Narita to London - 1st April

Awoke early after a thoroughly deep sleep, and then prepared for the flight. Everyone who wants to enter Narita Airport has their Passport checked on the shuttle bus BEFORE entering the airport precinct.

After our leisurely breakfast in the Sakura Lounge, we finally boarded, to be greeted once again by those amazing cabin crew, one of whom was the only male amongst all those beautiful Japanese ladies. His name was Evan, and we later discovered he was born in northern Spain, but spoke fluent Japanese, and perfect English. He said English was the harder one to learn!

This flight was the longer one and when you look at the screen and see "Time to London - 12 hours and 5 minutes", it can put you right off. It is soooooo tedious and boring, except for the fact that Lee had the window seat, and saw (and took photos) of the scenes below. Vast sheets of ice and snow, which seemed to be breaking up, especially near the ocean. The flight goes OVER the top and across Siberia and the Barent Sea, amongst others.

However, after many hours of crossword puzzles, and looking at a small screen of where the plane is, and then watching "Casablanca" right through for the first time, you look up again and see that you are within 3 hours of your destination, and for me at least, that is great, and it seems to go much better from there on.

We descended across Finland and Norway, and then the little plane picture showed us crossing the North Sea, and we came in from the East, ready to begin our flight path down to Heathrow, only to be told that there was a traffic build-up, and we would have to circle for a while!

We finally touched down about 5.30pm London time, and I was never so glad to be on the ground again. We realised later, that we had been on the go for 22 hours, (and chasing daylight all that time by flying West),  but things were not going to get any better when we had to go through Immigration and Customs.

Stay tuned...