Getting to the \u00e6roport was fairly uneventful, and the Airbus (bus going to airport, not plane at airport) was pulling up as I got to the stop, which was very convenient.
\nAs a result, I got to the airport VASTLY early, so I’m killing time, as it were. The people of Emirates were nice enough to open their check-in counters for all the days flights, so I am, at least, not lugging all of my luggage around.<\/p>\n
I next see my luggage in London (I hope)<\/em>, a good number of hours from now. — time passes —<\/p>\n This is a very<\/em> nice aircraft; The walnut trim around the windows & on the wee handle for the blind is particularly<\/em> classy.<\/p>\n In-flight entertainment includes cameras in the nose & up on the tail, to show where we’re going, a camera looking down, to see where we are (while waiting for push-away, I was having trouble working out what the hatch shown on-screen was. I think<\/strong> it was the roof of the plane moving vehicle, based on how it moved around<\/em>, and a bunch of movies, including Snowpiercer, which I’ve been wanting to see.<\/p>\n Currently flying over cloud & ocean.<\/p>\n — tick tock tick tock —<\/p>\n OK, I’ve watched all but the last 20 minutes of Snowpiercer, which was … violent. Also good, and very odd. — tic tic tic tic —<\/p>\n Yeah, not so much on the row-to-myself front. Dubai Airport is very big. — more time passes —<\/p>\n As I’d hoped, the daytime flight gave me the chance to Ooh & Ahh over interesting scenery, as seen from very high up. Figuring out where the hell the plane was took some doing at times, and demonstrates that I probably should have looked up where the borders are, or put a map on my phone or something.<\/p>\n The Emirates planes are very nice, and cabin crew seemed to spend the entire time handing people things. Hot towels. Meals. Bringing around a tray of drinks in the middle of a 14-hour flight. That sort of thing. I think, were I to do this flight route again, I’d break my trip in Dubai. — ding ding —<\/p>\n Arrival in London was delayed by about a half-hour, all of which was spent in well-lit cloud, so the cameras showed nothing. Nice views of houses & the like on final approach to the runway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Getting to the \u00e6roport was fairly uneventful, and the Airbus (bus going to airport, not plane at airport) was pulling up as I got to the stop, which was very convenient. As a result, I got to the airport VASTLY early, so I’m killing time, as it were. The people of Emirates were nice enough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday-2014"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-2k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSomewhere north of 30 hours, in fact.<\/p>\n
\nI’ll watch the rest on the next leg, as we’ve been transferred off the plane at Sydney for a crew change, and presumably to get more passengers.
\nI’m not complaining if we don’t<\/em> get more passengers; I had a three-seat row to myself for the Auckland to Sydney bit, so I’m hoping that’ll continue for Sydney-Dubai.<\/p>\n
\nAlso, Sydney to Dubai is a long-ass flight. I knew it’d be a bunch of hours, but hadn’t realised just what that’d be like as the second<\/em> flight of a journey.
\nI did finish watching Snowpiercer, and watched Frozen, and a chunk of Captain America 2, and probably slept for a while.<\/p>\n
\nBloody enormous, in fact.
\nNot enough seating near the gates though.
\nGetting between the different concourses was pretty simple, and there’s a little train, though I can see it being a nightmare if you had a tight timeframe between flights.<\/p>\n
\nIt might just be me being too fat, but the bathrooms seem really small, even for an aircraft toilet.
\nOn the other hand, they do<\/strong> sell duty-free items on the plane. Not run into that before.
\nAlso, quite a range of TV & Movies. They even had episodes of “Taxi” on the Auckland to Dubai bit.<\/p>\n
\nA 19:45 trip, broken with a stop in Australia, is long, but it’s OK.
\nAdd on another 7:30 trip immediately after that, and it’s a hideous length of time to spend on a plane. I get a four-hour Dubai stop on the way back, so I’ll have to take better advantage of the delights of DBX. Buy Starbucks, perhaps?<\/p>\n