We are now in the tropics!

Well, 'one of the wettest places on Earth'. Which means it RAINS all the time! Fortunately the weather has been not so terrible so far, hopefully that keeps up.

The morning started off a couple of hundred kilometres away on the shores of Waikiki, for a final-day sunrise opportunity over the tall hotels of Waikiki Beach. There were several other tourists out on the pier waiting for the sun to rise, and it was pretty spectacular too:

Spectacular sunrise over Waikiki

Then packing. We will be spending the next week or so on the Big Island, and had booked ourselves on an afternoon flight to Hilo, on the north shore of the island and where all the rain supposedly ends up.

But first we had to get there! Cue a considerable wait for a shuttle, a stretch of roadworks holding up traffic, a huge queue outside the terminal for TSA security clearance, and what we thought was an enormous queue for the bag drop. Much squawking from my mother later, we arrived at the gate with plenty of time to spare.

Hawaiian flies 717s all around the islands, so I'll be getting used to these birds over the next few weeks. They're really, really skinny compared to their length, hence being known as one of the 'flying pencils' of the skies:

A regular fixture in Hawaii, the 717

Our takeoff runway was the 'Reef Runway', right out on the ocean. This meant a sharp right turn on takeoff and spectacular views out of the window towards downtown Honolulu:

Takeoff over Honolulu

Once that was complete, came the rest of a 35-minute hop to Hilo. As is customary on Hawaiian inter-island flights, there is a water or juice offering, which can be sat on your tiny tray table:

Hawaiian's tiny tray tables

Following was one of the fastest touchdowns I have ever seen, there must be a premium put on time for these short flights.

A couple of hours later we had a car, had gone to our hotel, a nearby supermarket and topped up on supplies. Tomorrow the weather looks to be decent and we should be heading out to some parks and waterfalls. Ciao!

Felicity says:

"Plenty of time to spare"???!!! Ten minutes is not plenty of time, it took me that time to get my blood pressure back to normal, I was convinced we were going to miss that flight. The only thing that saved us was the huge bag queue (100+ persons) was for mainland agricultural inspection... we found a much smaller queue for the inter-island flight. You don't think you have just a tad too much plane geek stuff in this blog Matthew? And you should be saying "Aloha", not "Ciao".

Trip Report - CX103

Back home! Woohoo! Now a review of the second segment of our flight back home - Cathay Pacific from Brisbane to Hong Kong, via Cairns.

I pick up where I left off in Hong Kong Airport, where we made the transfer from the arrivals to the departures area and waited for boarding. During that time, I took some plane geek photos. There were quite a few A380s, as well as an area where you could see the planes right as they touched down:

Plane geek photos in Hong Kong

We were introduced to the new liquids rule for flights into Australia - now it's identical to the US, you can't even refill water bottles after security, as there is a second check at the airbridge. I have no idea why, that's the whole purpose of security screening is it not?

We got access to a small priority queue as premium economy passengers, although we were basically lumped together with everyone at the liquids checking area halfway along the airbridge. The Cathay flight was on an A330, so a bit smaller and a few less people to deal with. The flight left late, but we managed to 'make up time' by the time we arrived in Cairns and then Brisbane. They are on time 80% of the time for a reason...

Our ride back to Oz

They served dinner - the only meal offered on the flight, despite the fact that we would arrive a few hours after breakfast. The food was a vast improvement on Air France's offering:

Dinner on Cathay

I know that people don't always like Asian food when they have just spent two weeks on Asian food, but it was quite nice having come from European foods. Bok choy and chicken with rice and Haagen Dazs was just the ticket! Cathay was much better and came around much more frequently with drinks and the like.

We arrived in Cairns a bit before 4:30. The airport was completely dead, but the security staff were surprisingly perky, and were up for a good chat while we waited for all the people in front of me to empty their bags of their stuff like amateurs. Dad made the observation on the way over that all the Asian tourists seemed to go to Tropical North Queensland, and indeed the flight was decidedly more empty after the Cairns stop.

Just after departure in Cairns, I managed a really nice photo of the sunrise with my phone. It never ceases to impress me:

Sunrise over the Pacific Ocean

Our entertainment system from Cairns to Brisbane consisted of watching the entertainment system being reset, and watching the Linux OS start up. Not so amusing for several other people, but surely you don't need entertainment on a less-than-2-hour flight?

Entertainment

In fact, I lie. We got a small breakfast pasty. Quite delicious too. They even came back with a hot chocolate after they said they couldn't source me one. They shouldn't have bothered - it was hot but it wasn't chocolate - it must have had a quarter-shot of chocolate in it.

Arrival in Brisbane, and fast forward to, well, fast-forwarding through the ePassport section and bag pick-up. Again, our 4 bags were literally in the first dozen to come out. My luggage has shown up early for the entire trip!

Trip Report - AF188

Greetings from Honkers, the midway point of our journey back Down Under.

This is my first time flying somewhere other than the back of the bus (economy class), with my upgraded return sector to premium economy so I could fly with dad. With Air France's premium economy comes several priority accesses to queues, including check-in and passport control.

Our experience began interestingly at the first of these priority queues, at check-in. As you know, check-in typically opens 3 hours before. We asked the 'greeter' at the priority queue if we could check in before then, and she said "yes, yes, the economy check-in queue is over that way". Ah, you don't even want to ask if we have a priority ticket? I may never travel premium class again, but really?

A quick check-in process would have combined with an even quicker passport control, had the priority passport control access not been seemingly blocked off. I said to dad, "let's see if it's open". We were allowed through, by ducking under the temporary barrier. So Air France gets a very low mark so far.

The priority access was very quick though, once we figured it out. We had a couple of hours to kill, but decided against €25 each to access the premium lounge, which is a compromise - you can buy access, which economy passengers can't do.

Eventually boarding time rolled around. It took near enough to 40 minutes to cram the 500 people on to the A380. We made our way to our seats, once again at the back of the upper deck:

Premium economy

They say first impressions are lasting impressions, and it was about what I expected. It was a decent amount of extra space, but not amazing. Food and drink service was reasonably plentiful throughout the flight, although it wasn't that much more frequent than what I experienced in economy on the way over:

Dinner and brekky

Here you see Air France's two meal offerings. The dinner was quite reasonable, with a pineapple upside down cake and a bit of stale bread (stale bread seems to be a thing on Air France, judging by internet reviews). Breakfast was worse. A sausage with some beans and eggs that didn't even look like eggs. More stale bread. Even the hot chocolate wasn't that great. And to think this was on the A380, which Air France spruiks as the 'best of the best'. I don't think I'll be back.

The flight was on time though, so I guess that was something. A quick look around at Hong Kong Airport, before we board our Cathay flight back to Oz!

A big day of travel

Today was my 'monster' day of travelling. I was meeting up with dad at the end of today in Arinsal, which is a tiny town about half an hour north of Andorra la Vella, the capital of Andorra. Yes, here's how to Google it because you don't know where Andorra is: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=andorra

This necessitated getting a train from my accommodation to the airport, a flight from Rome to Barcelona, a bus from Barcelona Airport to Andorra la Vella, and a local bus from there to Arinsal.

I'd bought a train ticket the night before, and the trains are quite frequent to the airport (every 15 minutes from 5:30am). The train left on time at 7:30, and I got to the airport in plenty of time for my flight with Vueling. Vueling is a Spanish low-cost airline with a base in Rome and Barcelona, so I thought they would be organised. Eeeeeeh! Wrong answer.

I arrived at the check-in area, where there were two separate queues - one for bag drop, one for check in. Both were so long I couldn't tell which was which, until I was told that I was in the check-in queue, not the bag drop queue (I had checked in online the night before).

Both European flights I got were completely paper-free - Vueling and Airberlin both accepted the mobile boarding pass at bag drop, at the gate, and on the plane. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER VIRGIN/QANTAS/JETSTAR/TIGER!

I was waved into an express queue, because the normal queues were moving a little slowly. The 'express queue' had about 10 people in it, and we were waiting in that queue for 25 minutes. Go figure. I went through in about 60 seconds, if that. Bloody novice travellers!

Having joined the uber-long security queue, I realised as I got to the front I had a full water bottle. D'oh! By this stage all my 'stuff' was in the box, and I was ready to quickly nick off to the rubbish bin to empty the bottle, less than 100m away. The nazi in the security queue made me pack all my crap BACK INTO my bags, go and empty the bottle, and rejoin the back of the queue. NOT HAPPY!

Vueling's flight schedule is identical to those in Australia. Our '1 hour and 50 minute' flight was delayed by 20 minutes leaving. Announcement: 'flying time 1 hour and 20 minutes, we will arrive 5 minutes early!' Congratulations, Vueling:

Our ride to Barcelona

After flying over the Tyrrhenian Sea and the island of Sardinia, we arrived in Barcelona, and to Vueling's largest terminal. We were dropped on the middle of the tarmac, to get a bus past about a dozen other Vueling planes. The terminal was actually quite nice, with lots of duty free shops but it was a wide-open space and not packed with people.

At the baggage claim (one of 18 in just one terminal!) I met an Australian girl who had been waiting 15 hours for her luggage from Paris. She was only staying in Barcelona for one day, and Vueling had promised her 4 times that 'it would be on the next Paris flight'. She was one of 20 people from 3 flights from Paris waiting for their bags. And Vueling said they required receipts for food reimbursement, but security wouldn't let her out, and then back in, to buy food, and the only thing in the terminal were receipt-free vending machines. Ouch!

I again had the magic touch, my bag was the second one out. After asking the information desk where I could find the long-haul bus terminal, I headed in the general direction and found the bus stop. I was originally supposed to wait nearly 4 hours in Barcelona (in case the flight was delayed) for the bus, but there was one there leaving two hours earlier. With my atrocious Spanish, I eventually found out that I could jump on the early bus.

The travel time to Andorra was just under 4 hours. In that time, we passed through some spectacular scenery in the Pyrenees:

The Pyrenees opening out

Once we arrived at the bus station in Andorra la Vella (which was very busy, because there's no airport or train station in the entire country), I managed to find the local bus stop, where I waited about 20 minutes for one of the local buses. The buses are quite small, seating about 40 people. Eventually the bus showed up and a hair-raising half-hour later I arrived in Arinsal. The bus stop was right outside the hotel!

I signed in to the hotel, and found out that dad had stayed here for an extra night. Dad eventually got back from a walk 'up the hill' across from the hotel, and after a couple of hours we headed down to the in-house restaurant. As part of our hotel rates, we managed half-board for an extra €5 per person. It was an amazing investment - it's a full 3-course meal every night:

Tonight's menu

I had the Putanesca pasta, grilled pork chops and lemon sorbet. The quantity was amazing, and the quality was pretty good for the price we paid.

That's all for today from Arinsal, until tomorrow, when we're planning on a hike (or walk) in the Pyrenees.

Trip Report - Airberlin

Well that was a heck of an adventure! There were several moments of panic today, for various reasons.

I had thought about going to Checkpoint Charlie this morning, but it seemed a bit of a wasted trip out just to see one small thing, take a photo and go back. Maybe next time, when I hopefully come back for a bit longer.

Having packed, I followed Google's advice on how to get to the airport. European public transit means that 3 different buses/trains should only take 40 minutes. Having got an U-Bahn and an S-Bahn to the transfer point, where one of the airport buses stops, I was astonished at the number of people waiting. There must have been more than 100 people, at least.

The buses are 15 metres long, so there's plenty of room, and they're supposed to be every 7 minutes. We waited 15 minutes for the first one, which somehow fitted another 30 people on. By this stage more people were arriving and attempting to push their way in front to get the next bus, while others were sharing a taxi.

I waited another 15 minutes for the next bus and attempted to cram myself in. I lost my marbles at a couple of people trying to get past me to get on first, who had only just showed up. "Oy! Just wait!" "Oh I don't want to go past you." "And yet that's exactly what you're doing..." Or something to that effect.

Finally squeezing on to the bus, it was another 15 minutes to the airport. By the time I arrived at the airport I was down to 65 minutes before takeoff, which is 20 minutes before check-in closes. After a long walk to the check-in terminal (having already checked in online), the bag drop was rather painless. I also found time to grab a bagel from one of the shops at the airport:

Today's lunch from Marché

Security screening is different in Berlin as well. ALL electronic devices have to come out of your bag, sunglasses and watches have to come off. It's not quite like the States (or so I'm told), but it was still a little different.

I was flying Airberlin today, and when boarding rolled around, I was a bit confused on the tarmac - everyone was going towards an aircraft which was clearly a Niki aircraft - I found out later that the two airlines interchange all their staff, planes etc.:

Our Airberlin ride to Vienna? Huh?

The flight itself was a lightning-quick 55 minute hop from gate to gate. I managed to have a quick snooze in the 20 minutes between tables down and tables up. After we landed, we taxiied at Formula-1-like speed towards the gate.

The rest of the trip was relatively pain-free. My bag was one of the first out. Once it came out I headed to the S-Bahn terminal and caught a train into the city, connecting to my accommodation. I'm staying somewhere different for my second and third nights in Vienna, so I'll catch up on my second night. Until then!

Trip Report - AF187

One of Air France's A380s was my ride from Hong Kong to Paris. Flying an A380 sector was one of my 'things that I had to do this trip', and I was looking forward to it. The timing was quite awkward - the flight left Hong Kong at 12:50am for an 8:00am arrival in Paris.

The first problem I had on the trip started before I even went down the aerobridge - my ticket was pulled up for being from Qantas - because it was an onward ticket, they had to call up Qantas (or something like that) before they would let me on.

I'd taken photos of the A380 from the outside, but the inside feels even bigger. I'd managed to snag a seat up the back of the top deck, where there's a mini-cabin of 5 rows of economy seats in 2-3-2 behind the premium economy cabin. So I basically walked the length of the plane after boarding. It's mind-boggling to think that there is that much again on the bottom deck (albeit about 200 more seats on the bottom, which is mostly economy):

The outside view

The seat itself had a window that wasn't suited very well for taking photos out of - there was a fair gap between the inside and outside part of the window of about 30cm. There was a small container next to my window seat as well to store stuff in. Lucky I didn't, because I didn't manage to get it open until we landed, despite numerous attempts.

There was a gentleman sitting in said seat when I boarded the plane - evidently he made the same mistake I made on the Qantas flight. He hastily shifted to his actual seat when I arrived:

My seat

The fact that this time the flight was actually full meant I could barely take any photos. The best I managed was camera phone of the meal trays, and that was all. Dinner came about an hour into the flight - at 2am - and consisted of a choice of pork or chicken. Having chosen the chicken, this was what I ended up with:

Dinner

The salad was raw tomato and prawns. That's two big crosses. There was a small camembert cheese, a bread roll, some fruit, and chicken with 'roasted' potatos and beans, and a tasty dessert pastry. The camembert wasn't to my taste, but I'm not a big cheese eater so that wasn't a major drawback. Overall the meal was basically a typical 'airline food' experience.

After dinner I tried to get some sleep. I was able to do so in fits and starts, managing about half a dozen naps of 3/4 hour or so. There wasn't much else brought out by the cabin crew, just a couple of drinks runs.

At about 5am Parisian time, so about 8 hours after the first meal, breakfast came out. The cabin crew asked us to keep our windows shut until breakfast, so that everyone could sleep. Breakfast was much the same, but with a chipolata, a hash brown and eggs. The eggs were a bit tasteless, which meant I could actually eat them, and the hash brown was a bit sad-looking. There was more fruit, a bread roll and jam, and another delicious dessert pastry. I also got a hot chocolate, which was nice, but not a touch on Qantas':

Breakfast

With a couple of hours left, I started watching Need for Speed. I'd wanted to see it for a while because it had Harrison Gilbertson in it. He's an Australian actor that I've seen in a couple of other movies and TV shows where he did a good job. The movie was OK, the plot was a little predictable but it was pretty much your average action movie.

With the movie over, we started our descent into Charles de Gaulle Airport. The first thing you notice is how the city is spread out so much yet has so many more apartment buildings than Australian cities. The airport itself is so massive that we flew a parallel approach with another Air France A380, landing on opposite sides of the airport.

Once we taxiied and taxiied, and taxieed some more, we arrived at our gate in Terminal 2E. Once again I was lucky enough that the flight crew allowed me to take some photos of the cockpit. The cockpit of the Airbus A380 was much larger than I've seen on twinjets:

The cockpit of the A380

The airport itself is very organised, with clear directions to baggage collection. From Terminal 2E, you have to catch two trains to get to the baggage collection area. Some of the people getting off our flight had great difficulty communicating with the French person herding people onto the trains though.

Once I arrived I was only waiting about 5 minutes or so to collect my bag, after which I headed towards the RER station. There was a queue to buy tickets, because the automated ticket machines outside only accepted coins and credit cards, of which I had neither. It was slightly cheaper for me to get the RER, because I was only going as far as Le Bourget, instead of to the centre of Paris.

Checking out for this report, I'll add another post after Day 1 in Paris!

Trip Report - QF97

Trip Report - QF97

My first of two flights taking me to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris is QF97, leaving Brisbane at 10:30am for a 5:20pm arrival into Hong Kong.

Having arrived at a virtually deserted gate about 90 minutes before the scheduled departure, I saw our ride to Hong Kong waiting at the gate: an Airbus A330-300, nicknamed Kununurra. It's one of the more dated A330s in Qantas' fleet, but as people say, it gets you from A to B.

Our ride to Hong Kong

After roaming the proverbial departure halls and taking some photos, I walked back to the gate, which was still rather empty, and waited out another hour before boarding is opened. Mum had warned me before she dropped me off that I would have to climb over someone if I asked for a window seat. Pfffft! They were processing so few people that there wasn't even a queue for boarding, and everyone was using the premium queue.

They closed the doors relatively quickly and taxiied out right on schedule. Once the doors were closed, I looked up and down and discovered that there was no-one next to me or in the row in front, and there was no-one for the next 4 rows behind me! Another gentleman said he flew the same flight 3 weeks ago and it was packed. I guess I'll have to take his word for it, but I can see how Qantas' international arm is losing a bucketload.

Also on the flight I met a young guy who was travelling on to Manila from Hong Kong, and a couple who were representing Australia in a bridge competition just outside of Hangzhou, China. Most interesting people.

My palace in the sky for the next 8.5 hours.

The first thing I noticed was that Qantas International has the same nazi approach to electronic devices, that they 'must be completely switched off until we get to 36,000 feet'. I'm told that European airlines don't follow this policy - that will be road-tested in a few hours. As if waiting for the seatbelt sign to disappear, the cabin crew whisked shut the business class separator curtain as soon as we had reached altitude.

According to iQ's flight path, we travelled directly over Yeppoon. Fabulous! A shout out to Uncle Bill and Auntie Marie. This flight path shows all the popular destinations on the map between Australia and Hong Kong, including Pentecost Island.          Nope, me neither.

The iQ screen was delightfully small - any smaller and I would need binoculars to see it. OK, not really - but it certainly isn't "the best entertainment system in the world", as it advertises.

The main meal came out less than an hour into hour trip - about 11:30 local time. I was served by Georg (pronounced Ge-yorg), which is an unmistakably German name. A German stewarding on a flight from Australia to Hong Kong? So after lunch, we talked in German whenever we saw each other for the rest of the flight. Speaking a foreigner's native language with them (outside their own country) never fails to be rewarded with a big smile.

The menu - and the result

But back to the food. Let me translate the above menu for you:

Rocket and parmesan salad = rocket and parmesan in a little dish, with a small vinaigrette dressing.
Chipotle beef with mixed rice and corn = rice with a bit of corn, and a few bits of meat interspersed with capsicum
Cheese and crackers = 2 crackers, 1 bit of cheese
Chocolate mouse with cherry and coconut was the only exception - it was exactly what it said on the label.

Overall Qantas gets a tick for this - it was perfectly consumable and serviceable airline food.

Georg came around again and asked me if I wanted a tea, coffee, or hot chocolate. I asked for a hot chocolate, which was absolutely marvellous - a couple of marshmallows and perfect strength. It was the best hot chocolate I've had for some time.

I found out that Georg is from Düsseldorf, which is just north of Frankfurt, although he lived in Berlin when he was younger. I told him about my plans for three days in Berlin, and lamented the fact that I couldn't get to Düsseldorf, to which he replied "next time". I can't but agree - Düsseldorf is a little more old-town and less booming-city compared to Frankfurt and Berlin.

The inimitable Georg

A bit under halfway through the flight, I got up to stretch my legs and to see how many of the other seats were occupied. The back half of the economy cabin, behind the toilets, had been completely blacked out - ALL the windows were shut, and there was barely anyone there - I reckoned there were less than 100 people for 271 seats. On the return trip I noticed that I had sat in 31A instead of 30A - oops! Good thing the flight was so empty.

There was the token handout of apples, and about halfway through the flight the cabin crew brought around ice cream - coconut and pineapple Weis bars. Kudos to Qantas, but the green and gold felt a little tacky.

As I type we are passing over Davao, and the Filipino border - and coming across some solid turbulence. As soon as we got into the Asian region, the cloud formations became stunning, like erupting volcanos and walls of water falling from the sky:

 Fluffy and not-so-fluffy Asian clouds.

For the most part, the rest of the flight was interrupted only by the dull hum of the engines right outside my seat. I watched 3 Days to Kill, the new release starring Kevin Costner, and thought about watching a couple of others. Qantas actually has decent new releases - RoboCop, The Monuments Men, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, The Lego Movie, and the sequel to that Hunter Games thing. Oh wait, Hunger Games. My bad.

About an hour out of Hong Kong the cabin crew came around again, this time with vegetarian pizza. It was yet another delicious example of airline food - I may yet change my opinion about Qantas! Air France has got a high standard to compete against.

Vegetarian pizza - yum!

With less than half an hour until touchdown, the weather forecast was announced as "partly cloudy". What that really means is that the Hong Kong smog was in effect. After touching down, it was a short-ish taxi around the apron before we docked.

I was the last off the plane, and the flight crew generously allowed me to have a look inside the cockpit and snap some photos. It was great to see the difference between an older A330 and the new Dreamliner cockpit I got a glimpse of back in December.

The A330's cockpit