13 August 2014

Awake at 4am [who needs wake up calls with body clocks ]

Into the shower…. Cold….but refreshing and definitely the way to get your eyes open.

Bags were all packed last night, so once Julia was ready…..which was virtually straight away….we took the gear downstairs, having decided to catch the 4.40am  shuttle rather than the 5.00am, just in case. Into the restaurant after checking out, for brekky, just a bowl of cereal and an orange juice.

Upon waking, it had been thundering and lightning, but now it had cleared and was fining up for the day. Even now at 4.35am [there were plenty of people milling around outside…..nearly all of them smoking……[ what at that time…? ] waiting for the bus.

Shuttle arrived 20 minutes late…? and you guessed it…..there was a mad dash for the seats. I’d said to Ju that it would happen and there was no way we were missing this bus. So turning the boxes on end we proceeded to push amongst the throngs and secure a place on board. No one offered any assistance [ knew they wouldn’t ] so it was a mad dash. At one point the bloody driver….a right useless git….started the engine and went to close the doors. No friggin way fella…..I yelled at him to stop which gave me just enough time to climb aboard and we set off.

At Helsinki airport we disembarked and made our way into the departure terminal….up the stairs….couldn’t fit bikes into elevator….to British Airways check in. After a few minutes we saw a nice Finnish girl who was losing her voice….who took our details and got ourselves and our bikes through the process. She did however tell us that we had a 30kg baggage allowance, rather than the 23kg we thought we had, after confirming it earlier with the airline. Now come on people…..surely it doesn’t take too much to all be on the same page, especially as we had given away or thrown out stuff because we didn’t think we could take it.

So, now we had time to relax whilst waiting for the flight, knowing that the bikes were taken care of.

She did tell us to see the service desk in London, as our Malaysia flight had us sitting apart.

At 8am we were off on a pretty crappy B.A. flight. The service was very average and we were served a cold roll and told to wait for half an hour for it to thaw out. Fantastic…..and if it’s that cold maybe I could crack a couple of teeth on it whilst I’m at it…!

Arrived at Heathrow after circling for 20 minutes, but still early. Landed first time I can ever recall at a major airport and walked down steps to the tarmac, to be transported by shuttle to the terminal.

From here for us, it was follow the signs to another shuttle to Terminal 4 for our Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpar. All good and arrived at passport control…..no queues…..on to service desk to get our seats changed so we could sit together. Had a chat to a nice Italian service operator who fixed it for us. On towards our departure gate and found a café for a nice breakfast….since we hadn’t eaten much in Helsinki. Saw here the news that the comic Robin Williams had committed suicide.

That I find extremely sad. Very often the case though with people who succeed in making others laugh. Their own lives are very dark usually. Boarded a very flash flight at 11.15am and took off at 12pm. Great seats…huge leg room and service brilliant…..so far.

Great flight….service brilliant…..with massive amount of leg room.

Into the transit lounge to wait it out for our final flight and into the homeward stretch. The wait in here was bloody awful….stinking hot….do they not know about air conditioning in Malaysia. Got chatting to a girl and her daughter who are heading back to N.Z. for a holiday to see her parents. She’s been living in England now for 11 years after going there for her O.E. No sign of her moving back to N.Z.

Flight was late leaving K.L. which meant we were going to be late into Auckland. This flight wasn’t as good. Plane wasn’t anywhere near as good….and the cabin crew were just doing what they were required to do and with no frills.

Eventually….with hardly any sleep overall….we landed in Auckland at 11.05pm. Cruised through the check points as most of the officials were pretty impressed with our venture. Had to wait a while in baggage claim though and it was freezing cold (well it was for Pete who refused to accept that he was heading back to a NZ winter and wore shorts).

Into Arrivals hall….called the hotel we were staying at and 15 minutes later a nice driver picked us up and whisked us to the Jet Park Inn. At this time of night we weren’t really interested as to what it looked like, but the room was very nice and the service good.

After a quick cup of tea we  crashed in a King sized bed and for the first time in a long while…..snuggled up to keep warm.