Adam's diary of the holiday: the outward journey

Slightly disconcerted when the taxi arrived 20 minutes early, but having spent all morning packing we were nearly ready so didn’t have to keep the driver waiting too long.

Took the scenic route to the airport when we found a traffic jam on the way out of Wallington. Luckily, our driver seemed to know all the little back roads to get us past the jams and back onto the A23 just before the motorway. Got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, about 3 hours before our 17.40 flight.

Felt the benefits of business class travel almost immediately on arrival at the airport, as there was a huge queue for check-in which we had the great pleasure of bypassing to go straight to the business class check-in desk. Our bags were all within the weight allowance, although our main bags did both get special labels attached to say ‘Heavy! Lift with care.’

After a brief shopping trip to buy Carolyn a spare watch and me a lens cloth for my camera, we went to find the executive lounge. After all those early morning flights from Heathrow where I had to look longingly at the huge range of drinks on offer but had to accept that it was just too early in the morning for champagne, I was rather looking forward to being able to sit in the executive lounge at a more drink-friendly time of day. Sadly, however, the ‘Aviance’ lounge is rather low rent, and the choice of drinks was just cheap spirits, a dismal selection of beers, or red or white wine. This turned out not to be the disaster it might have been, however, as the white, an Australian semillon chardonnay, was actually very pleasant.

A slightly disconcerting feature of the lounge was the sign saying ‘Please be advised that flight announcements are not made in the lounge’, which coupled with the lack of any display screens, made it look like you’d have to stay alert to catch the flight.

Anyway, we did stay alert, and were at our departure gate in plenty of time. Our business class status conferred no special privileges here, as we had to wait until everyone else had boarded before we were allowed to. There were certainly no special privileges once on the plane, as the seats were really no different to the ones in cattle class. We really had to struggle to squeeze the hand luggage into the overhead lockers as well, thanks to having had to wait for everyone else to get on first. Still, at least we got a nice little curtain between us and the great unwashed behind. So that’s all right then. We also got a drink before take-off. I had hoped it might be champagne, especially once I’d heard the cork pop, but it was instead a rather indifferent cava.

The flight to Madrid passed uneventfully, with a snack being served consisting of a disturbingly pink salami, some indifferent cheese, but redeemed by some rather good ham (I believe it’s what the Spanish call ‘jamón serrano’).

On arrival at Madrid, two ladies from the airline stood in the concourse we entered into handing out boarding passes to Buenos Aires. This didn’t strike me as the most organised way of doing things, but we got our boarding passes in the end so no harm was done. I’m still not sure what we were supposed to do with the boarding passes we were given at Gatwick, supposedly also for the Madrid to Buenos Aires leg of the flight.

We had about an hour and a half to wait for our next flight, and I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t thought to bring any euros along so that I could practice the Spanish for ‘two beers please’. This was rendered rather less serious by the time we had to wait to pass through a security check on the way to the departure gate for our next flight. Eventually, we emerged into a part of the airport with the usual depressing collection of shops. We found ourselves almost on top of the smoking area, which was simply a spot in the middle of the concourse with no separation from the surrounding area, so the fumes extended very much further than the size of the area would have suggested.

A huge queue had formed at our gate, with no real indication of why, since our flight hadn’t started boarding. Eventually, boarding started, and again we had to wait until everyone else had already boarded as they boarded everyone from the back of the plane (so the queue was, in fact, utterly pointless, and we were thankful we hadn’t joined it). This was a laudable attempt to reduce congestion by letting people most distant from the doors board first, although it would have been more successful if they had realised that the doors were not at the front of the airplane, but some way along it. We therefore had to wait for a whole bunch of people in cattle class to finish standing in the aisle on our way to the business class section in the front.

At least on this plane (a 747) we had proper business class seats, with huge amounts of leg room. Plenty of room for our hand luggage as well. Rather disappointingly, however, our seats were the only ones in the middle of the plane, so our possibilities for admiring the view out of the window were somewhat diminished. A further disappointing feature of the seats was that the reading light for Carolyn’s seat didn’t work.

Once again, we were offered a drink of fizz before take-off, and once again, it was a rather indifferent cava. We actually had plenty of time to drink it, as despite being scheduled to leave at 10.20 pm, it was about 11.00 pm before we got moving.

The food was not exactly the finest gourmet fare, but nonetheless an enormous improvement on what you usually get fed in cattle class: a rather pleasant salad with some salmon, an acceptable pâté, followed by a main course of some quite pleasant beef in a juniper sauce. The red wine to accompany the beef (an Argentine cabernet sauvignon) was also quite pleasant, and if the service had been a bit more attentive I might even have been able to drink it with the beef, rather than after it. Still, at least I was able to drink the wine with the cheese that followed, which was a mixed bag ranging from utterly boring to quite pleasant.

The in-flight movies were quite well timed, starting just as the meal was over. I settled on Thunderbirds, which was quite fun and sufficiently non-taxing for my present weary state, and Carolyn settled back to sleep and eschewed the movies altogether.

I can’t say I got a very good night’s sleep, but I certainly spent a good fraction of the night asleep, and certainly felt I’d got my money’s worth from the extra space in business class. Carolyn’s night was pretty similar.

We were woken just before 5 am for breakfast, consisting of rolls, croissants, jam, fresh fruit and yoghourt. We were also offered a cooked option, which looked pretty horrible. There were two choices, one of which was described as fried milk (it may have lost something in translation, but actually it did look as bad as it sounded), and the other of which was something to do with courgettes. Neither of us had any trouble turning it down.

I had a chance to read a bit more of Shackleton’s ‘South’ before we landed, and very nearly finished it. I really hope our trip is easier than his was.