The room was very nice, and I slept like a log from 9 till about 7:30. I had ordered breakfast for 8, and had mistakenly asked for just bread. No matter, they just ignored that and brought out bread, a big croissant, / fried eggs, a sausage, a slice of thin pork, mushrooms, a quarter pineapple, a quarter papaya, a banana, an orange, a handful of strawberries, coffee, tea with vanilla, and an iced juice drink rendered unfortunately undrinkable by the fact the ice could've come from local water. Wow!
After breakfast I had about 2 and a half hours to kill. I went for a shower, then just lay around my room reading (no wifi, remember!). I had asked the hotel to order me a taxi for midday, but came down at 11:30 in order to avoid any mishaps. The guy rang up though, so the taxi arrived about 5 minutes later. It was to cost only 15,000, and not the 100,000 I had budgeted, so I decided to give the hotel a nice tip. Their English wasn't the best, but they'd tried hard, so I gave the guy 10,000, 5 for him and 5 for the woman who'd been on the previous night.
I also paid the taxi driver 20,000. I have a fair bit of money left, and I didn't spend half as much as I expected anyway, so I could afford to be generous. Previously all the tipping had been handled by a kitty, so I have no idea what other people have been getting, but I doubt it was that much!
It wasn't even 10 minutes to the airport, so I'd arrived with plenty of time. I needed to change some money, but first to get checked in! The queue wasn't too long at this point, so it only took half an hour. No Heathrow, but not bad. Unfortunately the woman at the desk only gave me one ticket, to the Seychelles! I tried to get more information out of her, but her English wasn't very good so I gave up. At least my bag was checked through.
I then went to the ships, with an eye for some sweets for work (not seen a single bag of Madagascan sweets on my holiday, they just don't reach the countryside), and perhaps a little lemur friend for Misty. The sweets were fine, but lemur thing was 90,000, or £25. It wasn't even that big! Sod that, I left.
Next I went to exchange currency, at a terrible rate I might add. I had about 100,000 left, or £27ish. The minimum the guy would do was £50. Well damn. It's a closed currency, so once I get out of here it'll be useless even if I try to exchange it. I wasn't particularly hungry or thirsty, and the flights will stuff me fatter than a pig at Christmas anyway. I had no room for anything bulky. I had 100,000 ariary to burn, otherwise it would literally rot in my wallet forever. That means there's a lucky pupper out there somewhere who has the most expensive toy lemur ever coming her way!
I killed time to the next flight by reading. It went rather quickly really, and I had a seat in row 8, only the third row behind business class, which meant getting off would be easy. Good.
The flight was largely uneventful, the food was very good, though perhaps this was partially thanks to the limited availability of spices in Madagascar (they only have those that are grown in the local region). I finished my book, which I had only started this morning, so just rested until the end of the flight. The sun was setting during our descent, and it was lovely. I was in the aisle though, so couldn't photograph it at all. It'd probably have come out awful anyway through those windows.
I was first to security. I don't mean in the first lot, I mean first. Business class people are old and slow, most of the people in the first 3 rows were Chinese, so have short stride length, and I normally walk purposefully, so I didn't queue for a second. The lady at the connections desk gave me the rest of my tickets, so I could stop freaking out, and the flight was in 15 minutes early, so I had 2 hours to kill. Reading again then; luckily I had 2 books!
The next flight was 4 hours long, so I went for the films this time. Captain America: Civil War. It was alright, about what you'd expect from the modern Marvel films really. The final couple of hours, including takeoff and landing went to my book. Riveting I know.
At Abu Dhabi we were in early once again! What is this?! I was actually near the back this time, so nearly last off, BUT they just opened a new security counter as I was walking up; I was third through that one. Good trip so far, Tana aside. This time there was an hour to kill by the time I got to the gate (the airport is HUGE, it took 10 minutes of Serious walking to get there), but there was free wifi, so I mooched around the Internet a bit.
An A380 again to London, and I was hopeful of triple seats to myself again as I intended some serious sleeping on this flight. Alas it was not to be, some Czechs I think came along and rained on my parade. But wait! Once the captain announced boarding was complete, they ran off, leaving me with 3 pillows (plus my trusty neck pillow, which manfully served as my only pillow during camping), and the perfect chance to get some sleep!
First I awaited the snack. Some sort of chicken sandwich, which wasn't bad. The bed was excellent. I have refined my sleeping technique on 3 airplane seats, and had a solid 4 hours in the middle of the flight. Then they started rustling with breakfast, so I thought I might as well get up for that.
Another hour of sleep, and the descent had begun. I flipped on the map, shocked to see we were early once again, and also that there were some strange zig zags on the route we had taken. Oh well, drunk or not the pilot got us down safely. Half an hour early too, though for me that may just mean half an hour in a cafe in King's Cross as opposed to on a plane, we will see at the train station.
Funnily enough, after all that flying, my lips were dry. In fact, it would be more accurate to say my lip skin was dry... MY SKIN!!! Maybe I have finally uncovered what that little boy was yelling about! I got to baggage, and after 10 minutes of tense waiting, my bag popped out and dispelled the omnipresent fear that it had been ransacked by Madagascans and left for dead.
The tube ride was uneventful. No scissors to be seen or heard of. I got into Kings Cross just after 9, and the first train I could use my open return on was 9:30. Jackpot! Just enough time to grab a little something to eat then. I had a look at a pasty/coffee shop, but the breakfast pasty was £4.99. That's 2 meals in Madagascar! I went to WH Smiths instead, and got a wrap, some crisps, and a Starbucks cold coffee for £3.99, and ate them all whilst waiting. About a minute after I finished, the train was ready for boarding.
The train journey was also uneventful. Thanks to a barrage of threats Vicky was waiting for me at the station, and she drove me home in am acceptable fashion.
That's it. Blog over. Hope you all enjoyed it, and see you next time!
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