Dylan Schiemann

On April 25th (ANZAC day!), I slept in a bit and then found a taxi for the airport. ANZAC day is a holiday much like the US Memorial Day, “honouring members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.” The event made traffic a bit of a challenge, but it was worth seeing the great memorial festivities.

I arrived at the Sydney airport and found my way to Singapore Air, which had just confirmed my flight a day before. Unlike all of my other tickets, they had placed me on a stand-by list which they did not clear until the last minute. The A380 is a very popular aircraft, and my efforts to get upgraded to suite class, which had empty seats, were met with laughter.

The Sydney airport was nice, and the lounge had a reasonably good selection of food. When it was time to board, I made my way to the boarding area which had four lanes to handle each class on each deck:

Once on-board this monstrously large plane though, it felt very cozy and intimate. Because the seats are 34″ wide (so wide that two people could sit together in them), everything just felt spacious and comfortable. The mood and comfort of the seats and planes was just all around awesome.

The food and service was excellent, and the bathroom was larger than many hotel bathrooms. The flight attendants were serving a good selection of cocktails which would help me sleep more easily on my next flight. After 8.5 glorious hours, we arrived in Singapore.

The Singapore airport is very cool, including a gym, movie theatre, and more. I didn’t have enough time to enjoy these perks. Because of Singapore’s positioning as a hub for the world, they seemed to have flights at any time of day or night. The airport was the most Americanized of all of the Asian airports I visited, with English being the dominant language. The Singapore Air business class lounge was outstanding, but was also very crowded even late at night. After about 90 minutes, it was time to go to the gate to board. As was becoming more common in various international airports, I had to go through security again before boarding at the gate.

I then had the best night of sleep so far on the trip, sleeping for the first 7 hours of my 13.5 hour flight to London. This really helped adjust my sleep schedule to European time. I really enjoyed my time in the east, and moving on to Europe was a bit of an initial disappointment.

I arrived in London surprisingly refreshed, and then walked through a maze of corridors, took a bus, and then walked through another maze and a security and customs line. All of this, and I wasn’t even staying in London for this part of the trip!

The Star Alliance lounge offered much needed shower facilities which were high in quality, and a decent selection of breakfast foods. The wifi was a bit spotty, but overall it was a great place to spend a few hours while waiting for a flight from London to Amsterdam.

The older parts of Heathrow airport are under heavy repair. BMI switched us to a very small plane so there was no business class for the very short flight which was fine.

The flight itself was an uneventful 55 minutes of waiting and 35 minutes of flying. I arrived in Amsterdam ready to see the city and I was met at the airport by my friend Nikolai Onken.