The day has finally arrived and in 16 hours we will be leaving Perth for the first leg of our flight to Glasgow; a long and dreary 11 and a bit hours to Dubai. In spite of the excitement of the trip this is never a welcome part of the journey as it's a long, boring, night trip and sleeping is never easy no matter how tired you are. To make matters worse the seats we were allocated (the original seats I chose were reallocated by Emirates when the plane was changed to the A380) are in a row in front of a bulkhead (meaning the seats don't recline fully) and next to a toilet. On the upside, there's no one sitting behind us to kick the seat and be generally annoying, there's no one sitting across the aisle and we're close to the toilet!
This will be our first flight in the massive A380 so it will be interesting to see if the experience is better, the same or worse than usual. I swear it could not be worse than the Malaysian Airlines and KLM combination of our last trip. But whatever my thoughts on the seating arrangements that is our lot so we will make the best of it. It's only 11 hours after all!
Tonks and Lachie will be off to the boarding kennels in a few hours and then the last-minute packing and double checking of all documents and luggage will take place. I'm always certain I'll leave something important behind so rather than double-check it's more like quadruple-check and then just one last time to be absolutely sure.
By Saturday lunch time we will be in Glasgow and ready to start our journey through the Highlands once again. This is the part we look forward to and once our feet touch Scottish soil any gripes about seating arrangements and airlines rapidly disappear.
So, watch out Glasgow (and Drummuir, Lochinver, Mellon Charles and Laggan) because here we come!