What a very long day of travel - about 29 hours from when we left Canberra to when we arrived at our hotel. However, it all worked out really well - no major disasters and a lot of plans came together as expected.
Airline
Well, this is a little difficult. I was going to be extremely positive about everything to do with the flight, until my brother pointed out that Emirates is a major sponsor of Collingwood!! However, I'm going to forgive them for that, because the flights really did go very well.
The food was excellent for airline food, and the service was also great. It is a little disconcerting to wake up to the sound of an inflight announcement and sit there dazed for a few seconds thinking you've lost your mind before you realise that they're actually speaking Arabic - but my poor confused brain worked it all out eventually :-)
Also, the people who say that jet-lag is much worse going east to west rather than west to east are completely correct. This was a MUCH longer flight than our previous ones to Los Angeles and yet we're both fine - Paul has crashed now, but he has to be up at 5am to catch his train to Nottingham, so it's probably for the best! - but I'm here just feeling the normal amount of tired that I'd expect to be feeling at 9pm.
About the Airbus A380 - I've said it before but I'm going to repeat myself - what an excellent plane. The inflight entertainment is really good - lots of choices of movies, TV shows, games or just simply watching the flight progress on one of the three external webcams. There's lots of options for staying in touch - there's a satellite phone in every seat and although I'm not sure that I'd want to pay the price for phone calls, you can sent an SMS for $1 - not cheap, but not hopelessly expensive either. Apparently there's over 300,000 SMS messages sent from / received by Emirates passengers in flight each month! And on some flights they actually have wifi running - price is better than cruise ship prices (so, still not cheap!) but I can confirm that it does actually work.
The best thing though is that there seems to be something about the way the seats are set up that makes long flights actually bearable. Usually within an hour or so on a plane I'll be getting sore and aching muscles - thighs especially - but no such problem on either the Qantas or Emirates A380s. I have a dream of being able to afford to fly business or first class one day but to be honest on the A380 cattle class is pretty much acceptable - much better to spend the extra money on the holiday rather than on getting there!
BTW Adam - you know all those times we have seen Air Crash Investigation episodes where the Auxiliary Power Unit saves the day - well, it's a good thing we didn't need one last night because according to the captain we flew all the way from Sydney to Dubai with the APU out of order.
Dubai airport
This would be the one down-side of flying with Emirates. I've never seen so many people waiting for so many planes in such a small area. Comparatively small that is, it seems to be quite a big airport - eg we were leaving from gate 231! - but it was so crowded. I wouldn't recommend flying through Dubai unless you were either doing a quick transit like we were (2 hours between flights - and even that seemed like a really long time after a 14 hour flight and without a spare seat in sight) or otherwise staying in Dubai for a couple of days. If I had thought about this before the holiday had grown into a 10 week monster, we might have given it a go, as I'd love to see the Burj Khalifa.
Arrival in the UK
Well, as others have said, it really is enough to make you wonder what the Commonwealth actually means. What it certainly *doesn't* mean is any sort of preferential treatment on arrival - we just get lumped in with the rest of the world while EU citizens get the same 'tick and flick' entry that UK citizens get. However, having said that, we did get through Border Control etc fairly quickly. Wandered out and found a taxi - which was actually more like a little minivan - and he got us to our hotel with no dramas, for about the price that the wonders of the internet led me to believe I'd pay.
Scottevest
Well, this might sound like an advertisement for Scottevest but their travel vests really are a miracle. I bought them because we carry so much electronic stuff with us on holiday that we were having trouble making the carry-on weight limits, and I knew that Emirates has a reputation for being particularly strict about that. However, I always assumed that I'd take the vest off as soon as I got on the plane as it wouldn't be comfortable. Not so, I wore it the whole way, complete with all of these things hidden away in various pockets:
an iPod, an iPhone, a camera, my purse, my passport in its folder and my reading glasses in a solid case.
It's really good not having to rummage through the backpack for these sorts of things, and of course the amount you can keep out of your carry-on allowance is just amazing. If I had been desperate to save carryon space or weight - my ultrabook actually fits into one of the pockets!
Here we are at home just before we left - both vests are loaded up with electronics:
Manchester
We haven't really been here long enough to really comment. However, a number of people - including the nice young lady at Border Control - have told us not to expect too much of the weather. Really, they're completely mistaken - how can you complain about the weather in a place that has so much of it? I swear we went through the overcast - rain - overcast - sunny - overcast etc etc cycle at least 5 times in the first two hours! But actually, we've found it to be quite comfortable so far - the rain hasn't been enough to even really get you damp, and the temperature is just right for two refugees from a Canberra winter. So far, everything has been completely easy - we've picked up Paul's train tickets for tomorrow (we prepaid for them last week but had to pick them up at a ticket machine), bought a prepaid internet package (a MiFi so we can have internet access pretty much everywhere), found all the shops we needed, etc etc, all without the least trouble or drama. Although, actually, that's not quite correct, there has been one minor drama. Any new place you go to the traffic signals (among many other things!) seem to be just a little different from what you're used to. An obvious answer is to follow the 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do' theory. Take it from me, if you're in Manchester and you're having trouble working out just when the street lights are telling you that it's ok to cross the street, do NOT try to copy the locals. I swear I've seen at least 10 people walk out directly into oncoming traffic - some of them jumped and ran when they realised what they'd done; others just kept on strolling.....
Hotel
We're staying at Roomz Aparthotel - an old bank building I think, that has been done up into apartments. Really good so far - we arrived early (and desperate for a shower) and our room was ready and waiting. That alone would have been enough to make me happy even if it was a bit of a dump, but it's actually a nice studio apartment with plenty of power points - important when you're carrying around as much technology as we are! - and all the usual things you expect to find in such a place, but done just a little bit differently.
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