Wednesday May 28, 2014 and Thursday May 29, 2014

We got up early to say goodbye to Mat and Kelly, both of them are working today.  We got a taxi to the airport.  The flight was at 2:00 p.m., at the airport for 11:00a.m., taxi was ordered for 10:30 a.m.  First problem, we had ordered a station wagon, when it arrived the bike boxes would not fit.  Although the seats dropped down there was a non-removeable metal cage separating the luggage area from the back seat.  We had to order a people mover (a 9 passenger bus).   We were eventually on our way by 11:15 a.m.

We made good time to the airport and were dropped of right at the Singapore Airlines check-in area, we only had to walk 100 metres and we were at the check-in.  The bike boxes were weighed, along with the two bags for checked luggage, then we had to weigh our carry-on.  The customer service rep for Singapore Airlines smiled at us, told us to remove the computer and book from the bags when we put them in the over-head locker and showed us where to take the bikes for x-ray and over-size bags.  No excess baggage charges and we didn’t have to leave anything behind.  She also put a dozen fragile stickers on the bike boxes – sticking them everywhere on the boxes.

I was still worried that we might get stopped and told to check-in the panniers, but when you see what other people carry-on, our bags were small in comparison.

We had an eight hour flight to Singapore, two hour lay over, then a thirteen hour flight to London.  Singapore Airlines is an awesome airline, the stewards worked really hard even before we were in the air. We were given hot cloths before we were airborne, drinks as soon as we were in the air, lunch – the food choices were excellent and limitless drinks for free.  I only had a couple of glasses of wine on both flights.  The in-flight movies were really good.  We had no complaints at all.

We arrived in the UK a little early and cleared customs and passport control about half an hour early.  We had booked a taxi for 7:00 a.m. to take us into London so that we could catch a train to Long Eaton.  I had booked the taxi and train from Brisbane.  The taxi driver was a little early and we arrived in London at 8:00.  We had about an hour and a half to wait at the train station in London before we could catch the train I had booked.

It started to rain as we arrived in Long Eaton.  We struggled to find a taxi to take us to my Dad’s place, but eventually got one.  We arrived at my Dad’s at 12:00 noon.  It was really good to see him and he is looking well.  Lindsey (my niece) picked us up from Dad’s at 4:00 pm and we were in bed fast asleep by 8:30 p.m.