Tag Archives: flight

A day in the clouds

The alarm went off at 4am this morning, everything was already packed so we simply refreshed ourselves and after the speediest checkout we were already in the taxi!

The heat wasn’t that bad, just 35°C around 5am. We spent an hour or so strolling and relaxing in the airport before heading to the gate. As our last stop here, we found the airport to be fascinating and it can be also very cheap if you know where to look 😉

Now it’s time for our 9hr flight, and sitting in the Emirates air fortress, we felt quite pampered.

We where given two sleeping kits, as for all the long haul flights, with ear plugs, sleeping mask, socks, etc.

This time Sara wanted to try a different menu, so instead of light diet meal she went for a hinduist strict vegetarian menu. Here’s what we got for breakfast and lunch.

On the other hand, Antonio went with the meat menu. You can’t go wrong with what you already know.

Pic colazione sarà

Between meals we spent time watching movies, TV shows, playing games, and sleeping.

Gomorra on air

There’s plenty of things to do at 10 thousand meters above sea level. Especially bothering other passenger, asking them to make way to go to the toilet 6 times. Well, it’s a way like another to make the time pass by.

At 20:30 we touched Bali.

The custom were very fast and soon we got our luggage, ready to step out and enjoy Indonesia. Little we knew that troubles were coming.

In Bali the use of credit/debit cards is very limited, so is suggested to withdraw money as soon as you land from the ATM in the airport.

Unfortunately our debit cards (V-Pay, from IngDirect), just don’t work. And here I would like to make a point: it’s been our entire fault for this problem. You must never travel outside Europe without checking beforehand if the country will accept your credit or debit card!

We spent an hour fighting a legion of illegal taxi drivers, trying to get us on their taxi, while wondering how to get to our hotel without any cash.

In the end we managed to call the hotel, thanks to the helpful personnel of the airport, and arranged for them to pay our taxi once we got there.

Mind that you should never use the taxi of the wannabe taxi drivers screaming in front of the airport. Go for the official ones with the logo on top of the car. Don’t get fooled!

After 15 minutes stuck in a traffic that reminded me of Naples with a bit of Bagdad mixed in Italia, we reached the hotel. Or should I say the Villa?

Well, I’ll let you all judge by the pictures that I’ll post tomorrow.

First steps into the Middle East

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Here we are again! (hence the name we chose for this blog).

This time we decided to unwind a bit and take a break to relax after our big day. The wedding day itself was dreamlike, but it took us some good organization and patience to prepare everything to the smallest detail!

But it’s entirely thanks to the kind presents from our friends and guests that we were able to take this trip 🙂

Unlike our Japan trip, this will be a very improvised one. Since I broke my ankle and had surgery exactly two months ago, we were not sure we would be able to take the flight and enjoy the trip without using crutches! Luckily, thanks to daily rehab session I’m almost able to walk normally so we decided to jump into this adventure.

Our super idea was to book our flights in order to have a day stopover in Dubai and then spend 13 days between Bali and Lombok.

Little did we know about what Dubai was saving for us in July… So we packed some essentials in a small luggage and with two very small backpacks we were all set to go!

The flight from Bologna to Dubai was rather smooth with the entertainment system surprising us with some pearls like 2048 (best way to make 6 hours literally fly).

As always Sara wanted to play hard and ordered a light and very sad meal, while Antonio had a real one. Emirates still proves to be the best so far for us!

After 6 exciting hours of feeling inside a washing machine on steroids, we finally got to see the shimmering lights of Dubai. It’s a real shock when you realize in how short time all of this was built.
To think that almost 20 years ago here was nothing but desert and few buildings out everything into perspective.

After landing we proceeded for our first time to the exit rather than a connection flight, and after some of the quickest visa control ever, and being offered some free ice cream from the Emirates staff, we found our shiny luggage waiting for us.

“Nothing can stop us now! Let’s head out and seize the night!” said the energic Antonio before smiling to the last airport crew member.

Then in happened. Imagine falling face first into hot tub. This is what we felt when we stepped out of the airport.

We were warned about what was waiting for us but never could have we imagined the humidity to be that bad!

We were escorted to a taxi, while we noticed that nobody really had our same difficulties to breathe in the 34°C. The taxi took around 15 minutes and brought us to the J5 apartments. The hotel is very well located and the staff is professional and friendly.

Since it was around midnight we decided to go for a walk to grab some water for the night… Once out we decided to explore the hotel surroundings, aiming at the creek. We didn’t get that far and walked back to o the hotel. This was the result of 30 minutes of walking at 1am in Dubai.

This was a total shock! But tomorrow we are planning to go to the world tallest building and to visit Dubai aquarium in the mall. I don’t think I’m prepared for the 46°C awaiting for us…

Finally Japan!

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Not much to say about the flight from Dubai to Tokyo.

The airplane was huge. Two floors full of smelly, tired looking people. Personally I slept most of the time (after spending one hour playing Zelda). Food was served twice, at seemingly random times, fucking up completely our already messed up biological clock.

Finally we landed! Narita Airport! The gateway to our Japanese dream. And the portal to another 30 minutes wait, among an horde of equally smelly and tired looking peasants.
Doesn’t matter. We can stand everything now!

We are in Japan!

And we can’t wait to take advantage of a toilet and, hopefully, have a shower.

Approaching Dubai

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Emirates…

I’ve got nothing else to say. One of the best companies to fly with.

We got to our seats in a two chairs configuration. Nothing fancy, but we have plenty of room for our legs.

On our seat, an incredible entertainment system with thousands between movies and TV shows keeps us from getting bored.

Some of the available movies

The remote, which could be used as a controller for games.

After being offered a welcome on board drink, we decided to keep ourself busy. I opted for watching a movie, Assassin’s Creed looked like the best option, while Sara decided to erudite herself watching documentaries on wild life.

After two hours from departure we’ve been offered food. Vegetarian for Sara, beef for me. Both delicious. Especially the little chocolate cake.

Vegetarian menu

Rice with some tasty side dish

Lentils & beans

The marvellous meat menu

Beef, mashed potato, and something else

This was not food. I consider it a mistake.

Ok. Enough with food. A short flash back to this morning in Bologna…

At the check-in desk we realised that we are definitely too confident with our packing skills.

We managed to underload our baggages, squeezing the entire needs for two weeks vacation in 20 kgs… total! 10 kgs each.

We barely scratched 30% of the max load we could carry.

Well, on the bright side, we have 40 kilos worth of souvenirs when we go back home. 😂

Now, back to the trip.

We experienced a bit of turbulence while traveling over Iran. Not a big deal, but it can be annoying for the ones who are not used to it.

Approaching Dubai we had the chance to admire it from above. Unfortunately we could not take decent pictures, but the Palm island is quite visible, as well as all the city and coast line. Truly amazing.

Shitty snap of Dubai by night

The airplane landed perfectly on time in Dubai, where the temperature is a staggering 31 degrees. I’m so glad we don’t have to leave the airport.

Once on the ground we wondered searching for a shop were to buy a t-shirt. The previous 6 hours on the plane took a heavy toll on my armpit and the previous shirt had to be sterilised with fire🔥.

While shopping for the T-shirt we took a look at some stuff. Probably going to buy something on the flight back home.

Goldish Pottery

Silverish Pottery

Boxes and more pottery

Say hi to my new super fancy 15$ t-shirt

Time to lay down and rest a couple of dozens of minutes while we wait for the next flight.

Getting ready…

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First thing you wanna do when you travel sporadically is plan everything.

And when I say everything I literally mean everything.

Fortunately Sara graduated in the end of February (she got a perfect 110/110 cum laude in computer engineering), leaving her plenty of free time to plan this trip.

We created a map on Google MyMaps with all the potential cities we may touch during our vojage. In a text document we shared our finding regarding each City, places to visit, hot spot, tourist traps and so on.

These two documents were followed by a time plan reporting the exact days spent in each City, the address and Google Maps link of the sleeping place and the name of our host, if any.

TripAdvisor forums were a big help to find the best areas where to sleep, enjoy nightlife (which we are aiming to experience at best :D) and be easily connected.

We spent time searching for the best places to eat and sightsee, exploiting our JRPass as much as possible. We decided to get the JRPass after checking this website, which is extremely useful to verify whether getting the pass is actually worth when compared with buying single ride tickets. This website together with hyperdia are the two most useful websites to get infos for traveling by train in Japan.

Using Google sheet, we created an easy to understand timeline to better plan the movement between cities.
After days of feverish research we came up with a map, which we called Golden Route, showing all the places we are going to touch while traveling around Japan.

We won’t bother you with the packing process as there are thousands of website explaining how to do it…