DAY 1 GETTING THERE
Our car showed up on time and we had a smooth run to the airport. Emirates have humans to check you in which is a nice touch. The Commonwealth seems to have let the current security checking contract to the very lowest of low bid contractor as there are now queuing races that run for miles and only two bag scanning carousels manned for normal passengers and these were operating with a skeleton staff that seem to mostly converse in Urdu.
They seem to have justified this minimum staffing with some very clunky technology . You have to stand in front of a bay where a tray is supposed to appear before you to put your carryon bags on to send thru the scanner. Only problem is that you need to stand in a very specific way before a tray appears and the trays would not appear for about 80% of the passengers . At the other end, despite large signs saying do not stack trays, people were stacking the trays to make space for their gear to come down the rollers out of the scanner. The automatic tray return feed could not handle stacked trays so it clogged and came to a halt which in turn led to more stacking of trays to clear the line.
Finally we made it thru and I breezed thru the automatic immigration passport reader. I have a photo on my passport that looks like it came off a badly printed wanted poster for a Bengali axe murderer but it recognised me instantly . Jeanette on the other hand got rejected by the automated machine which clearly could not believe someone with her birthdate could look so young.
We are trying Premium Economy on Emirates on this trip. Very impressive seats, lots of leg room, great food and service. One huge problem is the seats have a very large layback capacity and the guy in front of Jeanette reclined his to the max which made our space feel very cramped and also made it almost impossible for me to get out of the window seat.
Anyway after 14 very long hours we made it to Dubai where we picked up our next leg to London. Another 8 hours in a beautiful Airbus 380, this time with no seat recliners in front which made it much more pleasant. We were sitting in the second row of seats in the aircraft with the center of the aircraft at this area filled by a rather grand stair case leading up to the rarefied world of First and Business class on the top deck.
We were intrigued to find the bit under the staircase next to us had been turned into the cabin manger’s office.
We finally landed at Heathrow and Jeanette managed to breeze thru the automatic passport checker here. She had clearly aged a bit on the flight and now more closely resembled her passport photo.
After 30 hours from departing home, we arrived at our hotel, “The Hilton Paddington”. I was puzzled to see all the Great Western logos in the floors until I looked across the road and there was Brunel’s Paddington Station. This Hotel obviously had another owner in times past
Hardys’ Travels 