11 October
Finished the last bit of packing and checked out of the apartment. Overall, it was a good place to stay, although I do plan to email the management (since they invited me to) with some suggestions about things that could be made to work a little better.
We walked around to the station and picked up the tickets - no trouble with the tickets or the train. Same as last time, if you can pre-plan the exact train you want to travel on, it's really cheap - we travelled on an advance First Class fare for 34 pounds, but if you just rocked up that morning to travel on that train to London, even a standard class fare was significantly dearer than that.
Arrived at St Pancras station and got a taxi to Paddington - as usual the traffic was outrageous but I don't like taking suitcases on the tube and it is really too far to walk.
We booked our suitcases into the left luggage place. We've used them before and I think they're even more expensive than they were last time, however we had a few hours to spend - this was about 2pm and our flight didn't leave until 10pm. And no way did we want to spend that time dragging around suitcases and backpacks. Once that we done we got onto the tube and went to the British Museum. We knew that there were two things we had missed last time that we definitely wanted to see - the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. Found them, and spend a suitable amount of time admiring them. Interesting to see the British Museum 'side' of the argument over the marbles, which of course is a little different from the perspective we heard in Greece.
We also looked around at a few other displays, then went back and rescued our luggage and got onto the Heathrow Express.
Once we got to Heathrow we did all the usual things - check in, drop off the bags, through security. I must say I'm really turning into a cranky old lady; by the time we got through security I had mumbled under my breath at least 10 times about people who think that rules and processes are for other people - you know, the sort who wants to carry four heavy bags onto the plane, or who wants to check five suitcases for free when they're travelling economy.
Found a nice restaurant once we got into the terminal, and had some dinner.
Heathrow still has their process in place where they don't tell you what Gate you're leaving from until a few minutes before boarding is due. However, Singapore Airlines told us which gate we were leaving from at the point where we checked in. Very strange.
We boarded on time, although I have given up on any hope of Singapore Airlines actually following their own boarding processes. Every flight so far, they have started boarding economy by calling one of the boarding groups (never ours) but have then simply allowed a free-for-all.
The take off was delayed because of problems with loading some of the cargo; a 4 ton cargo bin got stuck and they had to use a fork lift to move it. Eventually though we got underway.
The A380 has a three-four-three seating pattern, and we were in the middle. Fortunately the seat beside me was not occupied, so the man in the other seat and I used the spare to store jumpers, pillows etc. Overall it was a fairly comfortable flight, at least as far as a 12+ hour economy flight can be!
12 October
The early part of the day was spent flying from London - we arrived in Singapore around 6pm. Checked into the transit hotel, had some dinner, and crashed. I had some trouble sleeping, but just the ability to lie down for hours was really welcome after that long flight.
13 October
Up out of bed a little before 5am, had some breakfast and went off to check in to the next flight. Because of Singapore Airlines messing us around before the holiday, this wasn't an A380, it was a 777 and it was showing its age just a bit - for example, the screen for my entertainment system wasn't working properly. I didn't make a fuss; they weren't going to be able to fix it and more importantly, I hadn't been able to find anything of real interest on the earlier flight so I spent most of the time reading / snoozing.
Arrived in Sydney pretty much on time at around 6pm. There was a problem with the automated entry check machines, so we all had to be seen and have our passports checked by a human, which slowed things down somewhat. However, we escaped eventually, got our luggage and then caught a train into the city. We stayed overnight at the Metro Hotel Marlow which is quite close to Central Station. Their restaurant provides room service but not your usual stuff, this was all Chinese and Thai food - really nice actually. Good hotel although not cheap, but very convenient if you're travelling on the train; I'd certainly stay there again.
14 October
Another early start as we were booked on the 7:05am train home to Canberra. We had both reorganised our luggage to put more in our suitcases and then got completely caught out by the fact that checked luggage has a 20kg maximum weight and they don't allow any exceptions. We could have just taken the luggage onto the train and put it into the luggage area in the carriage but we just wanted to be rid of them for a while.
Neither of us had travelled on this train before. Overall it wasn't too bad - very slow compared to English trains, and certainly slower than flying or driving or getting the bus. However, it was a relaxing easy way to travel and I'd certainly do it again if the timing was right.
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