Up in the sky (part 1)

The journey - in pictures, food, films, books and stories (UK to Japan)

Here is manchester airport

And this is what British clouds look like

Food; lunch was pasta in a pesto-y cream sauce (with the obligatory pot of non-descript salad and bread roll) and a tasty chocolate mousse pudding. Snack was a cheese and onion warmed wrap.

Film; The Imitation Game, about the life of Alan Turing and his cracking of Enigma. Very good film in my view and reminder of how unfortunate a life this man had. 

Book; brain not up to much on this flight given the early start, so it was just the beauty section of 'InStyle' magazine.

Story; on this flight I met two lovely people, Lucy and Dan, both first year students at Keele university studying International Business and Environmental Studies (NB. that's two separate subjects, not a crazy join honours). They were on their way to Shanghai to spend 5 weeks on a study programme at the university and learn mandarin. All planned and paid for by Keele university - nice one! And Dan is spending his next academic year in San Diego. Keele is clearly the place to be for studying abroad! 

I also got to visit my friends on the plane too - one of my hospital partners this year and her friend were on the same flight as me, making their way to Brisbane. It was nice to have a friend and familiar face on board. And would you believe it, they were sitting next to a bunch of medical elective students from Lancaster Uni!

...

Abu Dhabi airport - not many good pictures as it was all dark, but I will highly paise their new air traffic control tower which I thought looked stunning (a sort of sabre shaped tall building)

Food; a choice between a Japanese set menu meal or 'dinner' (aka. meat and two veg (chicken)). My amazingly bland taste buds went for the rock chicken dinner I'm afraid to say. I'll get lots of Japanese food in Tokyo was my thinking. Furthermore, I couldn't go for the Japanese due to a love of Pixar's Finding Nemo....

Noooo!!! Haha.

Film: guess what they had....The Sound of Music! A nice compliment to my Julie Andrews autobiography.

Book: none, fell asleep.

Story: well, the flight attendants were a lot less grumpy on this flight, that's for sure. Haha. But that's about it for this one as I was asleep for most of it.

On to Tokyo where I was hanging out for 6/7 hours and it where I'm writing this from. 

Stories: well, I've just helped the lady next to me in the departure lounge connect her iPad and iPhone up to the free wifi. Despite neither of us speaking a common language! And she was most grateful. It's nice to know that friendliness doesn't appear to have a language in this world!

Then I was most impressed with Tokyo's commitment to travellers health at the airport

And some of the posters made me chuckle 

But without doubt, the best thing I discovered was that Japan has a very finely named domestic flight company...

I'll load this post now whilst I have some internet access and will hopefully be able to post the second half of my journey when I arrive at my final destination :)