Day 1 – Journey starts

After a tedious cab 1h30 ride through a congested London in company of an annoyed cab driver (well London is congested, if it annoys you, why take such a job I wonder) we reach Heathrow’s shabby T3. e-checking does not work, so we end up having to queue like everyone else. A dozen passengers later, we find out that the seats have already been reserved and we are not seated together (we are actually on opposite sides of the plane, but that the good news is one of us has a window seat. After asking several times, the lady says there’s nothing she can do and we sill have to swap seats in the plane. OK so this keeps on getting worse it seems. So according to Virgin’s website, there are various complimentary magazines and newspapers we can pick up from the display before boarding. My excitement decreased quite quickly when I stood, puzzled infront of the display! Going to China , I am not quite sure how TimeOut Dubai, and a kind of Best of America magazines are going to be any help…
Anyhow, we manage to swap seats in the plane, but the window seat is not as great as it seemed.
It’s right on the middle of the wing, great! So we will not get to see anything.


I get acquainted with the ‘Virgin entertainment centre’, which cheers me up immediately. There must be a choice of 2 dozen movies, a dozen TV shows, games and travel guides, interactive map, and various things that I did not even have time to look at, even though the flight was 11 hours.