Up at 5 for breakfast, coffee, final details of packing, then off the ship at 7:35. From the Kobe Terminal, we had six transfers to make to before arriving home, seven including our Uber from SFO.
Transfer 1 - Kobe Terminal to Sannomiya Station. We took the Portliner line to Sannomiya Station, which was right next to our docked Diamond Princess. Our train took six minute, giving us an hour to relax inside a coffee shop.
Transfer 2 - We ate breakfast -- morning buns and breaded pork, all very good. At 9 a.m. our train arrived and we took it to Shin-Osaka. We had reserved seats with comfortable padding. It was one of the nicer trains we'd been on.
Transfer 3 - Shin-Osaka and a large, busy station. We had 12 minutes to make our connection and needed every minute to make our bullet train. No bathroom breaks here. We asked a ticket agent for help and she guided us to the proper platform on the other side of the station. We made it with barely a minute to spare.
Our bullet train took us to Shinagawa Station, a 2.5 hour ride. It was packed. Every seat was taken. We only had three stops and reached Shinagawa at noon.
Transfer 4 - Shinagawa Station to Narita Airport. Our Express train to Narita Terminal 1 arrived at 12:16. It was comfortable and fast. We reached Narita at 1:29.
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| Mailing our Pocket WiFi back |
...then boarded our plane to LAX at 3:45. Alice was able to sleep a few hours, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe I slept for 30 minutes if that. I mostly read and watched a movie or two. We touched down at 10 am Saturday. We had 90 minutes to make our Southwest flight to SFO.
Transfer 6 - LAX to SFO
90 minutes was not enough time for us. We needed more like 2.5 hours. The International terminal was insanely busy, plus our plane seemed to be parked a mile or so away from immigration. Once we passed through immigation and border inspection, we found ourselves in a line one hour or so long! Luckily, we had Global Entry and could bypass this insane line that wrapped around the hallway.
Our flight to SFO was in Terminal 1. We were in Terminal 3. We had 10 minutes to get there, so we ran. These terminals are long, so it took us about 12 minutes to arrive at Terminal 1. I printed out our boarding passes and rushed to security with Alice just as our names were being called in the terminal. After security, I had Alice run to our gate while I collected everything. We made it, barely, and had to sit in middle seats. It was awful, but probably worse for the passengers who had to sit next to me. I was all sweaty and hot and hadn't had a shower in nearly 24 hours. Pure misery. Luckily, we took off and touched down within an hour or so.
Transfer 7 - SFO to Home
We took Uber and made it home by 1 p.m. Saturday. The first thing I did was take a shower. The second thing I did was fall asleep for seven hours. Wow, what a long, painful day of travel. Brutal.
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