London calling...

We are here and it is snowing! A max of 3 degrees expected today, but who cares?

The flight was long but uneventful. We left Melbourne at around 4.40 pm with the intention that we would stay awake until our stopover at Singapore which was seven hours' flying time.  We 'more or less' achieved that (read Allan did and I didn't quite!). It was a brand new Airbus A380 - very quiet and comfortable - for economy!  We ate well too and the service was very friendly.

The new plane has a cool feature on its in-flight entertainment. Qantas has mounted a camera on the tail and you can keep an eye on any fires that break out in the engines (none for our flight). Fun watching take off and landing from that perspective, but a little spooky when the plane banks to turn and the horizon does a drunken tilt!

We had a couple of delays in Singapore - a rubbish bag in our parking spot delayed arrival until it was cleared, and traffic control issues in the skies over Afghanistan delayed departure.  Not sure what that was all about.

Singapore to London was a 13 hour flight completely in the dark for the whole journey. We landed at 5 am Saturday morning and made our way to the hotel by Underground, watching the snow fall (the Underground is not under the ground all the way from Heathrow Airport).  Arrived at the hotel just before 8 am and the lovely man let us check in early - lovely to have a hot shower and freshen up.

Both of us slept in fits and starts on the plane from Singapore but got enough sleep to feel reasonably fresh.  If we can stay awake now until a normal bedtime, I think we'll do not too bad on the jet lag.  Off to Oxford St now!