All the plans for leaving Australia went well - the taxi arrived at the time we ordered it for, we got the Murray's bus to Sydney and arrived there in plenty of time.
The check-in with Qantas went fine but the security and departure checks were a bit crowded.
We had our usual poor luck with the random security checks - I got picked again for the explosive residue test (got this on the way to Brisbane last weekend as well!) and Paul got to have a full body scan. However of course, since we aren't terrorists carrying bombs there wasn't a problem :-)
Once that was all sorted we got a bite to eat and then waited in the Qantas Club until it was time to go.
We ended up getting the seat we had paid for - the 'best economy seat on the A380'. If you read back a few posts you can see that I was concerned that we might not get to keep this seat, but it was all good. Also, the seat beside Paul was vacant, so we were as comfortable as you can be when sitting for hours at a time in an economy airline seat.
Just the same though, that flight really does turn into the 'never-ending night' really quickly - we left around 4pm and even though we were flying west it wasn't long until it was dark outside, and it stayed that way until not that long before we arrived in London.
When we got to Dubai we made our way to the Emirates International Business Lounge - the Qantas website says we're entitled to access because of my Qantas Club membership. The lady wasn't convinced but she went and asked her boss, and they let us in, thank heaven. Basically only had time for a shower but boy was that appreciated. The Qantas Club renewal this year cost around $400 but although I'm the member, Paul gets to come into the club with me when we're flying together. So, if the only benefit we get from the membership this year is those two showers, and the two on the way back, then they'll have cost around $100 per shower. And, do you know what - WORTH EVERY CENT!
There are new security measures for entering the UK - the way they describe this is that you must be able to boot up your laptop, phone etc - to prove it's a real piece of equipment and not something malicious - and if you can't boot it up they won't let you take it on board. They didn't do this in Sydney so I assumed - correctly - that they'd do it in Dubai. I had no idea how they were going to get enough time to do this - there can be up to 450 passengers on an A380 and it would take hours to make them boot up all their laptops. Turns out the actual implementation of this new security process is that it's a random thing, so the vast majority of laptops aren't checked. Including ours - this time we missed being part of the random selection. Pity really; I was looking forward to booting up my laptop, iPad and iPhone and then asking them if they wanted to see the Kindle as well :-)
Anyway, we got back on board on time, only to spend almost two hours waiting on the tarmac for some repair work to be done - something to do with the backup fuel transfer pumps. First they were going to just remove them since they're non-critical (I didn't like the sound of that much!) then they worked out it would be just as quick to replace them. I have to say, I wish they had noticed this problem before we all trooped back onto the plane - spending those 2 hours in the lounge would have been much more comfortable!
Anyway, this of course meant that we arrived at Heathrow 2 hours late - about 8:50am rather than the planned 6:45 am. Lots of people were going to miss connecting flights, and we of course missed our 9:15 am bus to Bournemouth. I knew that the bus line (National Express) promises that if you miss a bus from Heathrow because of a flight delay that they'll put you on a later bus, but I was a bit worried that the later buses might be full. Not a problem - they put us on the next bus at 10:45, and there were only about 8 passengers on it!
We got to our hotel and checked in with no trouble, then went for a walk around Bournemouth. Not really sure that any of it sank in though; we're both pretty tired.
In fact, I'm typing this at about 6:30pm local time, and Paul is already dead to the world.
Tomorrow we pick up a hire car and start properly looking around. Or maybe we'll just go to the shopping mall and get our phone and internet access sorted!
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