Our first flight for decades – or so it seems.
Having returned from Norway (by boat) with Covid, we left the exclusive 1% club. That small band of viral escapees! It gave us problems with pre-planned dental appointments and Covid booster and ‘flu jabs. All of which had to be rescheduled before leaving for Oz. It also left us a little under the weather…
However…
We had booked our trip ages ago when there was a lot of uncertainty about long haul flights. Not to mention potential rail travel chaos courtesy of the blessed RMT! So we left ourselves plenty of time to get to Heathrow. For our convenience, we were travelling at the start of half term holidays. How we missed that small detail, I have been asked by Glenda on many occasions. In the event, our fears of cancelled trains and planes were over-exaggerated.
The taxi to the station arrived on time – unlike on previous occasions. The train had our correct reservations unlike other times and, boringly, left on time. However, the standard of first class travel (booked cheaply months ago) has declined. Their promise of free on-board refreshments was fulfilled by a small trolley with just eight (really!) sandwiches to “refresh” all the occupants of two carriages. Luckily, we boarded where the train started it’s journey, so we secured a quarter of the available total plus a raspberry croissant! However, the chicken sandwiches were far from refreshing and the croissant was more or less inedible. As a further “improvement” in service, the trolly man informed us, Great Western Railways had binned all their buffet cars apart from on one train to London each day … and we weren’t on that train!
Still it got us to Paddington and then on the Heathrow express to the airport. Here we discovered further reductions in service. The hotel Hoppa buses had been reduced in number of routes and frequency of departures. Reducing the available routes has resulted in more hotel stops per bus. It now takes a week and a half to get to the hotel of choice and, presumably, another week to get back to the airport. This explains the reduced frequency of one departure per hour!. All the buses are out navigating the Bath Road and other back streets around Hounslow and Greater London.
Our hotel on this occasion was the Staybridge Suites. Intimately connected to the Holiday Inn. Both part of IHG.
Our room came equipped with a full kitchen and super-large shower. An excellent choice. We’ll book for the return. The latest checkout available got us on the 3 pm bus for the airport. Arriving at Heathrow – even via the mulberry bushes – we were still best part of six hours early for our flightl … and an hour before we could lose our luggage. Still, the Prosecco in the lounge was good and cool! But only after getting past security – which, to be fair, was fairly speedy.
The airport illuminations at night!
The seats, food and service on board Singapore Airlines.were all very good.
We’ve never before had the privilege of ordering food in advance!
But it was still basically two night flights with the window blinds shut all the way! We had a three hour break in Singapore – just long enough for a cup of tea, a bowl of cornflakes and a shower in the SIA lounge.
Eventually we arrived at Brisbane airport.
Negotiating the route to immigration was easy (Are you a terrorist? Are you carrying more than $500,000? etc.). Immigration via the e-passport line was mixed. I was allowed in, but Glenda was dragged aside (yet again) to present herself to an actual human being to explain herself! Glenda and electronic systems (of any sort) just don’t seem to be compatible!
The biosecurity team weren’t very interested in the two slices of fruitcake that we declared. Apparently that doesn’t count as fruit. The biscuits and chocolates are also permitted. Not so sure about nuts though. However, there were folk around who were being hauled off to jail for smuggling meat into the country. Great piles of sausages were being removed from their suitcases in front of us. Surely they could have bought meat for the BBQ in Coles or Woolworths?
Happily, once released from the baggage hall, we found Robin waiting for us. The hour trip up the Bruce highway was a bit of a blur, but we were “here”!
To be continued!