Tuesday 18 August – Leaving NZ

Off on our second Europe OE, only 27 years since the last time. Picked up Sally from her home, then back to ours for pickup by Sandy for the airport. Karen managed to leave her makeup case behind which gave me a chance to set the alarm, forgotten on closing the door first time round. Things can only improve.

It has been a horrible few months lead-up to the trip, with Karen working furiously on her book and me likewise on Talley’s Renwick system. We haven’t had the time to think about Europe, or read for it or learn the languages, so very disappointing. However, hopefully all that will be behind us soon, and make little difference over all.

Out to the airport with heaps of spare time. All our bags a gross weight, over 20kg compared to the normal 13kg, mainly due to extra food and books, e.g. 3kg muesli for each of J & K. Just as well that both Air NZ and Emirates have lifted their limits. Since we have a car, dragging all that extra weight about isn’t an issue (thankfully). Besides, we will eat our way through most of it. Also, we have a bunch of books to leave behind at our hosts’ places.

Our Emirates plane

First major problem reared its head at the airport. Opened up the laptop to do something, and found that the last transfer of outlook.pst, the main Outlook email and contacts data file, had not come across properly, and had even blotted out the old one. So no email messages, including all sorts of instructions, contact details and so on. What a hassle. Decided to close it all down and later collect an undelete program from the internet to see if I could recover a copy. A bit of a blow, though not the end of the world. One more casualty of our rushed and limited preparation.

Flight to Auckland pretty much business as usual (actually Economy as usual), but a little late getting away. No issue as we are all checked in online at Emirates and only have a short check-in time. However we were able to change Sally onto our flight which was a bonus – saved a hassle waiting and meeting up at Dubai. Met up with Scott & Ken at the café at International for a necessarily quick chat, then into the boarding area. Very little time to wait until we were on the plane.

Rather disappointing plane. I had expected Emirates to be a cut above the average, but the plane was fairly old and well-worn, seats significantly closer than the last few we have flown (Singapore mainly), and a panel near my feet fallen into the body internals. Not that we really cared too much – just nice to be on our way. Watched a heap of movies, but again despite a huge selection, not a great many we liked the look of. Slanted to American light comedy and chick flicks. Meals good, though an under-cooked mini loaf of bread caused my innards some wild gurglings later on. Not much of note on the flight. The lack of legroom proved not too much of a hassle, and we all slept a quite well, Karen more than her fair share. Broke the flight in Brisbane, which was good, but still left a 13 hour leg to Dubai.

Dubai Airport Concourse

Into Dubai very early morning, not that there are many clues to time in a busy terminal. Five hours to fill in so started with a look around, then tried getting a wireless connection and downloading some undelete software. Connection very slow and very flaky, so it all took much longer than it should have. Anyway, the two undeletes I tried didn’t manage to find what I wanted, so Outlook will have to start from scratch. Let’s hope there’s nothing critical in there that I need. I expect we will be OK. Took ages to find the Emirates restaurant for our free meal. We are not impressed with Emirates or the terminal. The former is not up to say Air NZ or Singapore Air, the latter is flashy and tacky, dreadful circulation e.g. you have to go down a floor to go up to the next floor, and hard to find your way about. Also the main thoroughfare was too small, so crowded and therefore slow to move about. Our free meal was OK - fried rice, banana, egg etc. Nothing special but welcome.