18th June Coming home

For those that don't already know we are now home! Well we will be by the time you read this as we fly overnight by UK time.

On Wednesday morning we woke up rather early, 3am to be precise so only about 2 1/2 hours sleep! Waking up to the view of Sydney was amazing and I couldn't help but stare at it again. We got dressed and met a rather excited Deb outside our door (more excited than usual anyway) I made myself a coffee and it tasted awful so Deb decided she was going to work out the machinemabob eventually after adding water coffee was made and it was much nicer! Ian presented us with a card and both Deb and Ian had filled it with writing! I opened and read it and handed it to Laura trying to hold back tears... A sentence from Ian in the card which I will always remember is "I don't believe in goodbyes, only see ya laters" brilliant. Ian didn't want to come to the airport so we said our "see ya laters" at the apartment and headed for the car. I offered to drive for the last time, driving through Sydney at 3:45 am is a breeze! Only catching and timing traffic lights is the tricky bit, we got onto the short stint of highway to the airport only for the exit for the international terminal to be closed!! Bugger. So we took a quick scoot further up turned off and swung back heading into the city, and took the exit heading back instead. We found our way to the terminal and unpacked the car. We said our "see ya laters" to Deb this time not managing quite so well to hold back the tears.. We lined up and waited for check in. Then proceeding to fill our leaving Australia customs form, scanned for bombs and as we were walking through duty free our flight was called. The airport was empty as Sydney has a curfew with no flights allowed between 11pm and 6am. Our plane was due to be first out of the airport. We were booked on the latest Emirates, Boeing Airbus A380. The biggest passenger plane in the world! And by god is it a big plane! We were right at the back out the way from all the noise and babies so walked all the way down. Unfortunately we couldn't come up with the $12,000 each required for business class tickets but even so economy is still rather lovely! It was still pitch black outside and we were sat on the tarmac ready to take off. Engines spooled and we were hurtled down the strip, it was a long time before we could rotate but we left terraferma and were climbing happily. Laura and me always hold hands while landing and taking off. Being in the air we then kept our hands busy playing with the infotainment! Shortly after everyone on the left side of the plane was asked to close their blinds I assumed it was because the sun was rising and it was going to be very bright. A couple of minutes later I looked because I wanted to see the sunrise over Sydney and I wished I hadn't. Laura's hand was held again! I'm no expert but I'm fairly sure that sparks and flames shouldn't be pouring out the back of a jet engine?! I closed my blind knowing there was nothing I could do. And pretended nothing was wrong, I watched the interactive map closely to see if we were deviating from the planned route. I knew if there was a major problem that we would turn dump the fuel at sea and head back to Sydney. But we stayed the course and kept climbing 10 minutes passed and we were still climbing I checked again and there were not only the odd streak of orange coming from the engine. Being lucky enough to have 4 of the most powerful jets Rolls-Royce have ever made it wouldn't be a major issue if one was out or order. Once we were level I went the long way around to the toilet and went via the galley closest to the cockpit without going upstairs obviously. I approached the only male steward went in and closed the curtain behind me, he asked what in earth I was doing until I asked if I could have a word, my exact question was "what was wrong with engine 2 at take off" nobody else had seen it as the blinds were closed to avoid seeing the sun. As it turned out I was the only person to see it!! This worried the poor steward greatly and asked me exactly what happened and when. He asked me to wait while he went to speak to the pilots. Luckily they were aware as they had been contacted by Rolls-Royce in the UK and Sydney Control telling them that there was a problem. The most likely cause was a bird strike as we were first down the strip and the sparks I saw was just BBQ bird. I accepted the answer knowing full well what a bird strike can do to a jet engine.  I thought I would distract myself and went to watch a film with very sweaty palms, well when I say the the film was on, I was fixated on the engine...

However we are now 8 hours into the flight and sat at 38,023ft with a ground speed of 565mph. It's -50degrees outside and we are flying over the equator. Only another 3469 miles to Dubai then 12 hours to home. I still feel rather special knowing that only 1 steward the pilots and me knew what happened to the engine! Laura will know when we land to refuel in Dubai. Not the most relaxing flight we have had so far, but we did have a lovely omelette, beans, hash browns, mushrooms and tomato for breakfast. I had a salmon in lemon cream for lunch and Laura had the lamb couscous. We both had an Asian BBQ pork salad starter and a chocolate Ganash for pudding. It was very yummy! Emirates has impressed so far...

We arrived safe at Dubai airport and walked straight to the gate, we felt rather poor after seeing all the gold and diamond encrusted watches in the duty free. We grabbed some free Internet to pass on travel information before boarding our plane bound for London!