Jaunted

Luckily, there was no line at LAN check in. The staff greeted me with smiley faces (a recurring theme throughout my flight that surprisingly didn’t get annoying like the typical smiley American flight staff, but complimented their upbeat Spanish vibe- or maybe I was just excited for my trip).

Luggage weight warnings (refer to my previous post for the history): LAN lets you check in 2 bags 23 kilos max each. Your carry-ons need to be under 8 kilos. Well, my luggage was 61.3 and my carry-on was 12.3. They put both on board and charged me only 50 bucks for my 1 overweight bag. Not too bad considering what I’ve dealt with recently with other domestic airlines.

I was upgraded to business class, traveling at the bequest of Tourismo de Chile has its privilege. Great service from the get-go! The LAN crew didn’t even badger me about turning off my cell phone or laptop during liftoff.

As soon as I sat down I was offered orange juice and some nuts. Oh, and biz class wasn’t full so I was able to pick my seat. No idea if the empty seats were a result of the economy or just a lack of travelers headed to Lima from LA on a Wednesday afternoon. Either way it made for some spacious seating digs for the long haul flight.

Here is a shocker, the in-flight meals were actually really great. Choices of appetizers and entrees: I chose the carrot soup to start, which included an excellent little salad and cheese plate.

Then moved on to a light fish with vegetables as my entrée and 2 glasses of Chilean Sideral 2003 Altair wine. Once I downed the wine and finished my meal I chilled with some movies to pass the in-air time. Judd Apatow’s Step Brothers and Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder helped me kill a few hours at least!

All and all it was a great flight, with great service -- hardly a surprise seeing that I was lucky enough to get upgraded to the spacious and sparsely populated business class.

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