27 April, 2016 – MEL, SIN, FRA

Wèll,here we are at Melbourne airport to take off to Europe for a five week tour going to all new places.

As I am about to go through security, I realise I have made a colossal blunder, I disconnected the laptop from its attachments and then forgot to put it in the travel bag. What a goose! So I am trying to use Julie^s Pad to do the Blog work and am suffering. It has taken me 20 minutes just to do these two paragraphs with the Backspace key the most commonly used. Arghh! I may have to give up on the Blog until I can get better facilities i.e. a real PC.

This realisation came after the check in Girl told us there may be a baggage strike in Germany which could mean being stranded in Singapore. Naturally I was feeling a bit down waiting in the lounge.

Anyway, we take off. The first leg is with Singapore Airlines. It’s a modern plane, clean and great staff. Just what you would expect from Singapore Airlines. They have a new feature for first, business and premium economy flyers called Book the Còok whereby passengers can select a meal in advance from an extensive menu devised by famous chefs, Australia^s representative is Matt Moran.

BTW the green curry was incredibly pungent, I would rate it as one of the best I have ever had.

(Guys, I just went through a convoluted process to get those two photos in the Blog. The only two on this post, not sure if I will give up or not ).

Anyway, the flight to Singapore was good. I saw the latest Star Wars which was OK albeit second billing Mark Hammill as Luke Skywalker was on the screen for about two minutes only at the end and did not speak.

Arrival in Singapore was smooth. We got to Terminal 2 easily and to a lounge which had lots of food variety, not that we needed more. The great thing was there no mention of a strike and hence no forced layover. We board our next flight which is with Lufthansa. It’s an older plane not as nice as the previous flight. The food menu is not as exciting. There is smoked salmon and smoked duck for starters we exchange although hangover from the previous flight, I have trouble eating it all. I had a steak while Julie had cod.

In the night, I fall asleep sitting up and it appeared like my glasses fell off into the aisle where someone stepped on them, smashing them with one lens broken. Oh well, there is a spare in the suitcase.

For breakfast I have some Asian noodles, on a German flight, and Julie has salmon, etc. I forgot to mention but our stewardess Barbara was really nice. The pilot had told us that it was a toasty 1 degree outside, and we can feel that on the air bridge as we get off the plane. Passage through FRA is smooth enough if you forget about the 5 mile walk from gate to immigration. We pass through that with only a slight hiccup. Onto baggage and our cases are among the first off. Replacement glasses for me, extra clothes layers for Julie. We are ready for the next stage of the journey – train to Heidelberg!