By now I was much more adept at navigating my way around the Sheung Wan and Central Stations, so finding my way back to the airport express train was a breeze. I had a little cash left over from my ATM withdrawl budget, so I headed upstairs to the macaron place to see if they had the cheese one available. Success!

The train arrived a minute after I went back to the station and the trip to the airport was uneventful. I checked in easily, cleared customs and made my way to The Wing Business class lounge to hang out before my flight.

The food on AA was awful on the way to Hong Kong so I decided to fill up on Dan Dan noodles and a steamed pork bun at the Noodle Bar before boarding. With champagne of course. I had my own little pod with a plug for charging my electronics which was great.

Per usual, the boarding process was more hectic than it needed to be. I was near the front of the Business / Priority / Platinum / etc. line but there were people in Group 2 trying to board through the first class line ahead of us and no overhead announcements just added to the confusion. There was a mandatory bag search at the end of the jetbridge – presumably looking for larger liquids. I cleared that quickly and made my way to my window (again! yeah!) seat in Main Cabin Extra.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the flight back would take about 2/3 of the time of the flight there. I managed to sleep a bit and watch movies for the rest of the time. The two guys next to me never got up to stretch or use the restroom so I had to be “that person” twice to relieve myself and change back into my normal travel clothes.

Thanks to Global Entry, clearing immigration in the US was a breeze. DFW has several kiosks but many were out of order and there were apparently a lot of folks on my flight with GE so I had to wait a few minutes until a machine was free. After that, I sailed through PreCheck and made my way from Terminal D to Terminal A for my connecting flight.

The Hong Kong flight arrived about 90 minutes early, so I decided to try my luck with the earlier flight into Raleigh. The woman at the lounge was helpful — and thankfully there was space for me — so I arrived home about two hours earlier than scheduled! :)