Flying from Istanbul, Turkey to Seoul, South Korea with connecting stop in Chengdu, China.
- Sichuan Airlines surprised us on the upside. While there was no online checkin (had to stay in line for 1.5 hrs at the airport for the boarding pass), the excellent service on the airplane, decent leg room, plenty of food and drinks were a pleasant surprise (if not shock) after flying Norse. Both airlines had a long duration flight of around 9 hours but what a remarkably different experience. Layover in Chengdu, China was somewhat annoying as we spent 2.5 hours in different lines being checked and re-checked multiple times in terms of registrations (even though we already had boarding passes for the connecting flight with the same airline) and bags check (even though we already had a security check in IST). The second flight, 3 hrs 20 min, was similarly nicely organized with services of food and drinks. Good job Sinchuan Airlines!
- At the Icheon airport: Exchanged $30 into KRW. Terrible exchange rate but oh, well, it’s the airport. 1320 while official rate was 1370-ish.
- Got Korean Tour Card which is the same as T-Money card but offers discounts for tourists attraction and some retail shops at the Nice to CU convenience shop (W4K). Registered Daniel’s card there to receive child discount. Loaded our cards with W15K and D’s with W10K to use for transportation.
- Took AREX train, with local stops, to get to the city and transferred to line 9-beige to get to the apartment at Dongju. Got to our apartment super exhausted at around 4:30pm local time. Only had time for grocery shopping before work at 8pm.
