And we're off!

After a lovely Christmas in Carlisle and some fun in London, with lots of emotional farewells, we're finally on our way!

Our trip got off to an excellent start when we had to check in with Air Canada for our flight to Tokyo.  What a sign!  Whilst we were checking in, for some reason Andy decided it would be a good idea to stand on his tiptoes. The nice woman thought that he was really tall so swapped our seats for the emergency exit ones which was almost as good as an upgrade to first! The picture below shows how much legroom we had.

Things got interesting when Andy got stopped at security because he had a suspicious package. After listing everything that we could remember in his rucksack, we realised that the small square thing raising the alarm was a little metal box containing some Kendal Mint Cake. This was a Christmas present from Andy's mam and dad. The one in my bag managed to get through undetected! We had to empty out everything in the bag and it had to go through the check again and after that we both needed a big drink at the airport bar.

It was then onto our flight to Beijing where we had lots of space to relax with a Yanjing beer.