***Pre-report warning. Must have a sense of humour – don’t take much of it literally***
Hi All, welcome to the third and finally edition of my down under travels – sorry it’s been so long, I’ve been busy with all sorts of stuff but no I’ve got a couple of hours I’m gonna write this like a bat out of hell.
Part 2 left you just arriving at Sydney Airport after an amazing holiday in Australia (I think – the last part was so long ago I’ve forgotten what I put in it) and we were just handing in our beast of a hire car.
The decidedly not Australian Avis blokes misinterpreted us saying that the tank was only ¼ full and wrote on the sheet that it was in fact ¾ full. They would later smack us with a charge of over $1000 because of this – who knew fuel was so expensive! In the end we paid a little over $100 after some hard bartering
Anyway – onto the ‘flight experience’. I will mention it now that I wasn’t on this flight to review it so the photos will be a bit lacking – but hopefully the picture I draw in your mind with words will help broaden your mind...
Check-in was a drawn out affair as I was trying to secure some window seats for out our flight. At first the old bat tried to say it was because we were amongst the last to check-in but I shot her down with the sequence numbers on our boarding passes (8-12). She finally gave in an admitted it was because we’d booked on the cheapest fare category that we’d been allocated our seats (second to last row, middle 4 – Row 87). I shan’t say how much our ticket was (we booked LHR-SIN-PER-MEL-SYD-DXB-LHR) but it was well into 5 figures for the 4 of us so I feel sorry for the souls who booked on a more expensive fare type. After all this she said no anyway so it was a bit of a waste of time.
Security was a breeze and we were soon into International land. The parents went off to buy some overpriced DVT tights or something with my brother tailing behind them like a lorry with a tank slapper; asking for everything and anything in sight. I made a heartfelt facebook post on the free computers before heading over to the packed gate.
There was barely a seat to be had in the holding pen and the one I did have had some kind of hippie doing his pre-flight yoga.
Trying to ignore the twenty-something on his head and waggling his crotch in or about my facial area I tried to get a look at our chariot but I never even found out what it was – mystery plane some may say. It had a kangaroo on the tail for you spotters.
On board we were given a pre-flight drink of ice-cold water which I thanked the lady profusely for and never touched it for the remainder of the flight. The Captain wailed over the PA informing us of all the drivvle you’d expect including a flight time of 14hrs 25minutes to DXB.
I don’t know which way the direction of takeoff was laterally but vertically wise it was certainly in the upwards direction.
The crew on this flight were pretty good to be honest – all smiley, chatty and bouncing up and down the aisle with the air of someone who gets free holidays. That is, all apart from the lady who was serving my section. I have never seen such a miserable person in my life (maybe it was an upside-down smile – I was in Oz after all). Ah well – she disappeared clutching a blanket shortly after our upwards takeoff and came back looking refreshed yet complaining that she only ‘got about 6 hours sleep’.
Dinner must’ve been alright because I can’t remember it – well done Qantas.
After about 4 hours I bravely ventured out of my seat and walked about 7 feet to take a photo;
Then I slept for a bit until the row behind set off. In the row behind us were four Fijians going to Rome for 4 days for a holiday. On the far right we had the anxious flier; blanket over head singing pretty horrifically. To her left we had shaken not stirred; a cup of ice being swished about making an abysmal noise. To his left we had the pointer; stabbing his screen so hard I was worried my brother would get mild whiplash. And finally to his left we had the restless flier, up and down like a yo-yo doing nothing in particular apart from wearing the seat down to a stump.
At one point my mum did complain. Their reply was for Mr Pointy and Mr Restless to get up and dance and sing for a bit before sitting back down and doing nothing for the rest of the flight. Quite a strange lot if I’m honest.
Literally nothing happened for the rest of the flight until we landed where I heroically returned to the window to take another picture;
^ Dubai by night
For the landing I took a couple of pictures of the plane-cam;
The landing was as smooth as a butterfly landing on a rose petal – really. It was actually pretty smooth and made me look an idiot as I’d assured the family that A380’s enjoy having a bit of a smackdown.
Transfer was pretty boring – I picked up a Calzone filled with bolognaise sauce which was pretty interesting and my brother had a McDonalds which he never ate.
My mum disappeared into the toilet for what seemed like several days. Eventually she surfaced and revealed she’d had a shower. Must’ve been nice for her – I smelt like a sweat bomb or something similar.
Back on-board our aircraft and it was manned by a British cabin crew who were all very nice – I had Emma who took a very long time introducing herself and generally being nice. Later on in the flight she fainted revealing she hadn’t actually been asleep since the previous year (I was 2am on 2nd of January so it was possible) and ‘was feeling it a bit’. Shame that because she really was a nice person.
After takeoff the Asian bloke in front of me reclined and stayed like that until landing – I could see right inside his mouth as he happily slept away the flight.
We were given a chicken curry wrap which was OK but I wasn’t overly keen on it as it had chickpeas in which I find about as attractive as an Airbus A380.
I then managed something remarkable – sleep.
Upon waking up I had a quick look through the map and photographed it for your general viewing;
During descent I checked out the chat room thingy with my mother. My mum still gets blown away by Bluetooth speakers so she very much enjoyed this – typing her message before asking me whether I received her thoughtful message of ‘sup’ and then breaking into the laughter of someone who has only just been introduced to technology. Below is a photo of our conversation, I will add a transcript so you don’t break your eye’s squinting at it.
Me: Hello
Me: Hello?
Me: All quiet on the Western Front
Mum: Yo yo
Me: No No
Mum: Sup
Me: Heading down actually
I hope you enjoyed our riveting conversation.
Anyway – a couple of circuits around the Lambourne racetrack;
And a view of London that would have looked good if I had a window;
Luckily my pride was restored as our A380 thumped down like a whale falling out of the sky (literally in this case) and we taxied over to T3 to be picked up by some bloke that we vaguely knew.
And just like that, out holiday was over.
I hope you enjoyed my long-winded 3 parter, if you want the first 2 parts you’ll have to dig through the a.net vaults.
I do have a LGW-MUC-MAN-SOU trip that I did photograph for a trip report including the SQ 77W so that will be up as soon as I can be bothered to do it.
I’ve also just booked LHR-CDG-FCO-LHR for January so that will be up some when after 2020 knowing me.
Anyway, thanks for reading,
Ben
. Look forward to reading your next trip report