Edinburgh - Amsterdam - Beijing
Trip Start
Oct 27, 2007
1
3
9
Trip End
Nov 12, 2007
Edinburgh,
United Kingdom
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The alarm clock sounds at 5:05am too, and again at 5:10am. At 5:12, I reluctantly roll out of bed.
At 6am, I wake Laura, my long suffering girlfriend and, conincidentally, also my long suffering companion on this trip.
We are soon ready for the off. We are catching the bus to Edinburgh airport so we drag our cases noisily through the quiet streets of Leith to the bus stop.
The bus journey is uneventful and, as such, merits no further comment from me. However, our arrival at the airport held one little gem.
We had been informed that our flight to Amsterdam has a three hour check in time, so we have duly gotten ourselves out of bed and to the airport in order to be on time. It turns out that we are an hour early. Most travel operators inform their customers that all flights have three hour check in times, whether this is true or not. I am not happy. I've lost a valuable hour in bed!
To console ourselves, we eat pie. Well, pasties actually. They make for a tasty breakfast snack. After a munch, we head back to the check in desk, offload our bags, amble through the security checks and sit around for two hours in Edinburgh's dull departure lounge...
* * *
Aah. Amsterdam. City of tulips, canals and 'cafes'. Only we don't get to see any of this. We are stuck at Schiphol airport for four hours. We wander around the shops, eat sushi and ice cream for lunch and sit at the gate for two and a half hours.
When the time comes to board our Beijing bound winged chariot, a little shock awaits us at the security check. I had purchased a bottle of water about an hour earllier but am not, it seems, allowed to take it on the aeroplane because it is not in a sealed bag. I struggle to see the point of this since, in order to drink the water, I would have to break the seal on the bag. Am I supposed to have purchased two bottles of water, downed one and then been able to carry the second, all snug in a sealed bag, onto the plane? I am annoyed by this but there is little I can do.
In the UK, anything purchased airside (ie in the departure lounge) can be taken onto your flight. It has been security checked prior to being placed on the shelf in the shop. Things are obviously done differently here and, as a result, I have wasted money and seen my unopened bottle of water tossed in a bin.
We board the plane, take our seats and settle in for the eight hour flight to the People's Republic of China and two weeks of exploration...
