It was never going to be an easy ride – Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Frankfurt, Barcelona. But it turned out much worse than that although I suppose it looked at one stage that it could be.

It started at MEL we picked up Gary at Noon and made it to MEL in good time. Settled into the MH lounge with little worry. Then I received a SMS about a delay and  it was announced that our 3:00 PM departure had been postponed until 4:30 due to a mechanical problem. No worries, we have a 3+ hour stopover in KL.

Then 4:30 came around and although there was a flag on the screens that Boarding was occurring, there was no announcement. Finally, I noticed the departure time on the screen had changed to 9:00 PM. Shortly afterwards, an announcement said that the plane was considered broken down and they woould wait until the next one from KL landed at MEL and we would take that. We got some confusing messages  like we would be delayed up to two other days, but eventually got on the re-timed 9:00 PM departure and were on our way to KL. Of course, we had no idea what would happen when we got there nor did any of the other similar passengers who were going to Frankfurt, Paris, London, et al.

When we got off at KL we found that MH was well organised. They handed us a new itinerary and boarding cards which showed us leaving to Amsterdam in under an hour. Apparently, they had delayed one of the planes for 5 hours so that the stragglers from Melbourne could at least get to Amsterdam. We also found that we were to connect to a KLM flight to Frankfurt (where we did not really want to go but our bags were tickets to go there – more later).

A quick to the MAS lounge to send an email to both travel agents, who were magnificent by the way, about our changed plans, and then boarded the plane. It was a very old 747 but hey we were off. We were in the back row of Business Class and of course what is in the first row of Economy, that’s right a bassinet and screaming baby. That didn’t turn out to be as bad as it was at the start.

The trip was long (12 hours) but I got lots of work done on a job that I had been dithering about – still a ways to go. Food was passable, wine was OK, got some sleep. JV’s seat wold not recline so She moved upstairs for a while.