Sunday 8 November 2015

15.08.2015 ~ Fly from Tokyo to London

We woke at 07:20 & packed the remaining items into luggage. I checked HyperDia & it said to get the 09:18 Joban Line to Nippori & then 09:25 Keisei liner to Narita. Once we'd left & were on our way I double checked and saw there was only a 4 minute changeover time between trains - not enough time! Sure enough we missed the Narita train which left as we were still trying to move along the platform on other side of Nippori station. We would've arrived at 10:03 if we'd got the trains according to HyperDia. As it was we had to wait to catch the 09:39 Keisei Ltd Express due to arrive 10:53 at Narita Terminal 1 (¥1060 ticket each).

We raced to check in where there was thankfully no queue, checked our bags & asked for fragile stickers on both, then ran through to security & passport control. It was 11:20 by now and as we cleared security they announced boarding for our plane; but we still had to buy sake as gifts first so we ran to the Duty Free shop and managed to buy 2 sakes & 1 fruit liquor before we ran to the gate... where they hadn't even started boarding. As we were so late to check-in we had separate seats, luckily we managed to swap so we could sit next to each other for the 9 hour 10 minute flight. (I was told that I would have to check my duty-free bag into the hold in Russia as it wouldn't be allowed on the plane; no idea how or when to do this but hoped for the best)

We both settled in to watch the in-flight entertainment; I chose the movie 'Transcendence' while M planned to catch up on 'Game of Thrones'. Unfortunately after half hour of watching the sound went on both our screens. After trying 2 new pairs of earphones each and having the system reset twice it became apparent that there would be no entertainment for us for the remaining 8 hours of the flight...M was furious, I was resigned. So I played some of the games for a while & then put on movies I knew inside out so I could watch the pictures and do my own soundtrack. We had lunch and dinner on this flight which for me were lactose-free fish in tomato sauce again, and then a sort of chicken casserole that had a really thick clear sauce (bit unnerving); while M had 2 different beef meals.

We landed in Moscow at 16:00 Russian time and as our next flight take-off had been delayed to 18:25 we decided to get some food. We changed £10 for 940 Roubles at the bureau de change just inside the terminal & went to the Burger King we'd spotted on our first connecting flight. We managed to get Double Cheeseburger with bacon; chicken nuggets and a Sprite for 740R as we'd already spent 170R on a bottle of water. Strangely the Sprite was a bit minty but not altogether unpleasant.

We went to our gate to wait for an hour or so and then at 18:00 an announcement was made to say the gate had changed to 31 from 26. So we rushed down as there was only 25 minutes to go until take-off but the queue for boarding had barely formed so we joined it as the British love a queue. We boarded (the duty-free bag got on no problems) and though we were sitting together on this plane it was in the very last row and so there was constant kitchen noise and toilet door banging. It was late at night in Japan by this time so really needed to sleep but that was unachievable for either us which we knew we'd regret later...

Our second dinner was served with M having Lamb Kare while I had yet another fish in tomato sauce (note to self: do not choose lactose-free meals if flying with Aeroflot again). I couldn't stomach much at this point; also could barely support my own head and it kept rolling. Apparently my eyes were scary as big blood vessels were visible in both... somehow M still looked fairly good at this point. This flight was only 3.5 hours long but it seemed to drag because of how tired we were.

We landed, through passport control, got luggage and went through Nothing to Declare (which is the route I always take so think I was on auto-pilot). We got stopped to ask what was in the duty-free bag; turns out the limit is 1 litre of alcohol per person. Who knew? Luckily we were allowed through, so then it was straight out to the shuttle bus to get back to the car park.

By the time we left the airport car park it was 22:00 (06:00 Japan time), and so when we finally got home at 00:30 it was 08:30 Japan time so we'd been up for over 24 hours. Needless to say we collapsed in bed & left everything til the morning...

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