With the door clicking shut behind me, with a particular automated click that always sounds like Korea to me, I begin the task of wrestling my bags down the hill to the taxi stand.
I travel light. Just a carry-on size roller bag and a backpack. But I am also bringing back a huge hard-sided suitcase on wheels and a medium sized duffel, each stuffed to the brim with belongings that my daughter is sending home with me.
All of these bags generate considerable gravity and I muster up all my wits to keep them under control. One errant move and I can see in my mind's eye a bag careening down the steep street, crashing into a parked car and exploding open, sending my daughter's beloved possessions into the air.
I'm being real careful.
I find a taxi waiting at the curb, just as I hoped I would. The driver is a polite older man who looks at my bags and silently groans. He begins the process of stuffing them here and there into the cab, but this proves to be no easy process. I take mercy on him and help rearrange them so that all the doors and the trunk can actually close.
After studying the maps and instructions in Korean that my daughter and her boyfriend prepared for me, my driver's light bulb goes on, and he says to me, "You go airport?"
Yes!
Well, technically, he is taking me just a few miles to the COEX City Terrminal, which is kind of a remote airport check-in location. At the Air Canada counter, I present my passport and explain that even though I bought a ticket through to Seattle, I'm going to fly only into Vancouver. Rather than wait through a double digit layover in Canada, just a few hours from home, my husband is coming to get me in Vancouver.
My able agent gets this all sorted out, hands me my boarding pass, and takes the two heaviest bags off my hands. Whew.
Now I'm off to the upper level of the terminal to buy a ticket for the limousine bus to the real airport in Incheon. I see a row of four kiosks where I can make the purchase, but despite my best efforts to unlock one in English, they all speak to me only in Korean.
So I seek out help at the information desk and a young woman comes to my rescue. To my great surprise, there is a seat available on the bus that leaves in fifteen minutes and in the blink of an eye, I find myself seated front and center, heading for the open road.
Incheon Bridge connects the mainland to Yeongjongdo Island, home of the airport.
We crawl through city traffic, winding along with the Hoh River, and eventually pick up speed as we leave Seoul behind. One very comfortable hour later, we cross a sliver of the Yellow Sea to the man made island where Incheon International Airport sits.
Once inside Terminal 1, my brain needs a few moments to comprehend that because I'm already checked in, I can proceed directly to security and passport control. The South Korean bureaucracy functions efficiently, and in a very few blinks of an eye, I'm seated at my gate.
Gate 22.
Well. I've got hours to go before boarding, so I entertain myself by alerting my family to my progress, eating a sandwich, viewing an ancient episode of Star Trek, and watching two adorable Indian-Canadian girls romp up and down the mostly empty rows of seats.
Just below this window stood a mob of cranky and impatient people.
As the seats slow fill up with my fellow travelers, I remind myself that my time in South Korea is quickly coming to an end. I stare out the windows at the mountains in the distance and the clear blue sky, I try to capture and calibrate exactly what it feels like to be here.
It feels good.
And then finally, as the long line of antsy travelers slowly snakes into the plane, I find myself walking down the jetway in the exact moments that the sun fades into the horizon and disappears.
How perfect.
<3
Then I board the plane, sit down in my seat, and fly away.
* * * * *
A full accounting of my trip to Seoul:
Morning In Seoul
Korean Barbecue
Blue Buildings
Shopping At Hara Cake
Sunday In Seoul
Sipping And Shopping In Sinsa
Happy Lunar New Year From Seoul
Our Bakery
In-N-Out
Cheongdam Square In Gangnam
Cheonggyecheon Stream At Night
Gracie's Snowmageddon
Seoul Food
Flying Away
Korean Colors
