Sunday, March 17, 2024

Japan is a long way away from Manchester so we spent the day travelling. We only had a few hours of sleep before getting up at 4 am for a shower in the hotel, check out and then walk to the terminal. The walkway from the hotel to the terminal was even longer than I had remembered but we were definitely one of the first people to check in our bags, such are the advantages to an airport hotel. Even at just after 5 in the morning security was busy but they still managed to stop me as I had two asthma inhalers in my carry-on bag - The apologetic staff explained that Manchester is the ONLY airport that considers these inhalers liquids so they are used to travellers being caught out.

Not a huge fan of Manchester airport with it’s confusing layout and disappointing services. We ended up having breakfast at a massive pub in the gate waiting area, grumbling about having to order online from our table, the price of the food, the quality of the food (not great) and the lack of any real service. The pub was certainly hopping with many wearing big green “leprechaun” felt hats due to the fact it is St. Patrick’s day though I didn’t quite catch onto this until Mel pointed it out to me.

Of course, wouldn’t you know it, as Mel got into the queue for coffee at Starbucks our gate was announced. The gate, ironically, was also one of the furthest away but we arrived in plenty of time and joined the milling travellers around the gate. There weren’t any seats and we did not really have a long time to wait with the gate only announced a few minutes before we were due to board. In any case, we found somewhere to stand a short distance away.

We are flying on Etihad Airways and I had opted to pay the extra fee to pre-book all of our seats rather than take a chance at the airport that we would be put in seats at opposite ends of the aircraft. Given that these flights are so long it was not really something either of us wanted to have happen.

Our first stop was Abu Dhabi which was a seven hour flight aboard a full, but quite modern Airbus. The food was amazingly good on this flight including an amazing lamb and potato dish that was full of flavour. The antiquated in-flight entertainment system, however, left a lot to be desired but we watched a couple of films before arriving in Abu Dhabi. I watched our arrival into Abu Dhabi on the entertainment system which had camera views to the sides of the aircraft, straight ahead and, more interestingly, straight down.

This was the first time I had been in the “new” terminal A at Abu Dhabi and it looks absolutely amazing - Modern arched curves above each gate like massive eyes all in white with massive expanses of glass. We had to go through security before we could get into the terminal and proceed to the gate for our flight to Tokyo but this was uneventful though after this we had a tremendous view of the main hub of the terminal so had to stop to take a few pictures. Despite it being quite late at night, the place was still quite busy.

We looked at a few shops including a “souk” style shop where we were immediately approached by a salesman when showing an interest in one of their products. Troublingly, there were no prices which made me suspect you were expected to haggle for everything, which did not appeal to either of us.

We ended up at a Starbucks where we spotted they had local specialty coffee grounds for sale (something to do with the anniversary of Starbucks in the area) so Mel had it ground up to take away. Our first souvenir…that we will have to carry with us for the rest of the trip!

We popped into a few other shops including a WH Smith (oddly) and a shop selling some amazing looking coffee but well outside our interest or experience - Mel is the only one that drinks it!

We proceeded to our gate when it was announced. After the normal passport checks the gate had its own toilets and many comfortable lounge seats. It was only a short wait until we were boarding our flight to Tokyo Narita, nine and a half hours away.

The plane to Tokyo was much more modern than the last plane but disappointingly the food was not as good. The entertainment system was quite a lot better but at this point we were both trying to sleep so that we could better adjust to the 8 hour time change. I had done a bit of planning to figure out where in our two flights would be best for us to sleep and determined it would be the first part of the flight to Tokyo as we were due to arrive just after noon but, of course, we found this very difficult. I can never get comfortable enough to sleep on a plane. Yes, we were travelling economy class but I would prefer to be mildly uncomfortable in the flight than pay the extortion charged particularly for long haul flights such as this for the upper classes. Another crowded flight and this time we are surrounded by somewhat noisy members of a Spanish tour group.

>> Next: Day 3