Trying to make my way home was a near disaster. Unfortunately a series of flight cancellations and delays meant that I got home a further 16 hours later than expected. After a total of 60 hours of travelling, it’s safe to say I have never felt that totally exhausted before in my life.
I started off by leaving my hotel in Nadi, Fiji at 6.30am and catching the 9am flight over to Sydney. No problemo.
As I had a layover in Sydney of over 10 hours I decided to head for lunch at a place I had been dying to visit, The Grounds of Alexandria. The former pie factory is in a heavily industrial area south of Sydney’s main city centre and has been built into a haven of coffee, flowers and foodie delights. As well as a restaurant, cafe and bar, there is also a petting zoo, a flower shop and cakes and bakes stall.
Unsurprisingly I chose the avocado on sourdough toast with a poached egg for lunch and boy was it good. The service was fantastic and the overall atmosphere of the venue was terrific – the big dream now is to set up a similar establishment back in the UK. Here’s hoping!
Following on from lunch I made my way to Circular Quay to check out the Opera House, Bridge and the Rocks once more, before heading back to the airport. And unfortunately this is where the trouble started to unfold. I arrived back at Sydney International at around 5pm which meant I had a further 5 hours wait till my flight to Hong Kong. However when it got to 10pm we were all notified that the flight was delayed by 20 minutes, and then another 20 minutes, until we were told at 11pm that the flight had been cancelled due to technical difficulties. This meant that I would also miss my connecting flight to London.
After the notification there was then a whole lot of queuing. We had to queue to collect our checked-in luggage, queue to rearrange our flights (they initially tried to book me onto a Malaysia Airline flight – thanks but no thanks) and queue to book a hotel for the night. By the time I finished this whole process it was 1am. I finally managed to get a taxi over to the Novotel which the airline had put me up in – there was another 45minute wait here to check in.
So at around 1.45am I finally made it to my room for the night and, admittedly it was pretty amazing. It was definitely more of a suite than a ‘room’. There was a sitting room with a flat screen, a bathroom with both a huge power shower and a jacuzzi, and a bedroom overlooking the beach and fitted with another flat screen TV. I couldn’t complain about the set-up; unfortunately though I only had a few hours to enjoy the stay as I had to head back to the airport at 8.30am the next morning.
That next morning, after filling up on a huge breakfast, I had to take another taxi back to the airport as the shuttle buses that had been booked for us (myself and many other travellers who had been moved onto the following day’s flight) didn’t turn up. When I got to the airport there was another 1 hour queue to check in and the flight was resultantly delayed by over an hour as no one was able to check in on time.
I eventually arrived into Hong Kong at some point between 7 and 8pm where I had a few hours to wait before my next flight to London. This third 12 hour flight was meant to depart at 12.35am but was once again delayed until 2am.
Unfortunately during the three flights, my body decided to react extremely badly to the air pressure and completely swell up. It looked like someone has pumped me up with air – think the Michellin Man. I have never seen my feet that size before.
After 60 hours with only 8 hours sleep, it was certainly an extremely tiring and frustrating journey but I’m just happy that I’m home now safe and sound. I guess that’s the problem with having multiple flights, but I have admittedly been very lucky and fortunate with all of my other flights and travel arrangements over the last five months so I have to be grateful for that.
And, silver lining, three flights meant that I was able to catch up with a hell of a lot of films!
Where's Winter? 