Singapore to England

Wednesday 12 September


Janine says it is my turn so here goes.

Up again at sparrows crack after about 5 hours sleep, then a race to get ready and repack ready for a pick up at 6.30 am.  One thing I will say is they are pretty on to it.  If they say 6.30 am they mean it.

From there though (only ones on the bus at this stage) we went down every second street and picked up every tourist in town.  Once we finally got to the airport we had a reverse unload, meaning all those tourists we picked up got unloaded first.

By the time we got to check in we were barely there with any time to spare, so a rush through security and passport control, then we were pretty much boarded straight away.

It was one of those big sucker A380 two storied planes with an internal staircase. Holly crap it's amazing getting those things off the ground.  All that said about these planes though, the seats are no bigger and there is no more legroom so still fairly uncomfortable.  It was with a fair bit of dread that we embarked on this flight as it was about a third longer in duration than the Auckland-Singapore leg. Whew!

2 movies, 2 documentaries, 2 meals, 2 naps and a few songs on the iPod.....nek minit we were there......pretty much a direct line apart from a dog leg around the volatile bits in Afghanistan.

Once in London the next mission was getting through Border Control.  There were about 40 desks operating but it still took a good hour and that was a good day as it can sometimes be 3+ hours. I reckon there would have been about a 1000 people queuing based on 20 rows with about 50 people in them.  You just don't get crowds like that back home.

Our transfers to our hotel were arranged as part of the package so this was pretty easy once we got through to arrivals.  We met up with a fellow tour participant, Terry from Australia.

Our hotel is in Kensington and pretty close to an underground station which will be invaluable over the next two days.  We headed out to get some dinner and what better thing to do but go to an authentic English pub for some pub grub.  Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding for Janine and Steak Pie for me.

Tomorrow is another day bound to be full on so will get this posted.