Greetings from South Africa!
I'm currently in Johannesburg. More about that in next entry.
I landed on African soil on Tuesday afternoon after what was a rather long way round of getting here. But the sun was out and I was happy to be back.
Monday had seen me heading down to Heathrow, avoiding the closed-off M40 due to that crazed biker murder. It struck me that the 2 main news headlines were about the M40 and the arriving protesters at Heathrow. Good day to travel then...
I've never been to Terminal 3 at H'row. It's a bit horrible. I think I was there on a quiet day too.
On arrival, and having negotiated that most of it is being refurbished and therefore is closed off, I was greeted by an Emirates representative who told me I'd have to wait another 2 hours before I could check in. Why do they insist you get there early, only to send you to the restaurants? Is is a ploy to get you to spend more money??? She wasn't even interested that I'd already checking in online and just needed to drop my bags. I fought my way over to the lift to be faced by another heathrow attendant who tried to tell me I couldn't take my trolley upstairs. I tried to explain to him that I didn't want to take it up either... but the 'nice' lady at Emirates wouldn't let me through... He started swearing, not really at me, but it's still irritating.. so I ignored him and got into the lift only to get out and be greeted by a whole rack of trolleys... So I have no idea what jobsworth downstairs was going on about...
In any case, I decided to attempt check-in again earlier than I was supposed to. The best thing about online check-in is that I didn't have to queue. Unfortunately, I did have to pay excess baggage, although only about half of what I should have paid, cos I argued I'm taking stuff for an orphanage...
Next stop was duty free. Now this is where Terminal 3 became more interesting... I did have to purchase a pashmina as I realised the moment I walked near to Emirates area that most of the women were completely robed in black and my strappy top possibly might cause offense in the extremely Arab state of Dubai... I did wear it all around Dubai airport, unfortunately I could only afford a woollen one from tie-rack and that was rather warm for me in the already sweltering 35 degree heat of 8am in Dubai!!! You live and learn, eh.
Flight from London to Dubai. Mediocre. Food was thrown at us at various intervals. I refused it as it was possibly about 1.30am by the time they got to us. We'd taken off at 10pm. Having forced us not to carry any water, they didn't bring any round until half way through the flight. So considerate of the needs of passengers!?! Great video console in the seat in front of me though. Didn't sleep much.
Flight from Dubai to Johannesburg. This was a longer, but day flight. And I'm glad I did this one as otherwise I might have thought emirates was a rubbish airline. The views were good. The movies were excellent. As he's now a friend, I thought it only fair to catch up with Jude's latest offerings of movies and so I watched 'Breaking and Entering' (Anthony Minghella director, interesting and quite perturbing movie), followed by highlights from 'The Holiday' (already seen it) I also caught up with some lost (for me) episodes of FRIENDS and a particularly entertaining Disney film called 'The WILD' (much better than 'Madagascar' in my view - although there were no penguins). This film saw Ryan the lioncub head off to the wild by mistake and his Dad Samson with friends Benny the squirrel, a giraffe and Nigel the Koala (easily the best British koala I've ever seen on the silver screen) to help him out. Lots of fun.
Didn't discover the music or the computer games until just before landing...
The food, though, was really not nice. It reminded me of airline food of long ago.
Long way of getting to South Africa. But it's cheaper. The fuel pump is in the back garden in UAE.
My lovely lovely helpful friend R picked me up from the airport and dropped my at new friend Y's house, after a few hours of Joburg traffic. And that's where I am now. It's Friday night and I need to sleep after 2 days of the most amazing time with God. But there's more about that later...
