The Rolling Stone

Dad drove us to the airport (thanks Dad!) and we got there in good time. The queue for checking luggage took forever, but we were still at the gate a few minutes before they started boarding.

We flew Philippine Airlines (‘the heart of the Philippine’ as the jingles kept telling us every 15 minutes), with a two hour change in Manila. Despite the lovely service, the flights were as terrible as long flights usually are, but this was offset by the boys’ excitement. These were Felix’s first overseas flights and Xavier’s first flights of any kind.

We were in the middle seats for the 9-hour flight from Sydney to Manila, but we got a window seat for the 5-hour Manila to Tokyo leg. Felix loved watching the other planes as we taxied for take-off. And the view of Tokyo at night from the air as we came into landing was amazing.

We arrived after midnight, all very tired. Poor Xavier kept falling asleep every time he sat down for more than a minute. There was the usual scramble around filling out multiple forms and navigating which queue to join. But it was all pretty smooth and we got a taxi to our hotel with no problems.

(Well except that the driver over-charged us by several thousand dollars, but that’s a story for my next entry…)