Up early and Jane was up too as she was
doing a sportive ride later that morning. All went well until I got
to Lewisham only to find the train station closed. Oh well, not like
the DLR was not running, ... hmmm. It was actually running but not a
full service. There was however enough of a service to get me to
Canary Wharf where I hopped on to the Jubilee Line to take me in the
direction of Paddington where I could get the Heathrow Express to
Terminal 3. All that went without a hitch and I was at the checkin
line before I had to be. The bag was under weight (just) and so I
got my boarding pass from the desk and headed up through security
where I got patted down (again) for setting off the metal detector.
Once inside I was again reminded of the thought that the reason they
want you here early is so that you get bored and go shopping. Unlike
the european jaunts I'd done recently though I was told when the gate
would open when I got the boarding pass and they stuck to this time.
It soon became apparent why when I got to the gate. There were a
huge amount of people queueing to have their boarding passes and
passports checked before being led into another waiting area. The
queue went down quite quickly but it was still apparent just how many
people they were going to get on board this double decker plane and
unlike the cheap airlines popping in and out of Luton/Stanstead there
was no way they were going to get 88 rows of people boarded in 15
minutes like they seem to try to do these days when you get on a 737
sized plane.
Once on board I headed for my
reallocated seat right at the back. I knew it was going to be near
the toilets but once they put the curtain up that wasn't really an
issue. The seats also had the advantage of not having anyone behind
you moving the seat around as they get in and out of their seat or
even just pressing the touch screen media centre in the back of the
chair. My sole neighbour was a french lady from Lyon who was going
to Australia and New Zealand for 5 months. I didn't think she spoke
very much english after asking a couple of questions so it wasn't one
of life's greatest conversations but she did look like Mini Driver
and I hope I didn't spook her too much looking at her to see just how
much like Mini Driver she looked.
The flight was good and thanks to the
SkyCam in the tail plane I could watch the take off and landing.
Also when the captain put the seat belt lights on after a few hours I
could use the cam view again to see the storm ahead. Ok I couldn't
see much but I could see the lightning brightening up bits of the
screen at random Thankfully it didn't actually make the flight
bumpy.. I didn't really get much sleep maybe an hour and a half at
most out of a 12 hour flight but I did get to see a couple of good
films (Arthur & XMen 4) as well as all of a series of Big Bang
Theory. The spinach and ricotta tortellini was very nice and then
they seemed to bring out more food every 90 mins including a twix ice
cream, cheese and crackers and a Melbourne something or other cup
cake.
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| Been a while since I had almond croissant and skinny filter from Pret |
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| Skycam before we passed sunset time on the 13 hour flight to Singapore |
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