D1 - Travel day

We woke up to Dale's 15th birthday. Having packed the car the night before it was an easy morning, leaving home at 6:40am.

We dropped the car at parking and had 45mins to kill before bag drop opened for our flight. At 8:45 we went through security and into the terminal.

We go Oscar some new headphones, as the buds hurt his ears, ate some expensive airport food and waited for our 11:45am flight. The flight left at close to 12.

No luck with scoring an empty middle seat for either of our rows. The kids were happily settled behind us. The flight was very full, but pretty uneventful. We did alert the cabin crew about Dale's birthday, and they announced it over the PA and came down to her singing happy birthday and gave her a card signed by the whole crew, some chocolates, a drink and a cake. Her embarrassment was short lived and she appreciated the treats.

We landed on time at 7:50pm, and we passed through the immigration check quite quickly. We saw the cabin crew and were able to get the video they filmed of Dale's birthday off them. Our ski bags were out first, then a short wait for our luggage. It was 8:30 by the time we got to the JAL luggage desk to send the ski bags.

Here we hit a snag, they could not say when the bags would arrive, saying it could be anytime in the week. With no snow, they would have been there on the 25th when we needed them. We really didn't want to luggage 2x 25kg ski bags around. But we had though this could happen. Plan A was send the bags, plan B take them with us. That developed into plan C, take the clothes and boots and send just the skis, and hire skis until ours arrive - so we repacked our ski bags, moving boots into the clothing bags. Then we ended up with plan D - take the lot with us as moving the items around now made the ski bags lighter and much more manageable.

The we headed to the Nankai railway lines and jumped on the waiting train at 9:10, it left at 9:27pm so with 2 hungry kids we hit up the drinks vending machines on the platform. The train journeys was easy and not too full so we were able to place the skis under the seats of the Nankai airport express. Outside it was snowing!!

We arrived in Namba at 10:11pm, got some gloves and beanies on and walked the 650m to our hotel Wellstay in the wet snow. Arriving at 10:20pm we checked it drop bags at our room and the went back out to hit up the family mart for some very late dinner. It was slim pickings this late, but the hotel had a free hot/soft drinks bar that worked well. We were in bed about 11:20pm.もっと詳しく