The flight was good, despite being delayed by 2-3 hours. Despite this, Singapore Airlines handled it quite well. I was sent a text early in the morning to say that it had been 'retimed' and when we arrived at the airport we were given food vouchers.
Leaving the family was really hard and very upsetting, as you can probably imagine. It was something that we had all been dreading and the tears flowed quite freely as the bags were being put in the taxi.
I managed to grab a few hours sleep on the flight to Singapore, which is quite unusual for me, I guess that was down to exhaustion, both physically and mentally as things had been pretty full on in the days up to leaving, with packing everything for shipping, selling and giving away our belongings and saying all our goodbyes.
The 747 was pretty comfortable with a good amount of legroom in economy, but the food wasn't that brilliant. It was spinach with everything! I don't mind it as an ingredfient, but big sloppy piles of it? No thanks! And spicy beans in the confined space of an aircraft? That's just asking for trouble! Apart from that it was fine.
Once in Singapore, we only had a couple of hours before our connecting flight to Sydney instead of the 5 that we originally had. We went for a shower, checked some email and then it was time to board the A380.
I'd been looking forward to a flight on one of Airbus's new monsters since they were announced and had booked us seats on the upper deck as I thought it would be a novelty to sit upstairs in a plane (at least in economy). The seats were comfy and well spaced and the entertainment system was great. There were even places to plug your USB stick into so you could do some work on the preloaded offfice software or watch a movie from your iPod on the large widescreen monitor mounted on the seatback.
The food was better on this part of the flight, but I wonder why I always end up with a vegan meal on this part of the journey? I always have to request milk for coffee and miss out on croissants for breakfast. It has happened on all the flights from Singapore to Australia.
We arrived in Sydney on time and caught a taxi to the hotel in North Sydney. We then went for a wander about and looked at the area where we are thinking of finding somewhere to rent, Crow's Nest. It looks great with loads of restaurant to keep Gaztronomy busy and a fabulous wholefood store that had more kinds of tofu than I knew existed! Oh, and it also sells Tiptree jam!
From there we caught a ferry across the bay and went to the Rocks and had lunch. We then popped back to the hotel for a snooze before popping down to a local Thai restaurant and then returned back to the hotel where I spoke to my parents on Skype. The wireless internet connection at the hotel is very weak and the sound was difficult to hear sometimes and the session kept dropping but it was good to see them.
So, that was the first day of our new life Down Under. The important stuff like finding somewhere to live etc starts now...
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