We arrived at Brisbane International Airport with a bit of spare time, which we spent just being with our families. Checking our luggage was amusing - both of our large suitcases were 29.5kg (with a limit of 30kg), and our carry-ons were 6.5kg and 6.9kg (with a limit of 7). Apparently we packed well!
Saying goodbye to our families was very difficult. We all did very well pretending to be cheerful until it was time for us to go through to customs - then the tears came. They started of course with the mums, then migrated to the dads, which set both of us off, which in turn set off the siblings. It was very surreal to realise I might not see those faces again in person for a year or more (thankfully we have Skype and FaceBook and Facetime!). I did fairly well at holding myself together until we reached the terminal, when it all came crashing down. Nevertheless, I pulled out my excitement at the journey ahead, and we boarded the plane to our back-of-the-section seats.
Having no one behind you on a plane seems relatively pointless as there are so many people everywhere else, but it turned out to be very nice. We could lean our chairs back as much and as often as we liked, and didn't have to worry about noisy people/children behind us. We synchronised our entertainment for the first part (watching Furious 7 - a very emotionally confusing movie, as much of it was about Paul Walker's character needing to return home after 'one last job' to be with his family). I chose the chicken for dinner (in an oyster sauce - tasted like hospital food, though the little nibblies that came with it were nice), and Mr chose the chilli beef. After the movie finished, we both decided to try and sleep - this turned out quite successful, with us each getting about 5-6 hours of broken sleep. When we woke, we both messed around with games and shows/music for the remainder of the flight. For our onboard breakfast we both went with a frittata, which I didn't particularly enjoy, though again the other things on the tray were nice.
After this enormous time sitting, we were very pleased to stand and disembark in Dubai. We arrived there at 5.30am local time, but even so it was already 35 degrees Celcius outside the airport. We did a few laps of our terminal, looking through the duty free and having a free meal at McDonald's (supplied by Emirates because our stop-over was long). Then it was back on to the plane for the next leg of our journey. As it was day time, we were able to see the Dubai landscape as we flew out of the country. We were both struck by how brown and dry it was. There were large dust clouds covering much of the city and outer parts of the country. But it was also incredibly beautiful - I've never seen anything like it.
The next few hours were spent watching The Kingsmen - a movie I thoroughly enjoyed. It has loads of ridiculous humour mixed in with action and dapper-looking men. We both chose the chicken option for lunch, this time with a wine or two, and enjoyed it more than we did the dinner. The rest of this flight I spent listening to music and playing games or staring out the window, while Mr watched Galavant - a show he said is a whole lot of 20-something boy humour mixed with a musical. I enjoyed watching the changing landscape, and seeing which countries we were flying over (that we will hopefully visit some day soon!). We also both managed to nap for about an hour.
Soon enough it was time to depart our flight, and Enter London!
We are staying in a hotel a bit out of the city, which meant navigating the public transport system with our luggage and very little sleep since the first flight almost 20 hours ago. We decided to take the Heathrow Express train (even with the utterly absurd £25 charge each), which got us into the city in 15 mins. From here we swapped to another train for about 15 mins again, then we had to negotiate with a bus driver to let us take our luggage on his bus. In between all this, poor Mr had to haul all 60kg of our large luggage up and down train station staircases where escalators and elevators weren't working (thank you!!). We spent the next 40 mins struggling to keep our luggage from rolling all over the place, while staying upright ourselves and not falling asleep/passing out. In the end, we got off the bus near our hotel, went up some very dodgy elevators, and collapsed onto our bed.
Unfortunately for us, we had to keep ourselves awake a little while longer - it wasn't even dinner time yet, and if we slept then, we wouldn't sleep that night. So we both had a long awaited shower, and off we went, staggering along trying not to pass out (even though the exhaustion was so real that it continuously felt like the world was tipping over), for a walk around the local area to find some food. We ended up at the local chippy, where we had our very first, very nice, British Fish & Chips.
Then, thankfully, back to our hotel and to the first proper sleep we'd had in about 50 hours.
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