I took my coworker's recommendation and went shopping for a plane ticket on Kayak.com last night. Sure enough, Kayak offers tickets that are way cheaper than anything you'll find on a more standard site like Orbitz.com. Orbitz and its ilk showed me nothing below $1000; Kayak, by contrast, offered tickets for $757 and $816. I went for the slightly more expensive option because the cheapest option would have routed me through Shanghai via some ratty, no-name Chinese airline. The ticket I purchased, by contrast, goes from Seoul to San Francisco to Chicago to DC, then back along the same route. On the way back, I've got a nine-hour layover in San Fran, but I'm pretty sure I'll keep sane by continuing to reread the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Thirty hours en route, in all.
Travel dates: departing Seoul October 14; arriving DCA (National Airport) that same calendar day, but at 11:50PM. Leaving DC on October 19 and arriving back in Seoul on the 21st, thanks mainly to that damn layover.* My brother Sean's birthday is on the 15th; the wedding rehearsal is the following day; the actual wedding is on the day after that—on the 17th. I check out of my hotel on the morning of the 18th, drive back to Fredericksburg, have dinner with a former student that evening, then depart for Korea the following day.
So that's the plan. I've got the ticket, so now I need to get a hanbok.
*The cheapest route, the one with the Chinese airline, would have taken three calendar days—another reason not to go to the bottom of the barrel. Rule of economics: sometimes, when you go to the bottom of the barrel, you get bent over the barrel.
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Very similar to my schedule. I'm leaving on the evening of the 13th and arriving the same day (early in the day, actually, thanks to a direct flight), and I'll be departing the US on the evening of the 17th and arriving here at some ungodly hour in the morning on the 19th.
ReplyDeleteToo bad we're going to be on opposite sides of the country.