We woke at 7 AM for a 10 AM cab ride to the airport. Today we will fly to Johannesburg to spend one night at the Sandton Hilton. It is a very nice hotel. We checked into our room on the sixth floor, which was also the location of the executive lounge, and never left the floor! We had a light dinner in the lounge, plus breakfast the following morning.
Thursday morning before breakfast we did go downstairs to confirm that a car had been ordered for us to take us to the airport at 7:45 AM. Good thing we checked since the concierge had not ordered it, but no worries, it was arranged. When we left the hotel, we realized that the clock for our journey of 43 hours to go home had begun. The next hiccup was the Johannesburg traffic. The main freeway was all backed up due to an accident, but our driver knew all the back roads, and we still made it to the airport in 35 minutes. We checked in for our flight to Sao Paulo on South African Airways and proceeded to the premium lounge. Oddly, business class on the plane was nearly empty. Their were two compartments with 16 seats each. Our compartment had 8 passengers, and the other sat empty. The flight left on time at 11:10 AM. Rob watched two movies: Joy and Carol, and we stayed awake for the entire flight. We landed in Sao Paolo on time and proceeded to yet another lounge to sit for the next 5 hours. We are already quite tired.
Our United flight to Washington, D. C., also left on time. Rob went to sleep pretty quickly (after scoring a large quantity of pillows), forgoing the meal. Roy ate and then went to sleep about 1/2 hour after Rob. Rob got about 6 hours of sleep; Roy maybe 4 1/2 hours. We landed in Dulles airport at 6:30 AM local time (it is now Friday) and cleared customs in 15 minutes -- wow! Since our next flight was on an independent itinerary, we collected our luggage and exited to the arrivals hall, then went upstairs to check in for our flight to San Francisco, not scheduled to depart until 1:15 PM -- ugh!
Fortune is with us, however, as we are allowed to move up to the 8:54 AM flight, cutting over 4 hours out of our travel time -- yay! Roy contacted the limo service, and they could accommodate our early arrival. Our flight departed on time, and oddly the plane was not full. We had window and aisle seats in an exit row with no one in the middle seat. Gloria Borger, CNN political analyst is also on our plane, and Rob told her that he enjoyed watching her on TV. She said it's been a crazy election cycle. That's an understatement.
The plane landed at 11:00 AM, and one limo ride later we were home -- 43 hours total travel time shortened to 39!
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