a good meal at the lounge before we leave and skip the flight’s meal. It’s always too much food anyway.

Then it was time to rest. Seat turned to bed, and I managed to sleep. (This photo is from a bit before I got back up, as you can probably tell since the plane image at the bottom shows us close to our destination.)

The flight went quickly. Breakfast came about 1 1/2 hours before we landed. I really wish they’d serve the meal according to where we were going, rather than where we came from. Ah well. Breakfast at 2:00 PM … whatever. And too much food. Again.

After deplaning, in the Z area of terminal 1, we headed to B. But how to get there? We went to the help desk and he verified what we thought we saw … we had to leave the secure area and walk walk walk … then took a tram. There was B. But then we had to go back through security. Slow security, even while barely any people were going through. We had to take out all electronic devices, liquids, and our cameras. Heh. My camera was at the bottom of my very full pack! But finally through things went, and I had the full body scan. I guess something showed up so a woman gave me a pretty darn thorough pat down. You’d think she might have said, “You are so fit for a woman of your age!” But no. Nothing. Gee …. Of course I was then able to move on.

But then?! I couldn’t figure out how I managed to fit everything in my backpack when at home. It was pretty hysterical. Dan helped and, yes, HE managed to get it all in. Oh, and I left my phone in the tray. Someone saw it … whew!

Now we are, finally, in the lounge, where we sit around for another hour or so. We thought we’d have tons of time here at the airport, but with the getting so confused about how to get to B and the slow security I’m rather glad we had all that time.

Still, our flight doesn’t leave until 10:05 and it’s only 5:30. Lots of time to waste.