Australia

Nearly nine months after first booking flights for this trip, the day finally arrived - it was time to go! Flying out of Sydney at 3pm on Singapore Airlines, Adam (son) and I were driven to Sydney airport and arrived just before midday. Vicky (wife) and Stephanie (daughter) had left last Friday and were spending four days in Milan, meeting us at the airport when we were to arrive.

The flight from Sydney to Singapore spanned a total of about 8.5 hours. Getting through Customs early we had plenty of time before finally boarding. The flight was smooth mostly, being late afternoon and evening I didn't feel the need to nap, and with a number of entertainment options in-flight I decided I'd try and watch the entire episodes of the recent series of 22.11.63. It was probably the last book I had read, written by Stephen King. I managed about 6 (I think) episodes out of 8 before we got to land in Singapore.

Our stopover here was supposed t be less than two hours. We wandered through the terminal towards our next boarding gate but then stopped for something to eat. We got to our gate with time to spare but by then had learned the flight was delayed almost thirty minutes, to depart at midnight. We boarded and sat and were then told there were issues with the hydraulics so there'd be further delays. By this time I was tired and fighting a headache and dozed for about an hour and woke to find we were still awaiting take off.

Nearly two hours past schedule we were eventually on our way. The plane for this leg of 12.5 hours was an older one, but for both flights I had upgraded our seats to have extra leg room. We had the seats near the emergency exit and so had no seats or bulkhead in front of us at all. We could stretch and get up and move around whenever we felt like it.

I decided I would try and sleep as much of this leg as possible, given that once we landed we were hiring a car and driving east. In total I probably slept about 4 times for about an hour each - hard to tell really. I decided to watch the remaining episodes of 22.11.63 before we got to Milan, I just missed as I was halfway through the final episode before we landed.