Getting Here

Hello everyone!! Welcome to my blog, where I'll try to record all of the interesting, or not so interesting, things that happen during my travels to Manila, Philippines. Let's start with how I and my co-workers, Karen and Gretchen, got here in the first place.

We started out in the MSP airport, and got to hang out in the Delta Sky Lounge. From left to right, here's Gretchen, Karen, and me!

We were able to check email and have a couple snacks and beverages before we loaded up onto the plane for our loooooooong flight to Tokyo. That flight took about 12 hours, I think. It actually passed pretty quickly, with some dozing, eating dinner, watching a couple of movies, more dozing, playing some video games on the tv at my seat, a little more sleeping, and some more eating. We had dinner when we first got on the plane, and then breakfast shortly before we landed in Tokyo.

Our plane was an hour late leaving Minneapolis, so we didn't have much of a layover in Tokyo. No time to check out Delta's loung there, though we've heard it's really nice! We found our gate, lined up, and boarded the next flight. Here you can see what my seat looked like:

And here are Karen and Gretchen. We each had a little light on our seat-backs, and we decided it looked like a microphone to take someone's order at a drive-thru. Would you like fries with that?

Even though we had just eaten some breakfast, once we were on our way from Tokyo to Manila, they fed us another dinner! It was evening in Tokyo when we took off, so that fit their schedule, but our bodies were very confused. And we weren't hungry at all. They had an interesting "Champagne Dinner", so I decided to try that. It came in a Japanese bento box, and was very cute.

I wasn't very hungry, but I tried a few things. And of course I ate the dessert! It's in the upper right-hand corner - a cheesecake, but very light, with some fresh fruit.

After some food, I watched another movie, played some more video games, and tried to sleep a little. The flights were all pretty smooth, and we had no problems. When we landed in Manila, we were all feeling very strung out and exhausted. We had to get through the Immigration line, then collect our checked bags, then go through Customs. There were some vans lined up to take us all to the hotel (there were 3 other people from Thomson Reuters who travelled with us from Minneapolis), and we finally made it to the Ascott Makati at around midnight. We all got checked in, and collapsed into our beds.

Next up - our weekend adventures!