Leaving London... again

We are sitting in Heathrow airport after a fabulous 3 weeks back in England (and Spain), visiting Andy's family and  our friends. It has gone by SO quickly and I'm afraid we are going to have post-holiday blues once we get back to Melbourne. We were very lucky to be able to catch up with so many people that we have missed since moving down under 18 months ago, not to mention the opportunity to attend a wedding of one of Andy's childhood friends in Javea, Spain at the same time. (It would be great if the rest of our friends planning on getting married soon could do so during Australian school holidays... ok? Thanks.)

We left Melbourne the Friday school broke up for the holidays at midnight. This was our first flight with Malaysian Airlines, flying from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur and then direct to London. We arrived at the airport to find a crazy long lineup at Malaysian despite being there 3 hours before our flight was scheduled to take off. We soon found out this was because the check in system was down, so everyone was being manually checked in. Yikes! Even though we had checked in online we still had to wait over an hour to drop our bags and receive a handwritten boarding pass. This also meant they weren't able to issue the boarding passes for our connecting flights in Kuala Lumpur. Our flight took off over an hour late and we were quite stressed we would miss our connecting. On arrival in KL the transfer desk was absolute chaos. We only had about an hour till our next flight, and were convinced we wouldn't make it. (Little did we know there were about 100 people in the same situation as us so they were holding the London flight). Andy somehow went straight up to the front of the desk and get someone to print out boarding passes and we rushed over to the gate and were quickly ushered onto the plane. Relieved, we settled into our seats only to hear the captain come on the loudspeaker informing us we would be delayed while waiting for the rest of the passengers from our flight! We proceeded to sit in the plane for 2 hours before taking off on our 13 hour flight. Needless to say, it was not an enjoyable experience! The food and movie selection were also pretty mediocre. We are not big fans of Malaysian at the moment but I am reserving final judgement until our return journey as the delay may have clouded my judgement.  I was wearing Skins compression leggings which I thought would be a comfortable choice but by the end of the second flight my knees were absolutely killing me. I am not sure if this was due to the  compression element or something else, but I've chosen normal cotton leggings for this flight.

When we finally arrived at Heathrow at 6pm we jumped in a black cab hoping to make it to my friends rooftop party before it got too late. WHAT A HUGE MISTAKE. I am not sure why we did this as I would never take a black cab in London, they are far more expensive than getting a mini-cab and there is a perfectly good underground system that goes from Heathrow to anywhere in London. Anyway I think we were just tired and not thinking straight but we will NEVER do that again, as not only did it take over an hour to get to Brixton, it also cost about £90. Ouch! A very expensive lesson learned.

On a positive note, the weather was absolutely gorgeous when we arrived, and nothing beats warm summer London nights. Especially those spent on a rooftop garden with all of your favourite people. We had arranged to meet my group of friends at Guillaume's infamous flat in Brixton, and everyone was there in good form. Even better, one of my best friends Kristin, who has since moved back to Toronto, was also in London for a visit. Her and her boyfriend, (now fiancee!) Dan, just got engaged so we were able to celebrate with them. We had a fantastic first night and I was just so so happy to be back in London with my friends who I have missed dearly. And I must say Andy and I did well, staying up until 3am before finally succumbing to jet lag.

Our lovely friends!

We are about to board our plan now so I will update the blog once we get back to Melbourne. *Apologies in advance for any spelling and grammar issues, no time to proofread!