The Journey

Well we have arrived in Belfast after 27 hours of flying and 8 hours of waiting in various airports.
The Dunedin Auckland trip was as eventful as it usually is and the wait for boarding seemed to last a long time. Neither of us had been able to get excited about the trip because the stress of the last 6 weeks at work but the excitement came back almost as soon as we got on the plane to London (NZ39). The flight to Hong Kong was comfortable and enjoyable and we were able to get about 6 hours sleep and read.

The stop over in Hong Kong was only 2 hours, we arrived at 5:45 am and rather than the bustling airport that we expected it was quiet and almost empty. Most of the shops were shut! As we boarded the plane for London the airport seemed to wake up.

The flight to London was long and very boring; we slept a bit, read a bit, watched TV more than a bit and wandered up and down. We got some spectacular views of snow and ice over central Russia.

All in all the trip was a lot of sitting, standing in queues and waiting, waiting, waiting. Everyone we meet was friendly and helpful except for the border control officer we meet at Heathrow . She was arrogant, ignorant and very very rude.

We arrived at George Best City Airport in Belfast at 7:00pm and arrived at our hotel about 25 minutes later.

We went out to dinner with other conference guests to a really nice restaurant called Beatrice Kennedy’s and we going quiet well until about 11:00pm local time then we just flagged completely so it was off to bed and straight to sleep. Probably the best sleep I have had in months.

Sorry no photos yet!! :-)