Leave Los Angeles

On LH451, tail number D-ABVD. Another 747-400. Very different seats.
Loads of leg room, but not quite lay-flat beds. See you boys in the
morning!

Enough exercise

Unfortunately for me its quite a hike from the Star Alliance Lounge to Gate 102 - and when I got there the plane hadn't arrived yet - so no tail number or photos yet. My Laptop battery is out of juice (dumbass forgot to pack a US converter!) so I'm sucking back a Corona using one of the Lounge PCs. The annoying thing is it means I cant post any of my photos...oh well.

So I've got another hour to kill before boarding (the boards read: scheduled time: 6:35PM, actual time: 6:40PM, status: on time - something wrong there).

My next flight is 10h 40mins, arriving Terminal 1. Looks like the bigger of the two terminals, so hopefully the guys should be able to park temporarily outside and I can walk out to meet them. Unless it's like LAX (sounds like Flying High, or Airplane) "The white zone is for the immediate loading and unloading of passengers, there is no stopping in the white zone. The red zone..."

It looks like we were lucky

When we set off from Doncaster we (mentally at least) flipped a coin to choose between the A1/M11 route and the more traditional M1 route. It looks like had we taken the latter we'd have been late to pick up Russell and would have missed the ferry. See the BBC News story here.

Let's hope we are similarly lucky for the rest of the trip.

Day one photos

Ready to leave Doncaster

So near, yet so Spar...

Champagne...

...and more Champagne

A "busy" Club Lounge

The Bruges Crowne Plaza hotel at night

Phil with Russ' new iPod Touch

It's hot in LA!

Very sunny, so I'm glad my walk between the Airport Terminals wasn't too much longer. I'm not dressed for this kind of weather. I made it through LAX arrival security - but only just. I got 'red flagged' for a 'random' inspection. It wasn't too bad though, only took a couple of minutes to search through my tiny (impressed, Phil?) bag - could have been worse.

Watched a couple of movies on the way over. Eagle vs Shark - a quirky NZ comedy with Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords - was very funny. 2nd was No Reservations, which was pretty average. I'd seen just about everything else on the list, and felt like a sleep in between.

Can't wait until they get web access going on planes - will make things much more interesting.

I've got 2 more hours to kill before boarding. I might go for a walk and take some photos of the plane (if it's here).

Very romantic

We've made it to the hotel in Bruges and all is good. The hotel is right in the centre of the city, down lots of cobbled roads and opposite some big church thingy. The rooms have original beams and there's chocolates in the rooms. A great place to take your girlfriend it would seem.

Now time to find a bar.

The Pride of Canterbury

You'll be very glad to know that the three desperados are now relaxing in the club lounge on the Pride of Canterbury, champagne flutes in hand with pinkies firmly hoisted(!) and expecting a smooth on-time crossing.

The "priorité" tickets saw us drive past everyone but for two like-minded cars that were here just before us. And as we constitute 60% of the business class passengers we've got plenty of space to read the papers (see "Day one photos").

We now move one hour ahead of BST and expect to be driving the 75 minutes up to Bruges after arriving in Calais at 22:00 CET.