The first 24 hours of vacation consisted solely of traveling! 12hr nonstop flight to Beijing followed by a 3hr layover and finally with another 3hr flight to Zhangjiajie. My mother and I were exhausted by the layover time because by that time, it was night time in bed and hence, sleep time.

But no, we were forced to stay up longer through the remainder of our travel and by the time we got to our first hotel, we were up for 24 hours!!! Of course, mommy and I were able to sneak naps here or there but really, how good are they?

So today, I am only going to talk about airplane food. Yes, I have a fascination for airplane food and I love airplane food but I think the reason why is because when I’m stuck on an airplane, the food is the only thing that brings me happiness (I think everyone can agree). The instantaneous if everyone just gobbling their trays there with no shame at the same time, no one paying attention to each other and everyone finishing their meals in minutes!!

Lunch time was served approximately 1hr into our flight. We had two options: beef and rice or fish and rice. My mother and I chose one of each.

Fish curry with rice served with Mac salad and some cubed hams on top of a few sad looking lettuce, a fruit cup of diced watermelon, pineapple and honeydew, and hard bread. After we ate, they each gave us an individual size of Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream.

Mine was beef with rice, which I thought was much better than the fish. There was plenty of sauce to go around the rice. I actually really enjoyed the Mac salad and even finished my mom’s.

Unlike Japan Airlines, the intermission of the flight had self serve juice but no snacks or crackers!! I was spoiled from Japan 🙁

Near the end of the flight, they served dinner for us. We both chose pork with noodle and it turned out to be like soggy chow mein noodles. The bread this time was soft because it was packaged. The salad came with thousand island dressing which I felt didn’t go with the chow mein entree. We didn’t even touch the Oreo cookies. We gave both of ours to these kids who were sitting in front of us.

Oh my god!!! While I always enjoy the meals with the flights, by the time we sat in our last stretch of flight, my mom and I were so tired that I think we wanted to sleep more than eat. We weren’t even hungry, but we ate it anyways because it was there. It was spicy beef with rice. The beef was seasoned with black pepper to give it that extra kick. I think this is like Hunan food? The pickled vegetables weren’t that good but I forced myself to eat it for the fiber. The peaches were bland.

And then we got to our hotel!!! I should post some pictures of the hotel. I really like it!!!! It’s very nice, with the middle being completely open to the sky and there’s a fountain in the middle to catch rain water. There are rooms surrounding in a circle with four floors. There’s also a free laundry room to use and clothes hooks to hang clothes dry at the roof top.

Our hotel room was nice too and the shower floor was actually layered with wood to stand on and water falls in between the cracks.

I wanted to take pics of the hotel but kind of scared. Felt weird to just suddenly bust out my camera to take pics of the lobby and etc haha. But!! The hostess is very nice. She had low wooden tables with wooden chairs and tea sets. She invited us to sit her her and put our legs underneath the table with the covers and we were greeted with a lot of warmth from the heater underneath! How clever!