Packing, tick, farewells, tick, Heathrow, tick

Tuesday 17 September

Packing, tick, farewells, tick, Heathrow, tick.

Early start, no mucking about, solve packing overweight problem - left some behind for Rach to send on with next parcel!

We said our brave farewells to the children

 

and we watched them leave in the car.  

Last session with Hannah before Tess arrived at 9.45 and we had a brief chat, big hug for Hannah and we were out of the door.  

We had a good run with no hold ups and arrived at the airport in good time.  Rachel parked the car and we piled our luggage on a trolley and headed for the check in.  We walked the length of the terminal before coming to gate A which told us it was being refurbished and that we were to go back to the start!  No worries we had plenty of time.  We went back to where we had come in and waited at the end of the long queue and after about five minutes David wandered off to check the gate where we checked in, we were waiting in a queue for Wales!! The one we needed was right there in front of us and had no one waiting, how strange we thought, but we wheeled our trolley in and we got checked in straight away, our cases were fine.  So off for a coffee and pastry.  I realised that I only had shorts on and I would probably need my travel trousers, fortunately they were in my carry on bag, so quickly got them out and went to the ladies to change.  I caught up with Rach and David at 'Paul's' where Rachel had bought me my favourite pastry, 'Escargot au raisin', well I had to take a photo of this to jog my memory...

..... couldn't find my iPhone, "DONT PANIC, DONT PANIC" as I  searched through my bags, Rach and David searched all around the trolley, Rach and I set off to retrace our steps, she went to the ladies and I scanned the floor asking a few people on the way if they had seen it, I looked and looked, ended up at the check in counter as hope was fading, and lo and behold, there it was, relief flooding back, I could have kissed her, but she was British!  I didn't get away with it that easy though, she asked me a few searching questions like describe the screen saver on my phone - easy my lovely family in Hanmer last holiday with Liam in the pushchair.  No issues.  So I hugged my iPhone instead and flew back down the terminal to my 'Escargot au raisin' and to a relieved Rachel and David.  Rachel assured me that nothing else could go wrong because three things were over!  Me? Superstitious?

We got on the plane, no problems, just a short flight, 1hr 50m, we made good time and landed about 5 minutes ahead of time.  Then we stopped taxiing, and waited, the captain came over the audio to tell us that we had a short wait until the plane sitting at our gate had moved off.  15 mins later the captain again apologising and saying that they were doing all they could, etc, etc.  And this was a British Airways plane, could understand it if it was Easyjet!  We were stuck on the Tarmac for 40 mins, the poor captain was beside himself, he kept us up to date, but... he told us to complain to BA because this wasn't good enough, it happens too frequently.  Some people missed connections, they were able to hold a plane to San Francisco which many passengers were on.  He was at the door when we left the plane, still apologising.  I gave him full marks for keeping us informed, luckily for us it had no impact because our plane to Tokyo wasn't due to leave for another 5 hours.

We checked in to departures and got all the customs things over with and had 5 hours to wait util boarding our plane to Tokyo.  We were getting a bit hungry so looked for somewhere to eat, whatever we did we had to pay twice the normal price, so we saw an English type pub and had a burger and chips.  Next to us was a couple from Dallas, Texas, who go overseas regularly, but never as far as Noo Zealand!  We had quite a long chat to them and it helped pass the time.

The ANA (All Nippon Airways) departures lounge wasn't open until about an hour before take off, but we managed to spend the time reading, etc.

When it opened we sat in there and watched people - becoming one of my hobbies.  There were a couple of Mums with strollers and small babies, and the lovely Japanese cabin stewards took such care of them.  There was one mum with a small baby in her arms trying to fold down her stroller and a male steward took the baby, he did so well, he must be a dad!

As they were boarding David and I were sitting watching and surrounded by our take-on backpacks and luggage, and this same charming male (of Arabic descent) cabin steward came over and asked us if we would like some help and boarded us early.  There some advantages in being grey!

So that was a very good start to our flight of 11.45 hours to Tokyo.  We were lucky enough to have a spare seat in our centre 4 and it made the world of difference being able to spread out a bit.  We had a nice meal around 9.00pm and a glass of wine.  I have to say that Air Nippon cabin stewards are the best I have come across, they ALWAYS smile, are helpful and willing to run around passengers to ensure their comfort, and the best thing is they fold the ends of the toilet paper into a triangle - each time I went to the toilet it had been wiped down and the toilet paper was folded.  Totally unbeatable service!!!