Premium economy made it not so terrible, even though I didn’t sleep much. Lufthansa in-flight entertainment is great and even includes camera views outside the plane, but mostly I just read DODO and tried to sleep.

I ate 4 airplane meals, which given the 1.5 calendar days of travel makes sense, I guess? The first was not-terrible vegetarian pasta. The second was a nearly inedible “spinach omelette”. The flight to India had an Indian vegetarian option, which I selected. I have no idea what I ate, but I’m certain that it was better than the “chicken and barbecue sauce” option. It included a packet of sugar and fennel which I did not eat, but I did spread the container of chilis on everything except the dessert. The dessert was some sort of rice pudding with pistachios, or so said the menu. I tried to order the Indian option for the last leg, but they ran out.

The 747 is a seriously impressive machine. I was startled at the size of the wings and just how quiet it is. Watching the outboard third of the wings flex upward at takeoff is impressive.

We had to go through security after immigration and before customs, which makes no sense. The unintelligible command, “Vials and Water Inside Bag,” was actually “Mobile and Wallet Inside Bag” which I did not do.

Our rental car came with a moderately aggressive driver who still had an impressive density of traffic to navigate given that it was 3am. We’re staying in a swanky Marriott that xrayed our luggage and made us go through a metal detector.