To be honest, the legroom was pretty good in my row, so I wonder if it was the same for the rest of the aircraft. Suffice to say if it were, then this particular Embraer would have to be one of the most comfortable shorthaul aircraft I've been on.

Once our bus load of pax was on board, I think we didn't have anyone else to wait for. This is one of the things about boarding at a remote stand by bus - especially with small aircraft, if everyone can fit on one or two buses, then it really clamps down on the gate closing time and departure time to a degree, since there's none of this running to the gate at last minute and then further running onto the plane (because if you miss the bus, too bad). I guess the only problem is lack of real priority boarding (unless you're lucky to use the FCT), but it was a lightly loaded flight, so plenty of room for everyone and similarly space in the overheads.

With the weather starting to pour a little harder now, we were pushed back out of our stand and soon taxiing and on our way into the sky towards London.

FRA to London is a mere 90 minutes or thereabouts. As an Australian, that's pretty much a BNE-SYD or SYD-MEL - fairly standard and known hops for me. LH serve a snack on this flight, which probably amounted to the normal cheese sandwich with full bar for the Y pax. For J pax, I was expecting the plastic food I got last year on my FRA-ZRH hop. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.


Tasting refreshment plate from LH.

The tasting plate LH provided wasn't too bad at all. Not sure what the obsession is with tartares, but they weren't bad (and if not, there was always a bread roll on the side to eat it with). Whilst a full bar was on offer (not a comprehensive list, but the bare essentials - wine and beer at least), I decided to be conservative and opt for an orange juice. Probably not a good idea to greet the people who would be accommodating me for a couple of days whilst pickled (my liver had already gone down that path with the Champagne...)

LH have little cardboard ads on their meal trays; this time they were promoting trips to California. Same tack as CX on their J meal trays, and the USA airlines on the napkins....


Napkin advertising on LH. How shameless.

90 minute flights go by pretty quickly, and soon we were passing over the body of water separating continental Europe from the British isles, signifying we would be landing into LCY fairly soon. LCY may be the smallest of London's five major commercial aviation airports, but it plays a fairly vital role in short haul flights serving mostly the business community (given its proximity to Canary Wharf and the rest of the neighbourhood), plus the novel LCY/JFK which is operated by BA. Like LHR, LCY has its fair share of controversy and limited in expansion as a result, plus it has stricter operating time restrictions than LHR. Nevertheless, the proximity of LCY to central London is unmatched and valuable.

Personally, I just wanted to land into LCY for the hell of it. If it was different to LHR (and LHR can be a headache to get through sometimes, let alone get in and out of), then I wanted to try it out.


Now approaching Mother England.


Looks like a storm region in the distance.




Lower altitude flying - we're getting there!

Our descent had a few bumps in it, but soon we were down on the ground in London City Airport.

@:-) Youtube VIDEO: Landing at LCY

We had a long taxi at LCY as we docked at a stand pretty far from the centre of the complex. All planes at LCY seem to turn in and then make a 180 degree turn so they are facing back towards the runway, presumably so that once they are ready to go, all they do is remove the chocks and off you go - no pushback required. A bus was waiting at our disembarkation point, so we all piled onto the bus (which just fit us all!), and then we puttered slowly along the edge of the terminal until we reached the entry to the arrivals flow.

At border control, LCY only have 6 counters, but thankfully all of them were open. 5 counters were for Euro and UK passports, and the last line was for all other passports. The immigration officer in counter 5 seemed to be in a bit of a rush, continually beckoning people to move to the next available counter, announcing the counter number to move to, and in no less than five languages including English.

Passport control was passed, then it was onto baggage claim. Let's see if my bag made the long trek like I did. I read the monitors and it said my bag would appear on carousel 1. So I stood near carousel 1 and waited. And waited more. Still a bit more. OK what the hell is happening now.......

I saw many bags, some seemed to come from FRA, so where is my bag? Don't tell me it's lost. I've come this far across the world; I don't want to deal with a lost baggage report. Suddenly, I had a peer over at carousel 2. That's a lot of bags there. Hey, why is my flight also on the carousel 2 info board? Oh nuts - that's my bag there! So much for any degree of organisation - so LCY probably decided just to load the bags on both carousels - whichever it ended up on it was there. Luckily there are only 2 baggage belts in an area no bigger than a double lock-up garage...

There's a first time for everything...... including being stopped at customs. The officer asked me a few questions then requested an inspection of my bags. She was quite pleasant about it all and mentioned all the regular cover-my-butt things...

Officer: "This is just a regular random check, this is not unusual or anything like that..."
Me: "Yeah, go on, it's OK. I'm from Australia, we do this all the time."

If you didn't think I was telling the truth, maybe you really haven't travelled to Australia. And if you are Australian, you know I'm telling the truth!

The officer was kind of intrigued by all the food I had bought. Not sure if she was sizing up my cargo to procure some for her own under the guise of "customs risk" or greater than duty limit (yeah right, like this stuff costs multiple hundreds of quid). In the end, it was a 10 minute procedure and she even let me pack my bag up myself (I mentioned to her that the first time I went to New Zealand and got the third degree, I had to keep my hands behind my back the whole time - I wasn't allowed to touch a single thing, and not allowed to say a single thing until prompted to do so).

I proceeded out the final set of doors, and I was in London. And so ended my 30+ hour trek from the antipodes.

When I got out of the small arrivals area, I made sure I had everything in place before heading out of the airport itself. Unlike other airports, LCY has a pretty small entrance. Even regional airports in Australia can have a large-ish entrance (probably because they have an adequate parking lot), but at LCY there's not much of that at all. In fact, you'd think LCY is some small out-of-the-way aerodrome than a bigger-than-it-looks STOL airport.

I bumped into my friend as I made my way to the nearby DLR station - another LCY advantage. Armed with a Travelcard - much more superior to my PAYG Oyster - we were off on the train trek home. That's a DLR to Bank, followed by the tube to Victoria, then a Southern rail service to the south of London. Seems complicated, but once you're used to it, it's like clockwork. What you might not get used to quickly is carting a ~20kg bag and a backpack and a duffle bag up and down several flights of stairs! Thankfully escalators and lifts are numerous, but you'll always have a spot in London where you'll need to drag or lift your bag up and down stairs (this gets worse if it's icy, wet, and/or near the end of the trip - you know, when you've accumulated a few more kilos of stuff!)

It's amazing how the rail services in London seem so much better than home. Must be a "grass is always greener" thing, because if there's something that Londoners will complain bitterly about, it's TfL (Transport for London), the rail services and the cost of public transport. Maybe we should at least bring some of their know-how to Australia - we could learn a thing or two (especially at the rates of fares we are paying for public transport!)

By now, I've had 30+ hours in planes and airports. It's no where near my last epic of just over 100 hours before getting to a bed, but that's not to say at a mere 30+ hours that I'd be as perky as a hummingbird in the morning! Arrived at our destination station, whereupon it was another 10 minute walk in the light wet before home (in London terms, nothing at all).

My friend's apartment wasn't very big, then you add one big suitcase, a couple of big-ish bags, and one big human (plied up with rich food and Champagne).... and you probably don't have quite much room to swing a small cat. The only thing on my mind was to wind down and think about getting to sleep. Normally in my own room I'd open up the case and so on, but that's a no-go here, but I did unzip the case to take out all the goodies for my accommodation hosts - a taste of Australia (supermarket style - no chocolate covered macadamias here! ).

Anyway, it was a bit more small talk (and a box of In-A-Biskits consumed), showing a few photos and then it was time for bed. An air mattress on the floor is probably like an F bed in the sky, but it is on land! And thank goodness for that......