Well, we've created a record! – our longest flight door to door, 38½ hours from the time we left home in Mullumbimby until we booked in at Cassidy's hotel in Dublin. It was a long way, not helped by stopovers at airports along the way.
Bradley picked us up at 8am on the 3rd and dropped us off at Uncle Tom's where we were booked on the Byron Easy Bus at 8:30 for the transfer to Brisbane Airport. All straight forward with our only detour being to drop some people off at Roma Street in Brisbane along the way. We had been warned of long delays at the airport (owing to the recent terrorist threats in Sydney) but while there was a long queue at check in everything else ran smoothly and we had plenty of time for some lunch and a sit around before our 2:30 pm flight.
We are flying with Singapore Airlines this year which we both decided we favour over our last long haul flight with Emirates a couple of years ago. The 8 hour flight to Singapore was uneventful. A few movies (for Alex), the screen was too close for Jill, so lots of reading. We arrived in Singapore at 8:45pm (Singapore time) and after a long walk to our our next boarding gate, had quite a wait for our next flight. At that time of night (2 hours later in Australia) we were not in the mood for coffee and as we had been well fed on the plane were not hungry.
By the time we departed at 11pm for our 12½ hour flight to Frankfurt, we were ready to sleep which we did after another meal. We both slept well (as well as you can in an airline seat – oh to fly business class and be able to stretch out).
Arriving at Frankfurt (6:45 local time) it was another long walk to our next boarding gate and quite a wait to get through screening along the way. The German emigration people were not very friendly or helpful, quite officious actually and verging on the rude, which was unfortunate. Once through screening, we found an ATM to get some Euro and had a cup of coffee before another wait for our 10am flight.
The next leg was with Lufthansa and the plane an A321 was quite small and basic after the A330 and A380 we had been on. No gluten free option for a meal for Jill. It was only a 2 hour flight to Dublin and for this leg we had a window seat so were able to see that section of our flight that was below the clouds.
We arrived at Dublin at 11am and purchased some DoDublin travel passes which gave us free travel on the airport bus, hop on hop off bus, and local buses for the 3 days we're in Dublin. The bus dropped us off about 200m from our hotel, Cassidy's Hotel in Cavendish Row, Upper O'Connell Street. After booking in we headed downstairs to the bar for some lunch. Lasagne and Guinness for me and a curry and Cider for Jill.
After lunch we went for a walk. Picked up a SIM card for Jill's phone and did a little shopping in a market street. Then back to the hotel for a bit of a nap. We woke around 8pm and decided we didn't need tea. We kept ourselves awake a little longer before crashing for the night.
