We were up at the unearthly hour of 3am. Our bags were packed and ready to go by the front door and after a few coffees we were ready to depart at 4am, Ben had got up bright and early at 3:30am ready to deliver us to our first stop.
For this trip we had decided to do it in stages. Norwich to Amsterdam. Amsterdam to Johannesburg and then Johannesburg to Durban.
We were at Norwich by 4:40am and we thought we had plenty of time to spare for the 6:15am flight and after paying £10 each for the airport development ( Conning ) fee ( tax ), we promptly joined a very short queue to drop our bags off.
Unfortunately for us we were behind students and most of them had more than one bag so had to pay for extra baggage which a group leader was paying for at the final tally of bags but he kept wandering off. Then to top it off 3 students had written the wrong name on the flight details and each had to pay £26 each to get a name change and then the flight boarding crew had to phone each boarding desk all the way down the flight line to let them know the changes.
This took forever and by the time we got done with our bags we had 10 minutes to get through security. Then I got stopped because of the zips in my trousers and then my camera bag got searched and I was warned about carrying electrical tape. It was a nightmare.
Finally we were on the plane and no sooner had the plane gone up, it was coming back down and into Amsterdam.
Flight 1 was done.Read more