Sitting in our Hostel room in Frankfurt waiting for the thunder

Getting loaded onto the plane in Dubai was interesting. It was a B777-300, still rows of 3, 4 and 3 seats, so quite a big plane. There was a single security person scrutinizing all passports and asking questions, and two people scanning the boarding passes. As a consequence the que of people became very long and moved very slowly. Then we were loaded onto a double width bendy bus and taken to the far end of the airport, way past the point where we disembarked, to get loaded onto our plane. Funny hooning around airport and having to give way to crossing aeroplanes. Once our plane started taxiing it too had to give way to at least another dozen or so other planes taxiing - you could see them trundeling along on the plane's forward looking camera.

The flight was smooth, but not as quiet as the A380. The 6 month Indian infant with the huge lung capacity seated immediately next to me made sleeping a bit difficult. I wached some Disney cartoons and George various movies including Avatar and the latest Shrek movie (I watched that on the last leg - funny movie - also really enjoyed How to tame a dragon, not least because the heroine is called Astrid!). By the time we got to Frankfurt we were both very tired.

My bag was already trundeling around on the baggage carouselle and George's took another 20 minutes or so. Not bad since we'd last seen our bags in Wellington - you always wonder if they get through all the connections. We eventually figured out to take a bus to Airport Termnal 1, from where we could catch the train into Frankfurt itself. We've come back to our rooms in the hostel (one road away from and parallel to the main railway station, and seemingly in the Red Light district) after eating Halal salami pizza because the sky started rumbling with thunder. Think it has passed over now.

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The Airbus 380, George and I were sitting by the first window past the I, on the lower deck