Trafford

Our 4am alarms rung...we both awoke excited like two children on Christmas morning! Today was the day we had been looking forward to so much for months now, but it was sort of bitter sweet for both of us as we had to leave our family behind. We were up and out by 4:30! I wanted one last drive of Mums Porsche before we left the country so I drove us to the airport. We arrived in good time and I said the emotional goodbyes to my mum who was clearly upset about seeing me leave for, well however long we decided to be away for, even though she’d kept it in for weeks. Into the departures area where we wanted to drop our bags off...which took ages due to the luggage carousel being broken, we finally got to the front of the queue got our boarding passes and the woman informed us that we had to wait in another queue to drop our bags off at oversized bagged as they were backpacks. Next stop security, which was equally painful, not helped by the fact that we both had to have certain items rechecked... it was even more slow as three guys were pulled aside for drug searches which reduced the headcount from 3 just 1 for a while...half an hour passed and we got them back. Toms didn’t go through because his Vaseline was covered up and my electronics bag was too big. Smooth start to the trip but we got through!

We were flying all the way to Sri Lanka with Etihad. The first flight was 8 hours from Manchester —> Abu Dhabi, which was 1 1/2 delayed setting off due to a sick passenger, but we were comfortable and the in-flight entertainment was good and the food equally good! We arrived to Abu Dhabi and had 40 minutes to get on our connecting flight to Colombo...we rushed off the flight comforted by the fact that Abu Dhabi was supposed to be a slick and efficient airport...we would surely be fine, right? Wrong! We got to the transfer section of the airport and we welcomed by a huge crowd of people trying to get through security. Time ticked away and it looked less and less likely we were going to get our flight. We managed to get into the business class queue and that increased our chances slightly. We were almost at the front of the security queue and we noticed a Chinese family trying to sneak through using their child as an excuse to do so...Tom abruptly stopped them in their tracks and told them to get behind us as our flight would be leaving in 20 minutes! When we were asked to put our stuff through we were as efficient as possible, ensuring my Vaseline was not covered and I even divided my electronics bag up. We had also taken our shoes off to get through and when we got our bags back we scooped everything up and sprinted through the airport...barefoot. Both of us swerved our way past the expensive looking shops, pushing people out the way at times and we found out that our gate was 37, the other side of the airport, of course! Eventually, we made it and they were waiting for us and we just made the flight. Safe to say we didn’t find the time to make our usual stop at duty free to shower ourselves with after shave...which we could both really do with right now. Upon boarding, the other passengers were throwing some serious dagger looks our way..little did they know what we had just been through. From Abu Dhabi to Colombo was around 4 1/2 hour flight and we got food on the plane too, which made us both too happy as we were hungry and weren’t expecting food at all. We tried to get some kip, but failed massively. Looks like tomorrow or today or whatever day it was going to be when we landed was going to be a long one!Read more