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Europe 2008 Stage 1 London
Wed 09/17/08 (day 1)
Brisbane to London
Brisbane to Brunei, Wednesday September 17.
We started off with a bit of drama at the Brisbane Airport. We arrived with plenty of time to spare so we sat . As you taxi to the airport terminal it appears to be small, but reasonably modern. But once you down to balance out some of our luggage (one bag was slightly overweight). After a few minutes we wandered over to the Royal Brunei check-in. Surprisingly, there was no queue at all. At the counter they asked us whether our travel agent had told us that the flight schedule had changed…. take-off was now 12:40pm (not 2pm), lucky we were early. Much to recommend about a late arrival though. We ended up with a personal escort through customs, security and boarding. We missed out on a couple of hours of boredom waiting in the departure lounge and we also saved a fortune by not being able to wander through the duty free area and food shops.
Royal Brunei
Not a bad airline. The food was pretty good, the leg room is adequate and the cabin staff were helpful. We would have no concerns flying with them in the future.
Brunei
You fly into the capital of Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, and you see magnificent new buildings and highways rising out of the lush rainforest get inside it’s pretty basic. The duty free stores stock a fine collection of chocolate …. but not much else. We landed at about 5pm and took off for Dubai at 7:35 pm local time. We should arrive in Dubai around midnight local time…. Scott is starting to look very tired, it’s about midnight Brisbane time and the lights are going out so lets hope we can all get some sleep.
Dubai
About 15 minutes out of Dubai Scott threw up, proving that those little bags they always have on planes are there for a good reason. Royal Brunei had fed us so much on the flight it was not surprising that someone suffered from a bit of motion sickness. Dubai airport is huge. It was midnight, but there were huge numbers sleeping on the floor. They are currently building a new terminal to service only the A380’s. This will be the only one of it’s type in the world and will increase the capacity of the airport to 120 million passengers a year. As you taxi you see a pretty good selection of all the worlds airlines. So our early departure from Brisbane was now being taken up by this refuelling stopover, probably a blessing as we still had a further 8 hours of flight time ahead of us. So far not much sleep for anyone.
London Heathrow
I think Myles got some sleep, he moved down onto the floor of the plane then rested his head on the seat, looked pretty uncomfortable, but it did give him more leg room. Everyone gave up trying to sleep about four hours out from Heathrow.
The UK customs operation is very slack. Once you get processed by Immigration you have the usual choice of going through the Declaration Items door, or the Nothing to declare route. If you have nothing to declare you just go through totally unchallenged, we did not even see a desk or official to complete random bag checks.
Then off to Kings Cross station on the Underground. Of course it was now after 7:30am so London’s peak hour was in full swing. Not the best time to arrive. We found our B&B hotel easy enough, dropped off our bags then headed off to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.
We started off with a bit of drama at the Brisbane Airport. We arrived with plenty of time to spare so we sat . As you taxi to the airport terminal it appears to be small, but reasonably modern. But once you down to balance out some of our luggage (one bag was slightly overweight). After a few minutes we wandered over to the Royal Brunei check-in. Surprisingly, there was no queue at all. At the counter they asked us whether our travel agent had told us that the flight schedule had changed…. take-off was now 12:40pm (not 2pm), lucky we were early. Much to recommend about a late arrival though. We ended up with a personal escort through customs, security and boarding. We missed out on a couple of hours of boredom waiting in the departure lounge and we also saved a fortune by not being able to wander through the duty free area and food shops.
Royal Brunei
Not a bad airline. The food was pretty good, the leg room is adequate and the cabin staff were helpful. We would have no concerns flying with them in the future.
Brunei
You fly into the capital of Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, and you see magnificent new buildings and highways rising out of the lush rainforest get inside it’s pretty basic. The duty free stores stock a fine collection of chocolate …. but not much else. We landed at about 5pm and took off for Dubai at 7:35 pm local time. We should arrive in Dubai around midnight local time…. Scott is starting to look very tired, it’s about midnight Brisbane time and the lights are going out so lets hope we can all get some sleep.
Dubai
About 15 minutes out of Dubai Scott threw up, proving that those little bags they always have on planes are there for a good reason. Royal Brunei had fed us so much on the flight it was not surprising that someone suffered from a bit of motion sickness. Dubai airport is huge. It was midnight, but there were huge numbers sleeping on the floor. They are currently building a new terminal to service only the A380’s. This will be the only one of it’s type in the world and will increase the capacity of the airport to 120 million passengers a year. As you taxi you see a pretty good selection of all the worlds airlines. So our early departure from Brisbane was now being taken up by this refuelling stopover, probably a blessing as we still had a further 8 hours of flight time ahead of us. So far not much sleep for anyone.
London Heathrow
I think Myles got some sleep, he moved down onto the floor of the plane then rested his head on the seat, looked pretty uncomfortable, but it did give him more leg room. Everyone gave up trying to sleep about four hours out from Heathrow.
The UK customs operation is very slack. Once you get processed by Immigration you have the usual choice of going through the Declaration Items door, or the Nothing to declare route. If you have nothing to declare you just go through totally unchallenged, we did not even see a desk or official to complete random bag checks.
Then off to Kings Cross station on the Underground. Of course it was now after 7:30am so London’s peak hour was in full swing. Not the best time to arrive. We found our B&B hotel easy enough, dropped off our bags then headed off to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.
Whispy (View Whispy's trips)
Hi, I am planing my trip to London for March and i was curious how much did it end up costing (you mentioned it was actually cheaper than you thought) I am wanting to see most of those sights too so it was nice to hear what you had to say about them.
Posted 11 months ago.
Report Abusepuckoon (View puckoon's trips)
Hope this reply is not too late for you. I cannot help with costs too much because London was only part of our (two adults + 15yo + 12 yo) trip. Many of the London attractions have free entry (Madame Tusauds is a bit expensive). We were able to get pretty cheap accommodation (9 nights for Stg812 for a quad room with breakfast). The standard was not great, but we saw rooms for twice the price that were no better. By staying in the city we were able to minimise transport costs, an Oyster card gave us great flexibility and cheap travel. The food outlets near Kings Cross station were not great so that forced us into buying ready prepared meals from supermarkets like Marks and Spencer. Their food was pretty good and reasonably priced.
Posted 9 months ago.
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