Friday 05 April 2024
Highlights: Farewelling Boots and Juno, Qantas Melbourne International Business Lounge, a surprisingly good Jetstar International Flight, and a welcomed shower at the Qantas Singapore Business Lounge.

After a lot of planning the exciting day was finally here for Darby and me. Will an uncle and niece kill each other, or will it be the trip of a lifetime building memories together?

First up I had to ‘catch’ my cats and get them into Cat Carriers. Not something that is easy to do. Juno put up a good fight to avoid her fate. Even Boots struggled. I hate leaving them but they get a very nice room with an actual TV plus a window to watch nature.

Lana was driving both Darby and me to the Cat Resort and the Airport. I think Lana did well to contain her emotions when it was time to leave her daughter in my care, and the car of Jetstar for our first long haul flight to our transit point in Singapore.

After clearing Border Control we headed to the Qantas Melbourne International Business Lounge. Darby didn’t go for any of the food or drink lounge options, but I was happy to have a late breakfast before the flight.

Our Jetstar flight turned out to be much better than I expected. I know I had low expectations but still a clean plane, a seat that was fine for 7.5 hours, the paid meal for me was good. Darby slept a lot on this flight, I however did not and felt a minor headache coming on at the end. Basically nothing went wrong with the flight so I’ll consider Jetstar as an okay back up option in the future (review here).

At Changi Airport (Singapore) we had to transfer from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1 and the heat and humidity was preview of our day in Singapore at the end of this trip.

I personally enjoyed the chance to refresh at the Qantas Singapore Business Lounge in particular a shower. This time Darby did try some pasta before we head to our Gate for the long overnight flight Singapore to Helsinki.

If everything goes to plan, we will land in Helsinki in the morning and attempt to do some exploring on the Saturday before our Sunday flight to Berlin and the start of our G Adventure tour.