14 Airports in 6 Days

Thus is my life over the past week. There are many people that have not visited 14 airports in their lifetime let alone in less then 1 week. If you're wondering why I did this, my younger sister got married in the Bahamas over this past weekend, so with some intentional stopping along the way (we stopped and had an overnight in Narita, Japan, then had an overnight in Baltimore before heading to the Bahamas) I got to roam around in various different airports. Yes you can get from Shanghai to the Bahamas without visiting different airports 14 times (note that I am not saying I visited 14 different airports, there were some repeats), but if you want to do some stopping along the way, it becomes harder. So as I write this I am back in Shanghai and right back into the groove of things. I actually got a good night sleep last night (I was pretty exhausted from my days of travelling into different time zones). Here are some interesting things you might also want to know:

-My first time in Japan was only a brief taste, but Japan is a pretty amazing place based on what I have experienced. I have an upcoming trip to Japan so will get to experience more of it and will get back to you on whether it is truly as amazing as I first thought it to be.

-I flew a total of 17,973 miles in the 6 days that I was flying, yes it really is a little insane if you think about it.

-I am still consistently disappointed with Washington Dulles airport, next to JFK and Shijiazhuang, it is one of the worst airports that I have visited in the world.

-I was most surprised by the Detroit airport during my trip. It seemed new and clean (at least the terminal that I was in) and it offered a lot of those good ole amenities that you look for in an airport (clean bathrooms, good shopping and food selection, functional airport space). Detroit is one of the worst cities in the US, but its airport is one that I would be happy to fly into in the future.

-US domestic airline carriers are some of the worst in the world and it will just keep getting worse. I avoided having to pay any baggage fees on my trips, but will most likely have to in the future. No meal service on domestic flights, no beverage service on domestic flights (except for NWA that they did have free beverages), no real in flight entertainment (at least not the good seatback entertainment you have on Asian airlines). By the way airline executives, by making consumers pay for the little things you are putting a bandaid over a very large wound, you should really look into ways of changing your businesses around to actually begin to make money instead of doing these short term not working solutions.

-I will talk more about the Bahamas in a later post so I will keep you updated.