Flight to Leeds
September 26th, 2007 by Scuba
Hello everyone! I think it’s finally time to update the blog, seeing as its lay dormant since I left Australia. So much has happened over the past two weeks – some of you have heard updates along the way, but I’ll cover it all just to be sure. Even though I’m writing this all at once, I think it’s best to break it up for readability.
My flight to the UK began from Brisbane at 10am. Considering I’d never flown internationally before, it went surprisingly well. I hadn’t expected amazing things from China Airlines for the flights between Brisbane and Frankfurt, but the in flight entertainment and food was amazing. The service was alright – not fantastic, but understandable, considering how difficult it must be to communicate to passengers in three separate languages on one plane.
Taipei was the first of our stopovers. Ashleigh and I were there for Sunday evening – from around 6pm to 11pm. It certainly isn’t an exciting place to be at that time, as most of the shops were closed. We managed to pass the time with a bit of local cuisine and beer. Wireless was available, but we couldn’t manage to connect while we were there. We were entertained by the tales of an elderly Australian-Brit man and met others from Australia heading to the UK and Europe. While we were all heading in the same direction, everyone seemed to be taking different routes. In the end no one from our first flight made it all the way there with us.
The incredibly long leg from Taipei to Frankfurt was taken at night, with the sunrise chasing us the whole way. We were quite amazed at the political issues involved with flying. The most direct route from Taipei to Europe would be to go straight over China, instead we flew north, and as soon as we’d cleared the Chinese border to Russia we flew immediately west over Russia. There was such a contrast visible at night, between the lighting of some huge Asian cities and tiny Russian towns. As we flew into Frankfurt the spread of the city was astounding, but there were still dark areas of forest aplenty. Considering it was about 5:30am, the roads were incredibly busy.
During the 4 hour stop in Frankfurt, we managed to grab breakfast from an American-themed restaurant and connect to the internet for a very quite 5 minutes (quite expensive). The airport was very quite when we arrived, but we were eventually able to collect our boarding passes and hit the tarmac in a bus. A short bus ride took us to the plane, and we filed up the stairs into the tiny cabin. We flew with flybe, with the 20 passengers only half filling the Embraer 145 – a plane which was a stark contrast to the Airbus A330 and A340 we flown earlier. The flight was over before we knew it, and thankfully the weather was clear enough for us to see the beautiful British coastline and country side. We flew into a chilly yet sunny Manchester, and breezed through immigration and customs.
After making the massive trek to The Station – the bus and train terminal connected to the airport, we were able to relax for about an hour before the bus to Leeds arrived. The bus took us on a scenic adventure through Manchester and Bradford, then onto Leeds. It was so exciting to finally be amongst these English towns. 2 hours later and just over 40hrs after leaving Brisbane, we’d arrived in Leeds! We stretched our legs and set off to find the International Welcome team.