Europe 2023, August 9th - 10th

Left for Melbourne Airport around Wednesday 5pm after a busy last day of work, but at least I didn't get stuck in a planned 4:30pm meeting. Had to deal with one of those trains that keeps stopping and starting in between every station, but still arrived at the airport by 6:30pm.

Had a very quick bag drop and security check, even with people who couldn't understand how to walk through an automatic smart gate who were holding up the whole line. The longest queue was waiting for Hungry Jacks for a late dinner meal - since it was the only fast food option after passing through security.

We boarded roughly on time at 9:15pm and soon we were getting served meals and snacks through the middle of the night. The meal schedule seems quite strange, but since you're not getting much sleep you probably need a bit of extra food for energy to deal with the exhaustion.

I purchased a seat in premium economy for a bit more comfort to try and avoid my usual back and leg pains, I also had the rare scenario of nobody sitting next to me but it wasn't much benefit since the arm rests couldn't be lifted up. There's a bit more space between each row and the leg rest was an improvement but I still struggled to getting any long periods of sleep due to being seated in an upright position.

It felt like it took forever travelling across Australia then time seemed to go a bit quicker. I didn't watch any movies or TV since I tried to rest and sleep instead - however unsuccessful that ended up being. Just about everyone else seemed to be watching Guardians Of The Galaxy 3.

Finally landed in Dubai after nearly 14 hours of travel at around 5am local time. Despite the time of day there was still people everywhere in the huge airport terminal. Got into the gate waiting area then boarded but took nearly an hour before taking off. This time it was only a 7-8 hour flight but felt like we were never going to get across mainland Europe.

I registered for the vegan meal options since there was no vegetarian option in the booking process, which is close enough. Being a custom meal you get served first which is good, except then you're stuck with the meal tray sitting on your lap for like half an hour until they come back to collect them all at once.

I didn't watch any movies again, but someone in front was watching Fall that seemed ok, although I saw some of the ending already.

Finally arrived in London and found it's super easy to get out of Heathrow airport now - automatic smart gate, bags arrived quickly, then walk straight out of customs in the "nothing to declare" line. It was very different to a previous trip where I remember standing in a customs line for like half an hour as a non-UK and non-EU resident - no benefits for being part of the Commonwealth.

I tried to use my bank card at a some random airport ATMs on the way through but they didn't work, even though I'd registered all my cards for travel.

At least my credit card worked to buy an Oyster card - 7 GBP for the card and then whatever credit you want to put on it. As I later learned, given the whole system supports "contactless" credit card payments there's not much point in having an Oyster card anymore, except for kids and people without credit cards I suppose - you get the same daily cap features either way too. Most people seemed to use credit card or the equivalent Apple or Google Pay apps.

My first trip to Paddington was on a slow train blamed on congestion, that was already feeling a bit too familiar to every other day with Metro Trains in Melbourne. I wasn't in a hurry as the hotel check-in wasn't until 3pm, and I ended up arriving at the hotel just a few minutes before that. I was pretty tired by this point from limited sleep in over 36 hours but still surviving.

My bank card worked at an ATM from an actual bank branch next to the hotel, so I had a bit of emergency money now. I had been using my Optus data roaming since Dubai but it's a fixed cost of $5 per day for 5GB regardless of use, so a bit expensive to use for 25 days. Instead I pre-purchased a UK + EU sim card online with about 30GB data for a month - not a heap of data but should be enough. I tried to switch it over and restarted the phone, but it just kept saying no connection, even though it was supposed to be activated at 4am GMT. Sent the company an email in the hope it would be fixed soon.

Had some supermarkets near the hotel, just got some bread and donuts for a small dinner as I'd completely lost track of my meal timeline. There was no fridge in the room which was a little disappointing, but had a free breakfast at least.

I'd done nothing but sitting down for nearly two days but had really sore legs, so I only managed a short afternoon run for about four kilometres around nearby Hyde Park. It was quite a warm afternoon, a good change from Melbourne winter, lots of different paths going through the park and people and bikes everywhere. Something I discovered quickly is people seem to not consistently walk on one side of the footpath or the other. You would think people would keep left to match driving on the road, but that rule doesn't work as they also stand on the right side of escalators instead.

I got some Pepsi Max Cherry from the express supermarket across the road afterwards, definitely the best flavour of all the Pepsi Max releases. I tried these weird skittles without the shell, they were not good at all.