Northern Ballet are touring to Shanghai and Beijing in early 2016. This is a personal blog of my travels and the trials and tribulations of the tour. My photos can be found at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153893609456617.1073741849.531021616&type=1&l=a70822c9fb
We arose at our normal time and finished packing, the bulk having been done the night before. It feels odd preparing to leave after only a week back home.
Living virtually on the Woodhead pass, we normally don't consider other routes, but as it was closed the previous night we double checked - whatever the problem was, it had resolved itself overnight. The journey to Manchester Airport was fine, although longer than normal as traffic was extremely heavy.
Parking was horrible and I eventually found a space on the roof - 13th floor. Check-in however was deserted so we quickly progressed through, on to security and battled through the newish duty-free-meander to airside. The lounge is OK but certainly not the nicest one in MAN and (shock, horror) they no longer have champagne by the glass - what is the world coming to?
The journey to Frankfurt on a A320 was fine, lunch was carpaccio of beef and tuna which I loved although hubby wasn't happy with the tuna, he did eat some of it. We arrived to an almost deserted FRA which was quite eerie - security had literally dozens of staff to process just us two! We caught a train between terminals and were the only people on it. The lounge was much nicer and we settled down to a few hours of work, punctuated with refreshment, of course!
Eventually we boarded the amazing A380 and settled into our space for the journey. Our steward is very attentive and tolerant, especially when I manage to throw a full glass of water over Mark quite early on, he offered to get PJs and mop up the disaster zone. Let's just clarify this - the seat is new to us, and I had no idea the bit where the glass was sat lifted, it wasn't logical! And of course it had nothing to do with the continually flowing champagne.
Let's talk A380 - we are fortunate to have been on these amazing craft many times, this is the fourth on Lufthansa so it's quite possible we have been on this very plane before - they have 14 so odds are 19.75% (that's 1 - P(x=0, Bin(3, 1/14)) in case you think I made it up!) They are amazing on so many levels - double entendres intended - we are "upstairs" in the business cabin, where 8 First Class, 92 Business Class and 52 Premium. Below is 336 Economy. Possibly the most impressive factor is how quiet the plane is, you can easily have a conversation "sotto voce" which would be impossible on any other. There is plenty of room, masses of stowage, and fabulous toilets with windows! Another great asset is the cameras- front, below and tail - the latter is my favourite looking along the body of the craft and into the future. As I understand it they are, and probably will be forever, the largest aircraft built! But it turns out there is a downside to being big - as you will read soon.
We had a good dinner - scallops with ginger, goulash (except with no onions, paprika and mushrooms it was really just a very good stew) and then cheese - whilst enjoying Jurassic World, and then getting a decent sleep.
We awoke to a Chinese breakfast (our choice) and the news that we are unable to land in Shanghai because of the weather, and we must fly back to Beijing (which we passed 700 miles earlier) to wait out the weather. We land in Beijing at 11:50, Oddly it took less than an hour to get there, but I don't know how near we had actually got to Shanghai initially. We sat on the apron for 2 hours before Captain announced we were clear to return. Sadly the authorities had a different opinion and refused to let us go. It was finally 16:30 before we had the necessary clearance.
Fifteen minutes later and there's another twist - we taxied all the way across Beijing airport to the end of the runway, took up our position and then stopped. Captain eventually came on to say the weather has deteriorated once again and we are not going make it to Shanghai today. Sat in full sunshine with smoggy but clear skies, this sounds very odd. Apparently it's just us and an Air France A380 that have problems, anything smaller can still land although with only one of the four runways open I imagine there are delays. By now our dancers should have landed but they may have had delays too, we will find out later.
At 17:10 we are within meters of our stand and suddenly we stop again. Apparently Captain can't park on his own, he must have a parking warden (I'm sure there's a proper name for the person with ping-pong bats) guide us, and in the whole airport no-one is available. So we sit at jaunty angle blocking a huge taxi-way, and a terminal for ages, we try to smile! Captain has remained incredibly well humoured throughout, but his disbelief was showing in his voice as he told us this new part of the saga. We disembark to busses at 17:30.
Clearing immigration took ages, and after a train ride we waited for our bags, and waited and waited, for about an hour. Then we waited in the freezing cold for a bus to take us to the Crown Plaza Hotel. Scrums, pushing, shoving - utter chaos at every turn, I can't write about that I've decided.
The final indignation is the buffet - apart from a bag of pretzels we've not eaten since breakfast - it was a bun-fight with evil looking food and luminous desserts. We walk out of this hideous eatery and sit in the bar to down a hamburger and beer - a snip at £20 each!
Body clock on planet Zog we fall into bed but wake up repeatedly during a fitful night.
We've now learned that the A380 is scheduled (that's not really the right word) to fly to Shanghai at midnight Friday, arriving 02:30 Saturday. We find this most unsatisfactory and Lufthansa are unable to move us to a different flight - can you believe there's no availability between the two primary cities? So we're going by train, the reverse of the journey we will take next week. I imagine there will be some interesting happenings on the train
We arose at our normal time and finished packing, the bulk having been done the night before. It feels odd preparing to leave after only a week back home.
Living virtually on the Woodhead pass, we normally don't consider other routes, but as it was closed the previous night we double checked - whatever the problem was, it had resolved itself overnight. The journey to Manchester Airport was fine, although longer than normal as traffic was extremely heavy.
Parking was horrible and I eventually found a space on the roof - 13th floor. Check-in however was deserted so we quickly progressed through, on to security and battled through the newish duty-free-meander to airside. The lounge is OK but certainly not the nicest one in MAN and (shock, horror) they no longer have champagne by the glass - what is the world coming to?
The journey to Frankfurt on a A320 was fine, lunch was carpaccio of beef and tuna which I loved although hubby wasn't happy with the tuna, he did eat some of it. We arrived to an almost deserted FRA which was quite eerie - security had literally dozens of staff to process just us two! We caught a train between terminals and were the only people on it. The lounge was much nicer and we settled down to a few hours of work, punctuated with refreshment, of course!
Eventually we boarded the amazing A380 and settled into our space for the journey. Our steward is very attentive and tolerant, especially when I manage to throw a full glass of water over Mark quite early on, he offered to get PJs and mop up the disaster zone. Let's just clarify this - the seat is new to us, and I had no idea the bit where the glass was sat lifted, it wasn't logical! And of course it had nothing to do with the continually flowing champagne.
Let's talk A380 - we are fortunate to have been on these amazing craft many times, this is the fourth on Lufthansa so it's quite possible we have been on this very plane before - they have 14 so odds are 19.75% (that's 1 - P(x=0, Bin(3, 1/14)) in case you think I made it up!) They are amazing on so many levels - double entendres intended - we are "upstairs" in the business cabin, where 8 First Class, 92 Business Class and 52 Premium. Below is 336 Economy. Possibly the most impressive factor is how quiet the plane is, you can easily have a conversation "sotto voce" which would be impossible on any other. There is plenty of room, masses of stowage, and fabulous toilets with windows! Another great asset is the cameras- front, below and tail - the latter is my favourite looking along the body of the craft and into the future. As I understand it they are, and probably will be forever, the largest aircraft built! But it turns out there is a downside to being big - as you will read soon.
We had a good dinner - scallops with ginger, goulash (except with no onions, paprika and mushrooms it was really just a very good stew) and then cheese - whilst enjoying Jurassic World, and then getting a decent sleep.
We awoke to a Chinese breakfast (our choice) and the news that we are unable to land in Shanghai because of the weather, and we must fly back to Beijing (which we passed 700 miles earlier) to wait out the weather. We land in Beijing at 11:50, Oddly it took less than an hour to get there, but I don't know how near we had actually got to Shanghai initially. We sat on the apron for 2 hours before Captain announced we were clear to return. Sadly the authorities had a different opinion and refused to let us go. It was finally 16:30 before we had the necessary clearance.
Fifteen minutes later and there's another twist - we taxied all the way across Beijing airport to the end of the runway, took up our position and then stopped. Captain eventually came on to say the weather has deteriorated once again and we are not going make it to Shanghai today. Sat in full sunshine with smoggy but clear skies, this sounds very odd. Apparently it's just us and an Air France A380 that have problems, anything smaller can still land although with only one of the four runways open I imagine there are delays. By now our dancers should have landed but they may have had delays too, we will find out later.
At 17:10 we are within meters of our stand and suddenly we stop again. Apparently Captain can't park on his own, he must have a parking warden (I'm sure there's a proper name for the person with ping-pong bats) guide us, and in the whole airport no-one is available. So we sit at jaunty angle blocking a huge taxi-way, and a terminal for ages, we try to smile! Captain has remained incredibly well humoured throughout, but his disbelief was showing in his voice as he told us this new part of the saga. We disembark to busses at 17:30.
Clearing immigration took ages, and after a train ride we waited for our bags, and waited and waited, for about an hour. Then we waited in the freezing cold for a bus to take us to the Crown Plaza Hotel. Scrums, pushing, shoving - utter chaos at every turn, I can't write about that I've decided.
The final indignation is the buffet - apart from a bag of pretzels we've not eaten since breakfast - it was a bun-fight with evil looking food and luminous desserts. We walk out of this hideous eatery and sit in the bar to down a hamburger and beer - a snip at £20 each!
Body clock on planet Zog we fall into bed but wake up repeatedly during a fitful night.
We've now learned that the A380 is scheduled (that's not really the right word) to fly to Shanghai at midnight Friday, arriving 02:30 Saturday. We find this most unsatisfactory and Lufthansa are unable to move us to a different flight - can you believe there's no availability between the two primary cities? So we're going by train, the reverse of the journey we will take next week. I imagine there will be some interesting happenings on the train
Comments
Post a Comment