Our first 2 days have been airports and planes.
We stayed at the airport Rydges prior to our early morning first leg flight to Tokyo and had our customary glass or two of bubbles to celebrate the start of our trip.
The Qantas Lounge was pretty empty, not long being open, when we arrived so we settled in until boarding. The flight was a little late getting away but otherwise good as we settled into watching movies for our daytime flight.
We arrived at Tokyo International about 5.30pm and checked into the Royal Park Hotel in the terminal. We ventured to have dinner in the hotel but we’re told the was a football team about to arrive but we managed to get a seat at the bar. Another small table left soon after and we were shifted across there for our meal of assorted tempura and meat skewers. All attention then shifted to the football team when they arrived and service became scarce so we soon left. We walked through the terminal and across to the other hotel and we walked around the shops for a while before turning in for the night.
Next day we had a slightly later flight onward to Paris.
We had a quick trip through checkin, security and customs and were in the lounge by 7.30am for breakfast. We wandered around the terminal for a while before our long flight to stretch our legs – Haneda is a big airport !
Boarding was pretty much on time and we were off on our flight – keeping well away from Russia. At first the flight map indicated we would be heading toward the Bering Strait and then turning west above Russia. However we just kept going east, over Alaska, Greenland and then south over the UK to Paris.
Confused the dickens out of the flight map but the service was good and despite a lot of cloud managed to snap a few shots over the snow caps of Greenland and the UK. Didn’t expect to be crossing the English Channel in this direction but neither did someone else 80 years ago !
Arriving fairly late we checked into the Novotel near the airport – after a bit of a walk trying to find the shuttle. Next step – on to Normandy !