I have declared the blog to be final apart from any changes which I might make as other things occur to me or I find errors and fix them up Enjoy!!
As seems to be the case these days this trip started with taking the small dog to the friend who is looking after her. Tammy seemed to make herself at home and seemed to get on well, albeit it excitedly, with the friends dog. Here is hoping. (Update: small dog had a brilliant time with a Corgi playmate and excellent care.)
The drive to Sydney was fine, although a slight bummer that the car didn't have cruise control as expected. Fuel consumption was negligible!
We got slightly cranky with Emirates that the online check in seemed to achieve nothing. People who went to the 'normal process' seemed to get through as quick, or quicker, than we did. After this we browsed the duty free shops and saw Penfolds Grange – 2005 vintage – for a cheap $599.00! We ended up in the low-rent part of the international terminal. Somewhere along the way we saw a forecast for Dubai: a temperature range from 32 to 46C. So glad we are not stopping there.
The inflight entertainment was very comprehensive but it took me some time to work out. (I think I was stressing about the drive to Ingleby so not really relaxed.) There was an unusual icon appeared from time to time in the route map sequence. Eventually I realised that one part of it was the cube in Mecca which the hadjis parade around and this icon was indicating the direction of the Holy City. At one point the map showed an airspeed of 957kph and a ground speed of 785kph, which resolves to a head wind of 172 kph. That bit – across central Australia was rather bumpy. The red wine was excellent – 2007 St Emilion appelation controlee. The 'beers' offered were Budweiser (US version); Heineken or Amstel Light. I see a new objectivefor CAMRA!
The airport at Bangkok was rather dowdy. Outside temperature was 33C hot at midnight. After a short leg to Dubai we found it to be 33C there at 5am. The place was a hive of activity in a very impressive structure. A particular hive was the dunnies which seemed to be well undersupplied.
For some reason our plane parked a fair way from the terminal (given the size of the UAE we may have been in the next country). As we bussed to the building I recorded 4 species of birds: probably all on my list from 2005. The amount of construction activity observable as we had headed to the terminal was most impressive: my impression (from the return trip) was that considerable progress had been made in three weeks, but we didn't take a comparson picture. Here is the way over:
The flight to Manchester was reasonably unremarkable except for the number of crying babies in our part of the plane. There were a couple of good views from the plane:
- the Burq al Haj in Dubaii: currently the world's tallest structure (not visible through the murk); and
- a large (say 50 turbines) wind farm about 1km offshore in the North Sea. The mst astonishing thing to me was that at 10,000m (ie 10 kilometres away !!!) altitude even my crappy eyes could see the blades turning! (I didn't have the camera ready for taking a snap of these.)
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