South Africa (Day 1)

We had a very early start. I was up not long after 2am to do the last bits of packing and odd jobs. At 3:20am the phone rang, it was the taxi 10 minutes early. Queue mad rush of finishing off bits and pieces and getting the bags down stairs. Security was nice and straight forward, they swabbed my phone but that was it, not even a beep from the metal detector.

As P was travelling with us, she was able to get us access to the Lounge as she's a frequent flyer.

The lounge was lovely, I had two bacon rolls and a few cups of tea before it was time for us to go to our gate and board the plane. For £15 we had been able to upgrade to economy comfort to Amsterdam and that extra 10cm of legroom was really worth it! The flight was fairly uneventful. We got tea and a sandwich part way through.

Our connection in Amsterdam was only 1 hour 50 minutes so by the time we were all off the plane and walked along to our gate, it was time to join the queue for another security check. This checkpoint had body scanners that everyone had to go through. I wasn’t very happy about that but as we watched through the glass whilst we queued, I realised that it was just flashing up things on a blocked out shape of a body. As it turned out though, mine didn’t even do that and I escaped the pat down with a nice green okay!

I think this is the plane we got on, but I can't be sure.

On our flight from Amsterdam we had paid a little extra for the two seats at the back of the plane. No extra space but no one to disturb when we needed up for a stretch. The flight was turbulent in places but I’m getting better with it. I still always put my sucky sweet in too soon though for the ear popping. Nearly 11 hours later we landed safely, cleared customs, collected bags and then went to meet 'I' and the car.

I was very tired as I’d only dozed slightly on the plane. This was the first time seeing this house. When we visited 6 years ago, it was still being built. Not long before bed at about 10:30pm