Day 3 – Stage 3 - Narita to London

After a big sleep we decided to head off to the airport early and have breakfast there.  The hotel has its own buses, which we took to get back to Narita International.  This is a huge airport, it is over 980 hectares and employees 48,000!  Talking about a daunting experience, when the bus got to the entrance of the airport, the police boarded and did a passport check on everyone.  The police are very military here and have a mean look about them, they are everywhere to be seen.  When the bus took off there were armoured police buses and vans with machine guns attached to the top, quite scary actually.  Into the airport we went, now talk about spot the Aussie, I think we were about the only westerners in the place!  The building itself is about 5-6 stories high.  We went to a Japanese café, I only had a drink as there wasn’t anything gluten/egg free, which was just as well as Craig and Emily’s food wasn’t very nice, they ordered a western full english.  This ended up being two small frankfurters, a small bit of bacon, a yucky looking egg, potato salad, and salad!!

Going through departures they took everyone’s fingerprints, a photo of your face and eyes, and also photocopied our passports, I found all this not very friendly and has made me not wanting to return!  The lady guard hit Emily on the arm and told her off for not having her passport, Emily had to tell her Dad had it, which was then OK.

I had no-one next to me this flight, which was nice.  The airplane crew were great, we have Fredrico and Jesus, pronounced Je-sous.  Fredrico was so helpful in finding me GF snacks, and he knew exactly what it was all about, he even found an extra ice-cream for me as it wasn’t included in my GF meal. AND he made the best vodka and orange!  

Jesus was amused by Sooty, who I took out for a photo-shoot, he asked Sooty for his boarding pass, but as he was a stowaway …… ! 

The seatbelts in JAL planes have bulking padding on them on one side, which is an airbag.  Jesus knelt on the floor next to me as we were preparing to land and asked if I knew about the airbags, I did as I had read it on the info that no-one usually looks at, he said he didn’t know if the worked as they hadn’t had a chance to test them!!!! Hahhahhhaaa.

This stage of the trip didn’t seem as bad as yesterday, I guess I knew what to expect.

Heathrow was great, only about 15-20 minutes to get through, in the line it was about 1000 Japanese and three Aussies!  It was great to see Kylie (sister) and her boyfriend Tom.  When arriving at our accommodation we went for a walk to stretch the legs.  Had a coffee break at a French café, then walked around Kensington.  It was so quiet for a Friday night, there is more people in the City of Adelaide on a Friday night than there was here !!!  So hence had a great chance to take photos without people walking in front of me.  

Prince Albert Memorial

Royal Albert Hall

Kensington Palace

Kensington Gardens

London icons