South Africa - Day 1 - Flying

I left the house with plenty of time, heading for Manchester airport, the main surprise was that there were no roadworks on the M6 and the traffic was flowing. Initial thoughts were that I was on the wrong road but as I got a few miles north I spotted the average speed cameras and the roadworks began.

I've never flown from Manchester before so didn't know if it was any good or not, I was hoping to bump into some Man Utd fans, happy that they'd only lost 2-0 to Everton, but soon came to my senses as they'd be well on their way back to London by now.

In the departure lounge I visited the shop and purchased the "meal deal", some deal, it cost about the same as my flight!

The announcement came over the speaker system in a voice so devoid of life that I thought Winter was coming telling me that my gate was open. For the second time today I had to pinch myself as my gate wasn't the furthest one away for a change, normally I'd have to walk half way down the runway to find my plane.

My flight was with Air France which meant that we had to stop in Paris to stock up with onions. The flight attendants looked as though they'd had a makeup fight in duty free they were wearing that much, if only they'd had a perfume fight instead they wouldn't have stunk of garlic so much. Stinky French.

The flight was mostly empty as my covert photo shows (Ok so it's a tad blurry but I didn't want to get pounced on again for taking a photo of a plane, think of the terrorism!).  There was one stupid woman though who was trying to photograph the eifel tower from 4000 feet with her Ipad, at night. If you thought my photo was blurry, you haven't seen anything.

After a short stop off in Paris, I boarded the next plane for my final leg of the journey. The plane was an a380 airbus which is one of those super massive double decker planes. I'm impressed, sat in my seat I don't feel like a sardine, it's only 3/4 full also so I've taken over the seat next to me. The food was also pretty good, especially the chocolate moose.

I can never sleep on planes and as it's a night flight, I kinda need to do that, so I played by Tim's rules and accepted every free bit of food and drink to make me sleepy. Oh, I also washed down some sleeping pills with some beers. For those who have seen Wolf on Wall Street, imagine the plane scene except with less hot chicks.

In other news, I'm now in Africa!

Ammendum: sleeping pills suck.
Ammendum 2: I stole the French guys pillow when he wasn't looking. Muhahah