Saturday 12th February
The very nice taxi driver was waiting for us as we opened the door to our bedroom. What service. We were taken to Terminal 4. It was heaving with people as it was the start of half term. There were people going to places all over Europe, India and USA as well as Singapore. People not travelling were being asked to leave the building as there were so many people.
We managed to check in quite quickly and then went on to the body and hand luggage scans. Then it was the duty free. You could buy a little scarf for over £100 - err I think not it is only the start of the holiday.
After a while it was time to board the plane. It seemed to take ages to happen. There were a few delays on the ground, so we had to wait for a slot for a few minutes but then we were off. The inside of the plane was a lot noisier than I expected with fans blowing all the time. I found it great fun looking at the on board information about where we were. After 35 minutes we were over Germany and heading east at a height of 31,000 feet. At this height all we were able to see was the top of the clouds way below. I was not expecting the outside temperature to be that cold - minus 50 degrees and sometimes colder.
Then it was time for food. The veggies get their food first, which was especially good for Jenny as she likes to know when she is going to be fed. The disadvantage was that the drinks did not come round with the food so we had to wait for the rest to get their food before we had the wine. We did get something to drink eventually.
Jenny is looking very silly at present as she is using the complimentary travel socks on her head to get the headphones to fit. So it is official that Jenny does not have a big head.
After heading east for so long it was good to see the plane start heading south. We were south of Warsaw and flying over Lodz. As we have levelled out I can listen to the Ipod so I am listening to Caravan and "For Richard" and various tracks by Emmerson, Lake and Palmer. This got me thinking of what are they doing now. When I listened to Trilogy the other day I really enjoyed it.
It all too quickly got to be rather boring and there is another 10 hours of this! While I watched the map Jenny was channel hopping. Her chance to have her own zapper ;-) she gets to find a programme about Machu Pichu so she is very happy. Err Jenny that is the wrong continent we are flying the other way. According to the in flight map we are flying near Lvov - no I had heard of it either. Out of the window all we could see were clouds. Although it is 3.30 in the afternoon London time the sun is setting. Singapore time is 11.30 p.m. so there are only 9 hours still to go. At least we are south of Kiev and heading for the Black Sea.
Half way through the journey and we have flown over Iraq, Iran and we are now south of Khabul. I was surprised at how infrequently the drinks trolley came round, even for water which you are supposed to drink to avoid Deep Vein Thrombosis. The water comes in little glasses and you have to disturb the aisle person to go and get it. There are all sorts of information on exercises to do whilst in your seat to avoid deep vein thrombosis. There is not really enough room to do them properly though.
Red sky at ‘night’ |
Dusk from the plane |
Time started to take a meaningless aspect. It is 3.15 a.m. in Singapore, 7.15 p.m. in the UK and it has been dark outside for 3 hours. Landing time is 8.45 a.m. so we need to try and get some sleep. More alcohol would have helped but it was a case of closing your eyes and hoping for the best.
We are over Pakistan now so at least the USA are not fighting below us. It amazed me some of the distances / times it takes to fly over or to places. Two hours after crossing into Pakistan we flew over the Indian coast south of Calcutta. It then took 3 hours to fly from there to Singapore. We then saw that we were flying over the Andaman Sea, which was somewhere I had not heard of until Boxing Day.
