Flying North to travel South.

[OZDUCK]

We are leaving Perth tonight in ScootPlus to spend 2 nights in Singapore at the Village Hotel Changi. We then pick up Etihad in J on an A380 to Frankfurt. Our stay in Frankfurt is only 2 nights and is mainly to catch up with some elderly friends who live in Bad Homburg.

Then we head south. Our first stop is Strasbourg for 5 nights where we will also catch up with some more German friends. The plan then is to head south with 5 nights in both Lyon and Arles followed by 4 nights in Carcassonne, 1 night in Toulouse and finally 5 nights in Bordeaux. We will spend our last night near CDG before we head home on Etihad and Scoot. All long distance travel will by rail.

As usual I will complete a full TR once we get home as I am one of those people who can't do one 'on the road'. However I will post some photos and a few comments as we travel around.

 

[Seat0B]

I love your photos @OZDUCK, so will follow along. These are places I haven’t visited so I will likely be adding them to my wish list after I see how lovely they are

 

[OZDUCK]

I love your photos @OZDUCK, so will follow along. These are places I haven’t visited so I will likely be adding them to my wish list after I see how lovely they are

A lot of 'my' photos are actually taken by my wife. We are visiting a lot of new places to us on this trip. Frankfurt we have been to many times. Strasbourg we spent a few hours there visiting the Christmas Markets in 2023. Everywhere else listed is new to us. We didn't plan a stop in Paris so as to allow the maximum time for new experiences. There are a lot of Roman artefacts that we plan to see this time.

 

[VPS]

Tagging along

 

[OZDUCK]

ScootPlus to Singapore. Plenty of room. I am 6'3" in the old money. This section was around 50% occupied. Far better for 'big' people than economy in QF or SQ and around the same price.The only problem is the non adjustable headrests which hit my shoulder blades when sitting upright.

 

[OZDUCK]

The included meal and drinks set. You also get a 300 ml water. Anything else is paid for. The rice and mushroom in my meal was good. The meat ok but the sausage appeared to have been made from compressed cardboard. The cake was a nice Banana slice and the other packet was two chocolate biscuits. Fine for a 4:30 flight. We arrived 30 minutes early but the baggage was very slow to appear and our priority bags were pretty much the last ones to be unloaded.

 

[OZDUCK]

The paid menu

 

[OZDUCK]

Tonights meal at Changi Village. S$17.49 all up

Vadai with coconut chutney



Mutton Biryani



Mee Goreng Mamak(Indian style)



First time we have had Pandan Tea - delicious.

 

[ellen10]

Looking forward to following along.
Lots of my favourite places in France.

 

[OZDUCK]

OK we are now back and just about over some pretty bad, for us anyway, jet lag. I am once again convinced that I could not possibly have kept up with this TR 'on the run'. Just posting short items in the What I Ate or View From my Office threads take me about half an and hour each and I end up with finger cramps from trying to post using my phone. Plus we were usually pretty tired after some pretty extensive walking. We were generally averaging about 15 km a day.

So resuming in Singapore. We were only there for about 41 hours arriving around 01:00 and departing at around 22:00 the next day.

As we have often done for a short stopover we stayed at the Village Hotel Changi. It is only about 20 minutes from Changi Airport and has a free 2 way shuttle for part of the day. The rooms are big for Singapore if a little dated and the staff are very friendly. Plus it is usually available at a good price - again in Singapore terms.



Also, it is just across the road from the Changi Village Food Markets and with lots of other small eating houses close by.

A normal first morning breakfast for us - Kaya Toast and half boiled eggs. About S$4 for a set of toast, two eggs and a cup of coffee or tea



The next morning we had breakfast at the same cafe as we had tea at the night before.





The next morning we went to the same place for breakfast - S$8



These egss came out more like 1/4 boiled as I misjudged how long to leave them in the hot water



Dosai

 

[OZDUCK]

We went for a little walk around the area.

A bit of faded Empire with a memorial model of a Comet 4.





The old Changi Hospital closed since 1997 - a perfect place for a few ghostly sightings according to local gossip.

Changi Hospital - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The top of the hotel is a perfect spot for plane spotting. Even better for me I could sit in the pool while doing so.





Pulau Ubin from the rooftop. It is one of the last rural areas left in Singapore and is an interesting place to visit. You catch a bumboat from near to the hotel at the Changi Point Ferry Terminal for the short trip across and then hire bikes for a look around.

Pulau Ubin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That evening we went for a walk along the Changi Beach Park and had a bit of fun trying to catch the reflections of landing aircraft. My wifes phone takes much better photos than mine - she can't just be a better photographer of course.

My attempt



My wife's photos






A nice atmospheric photo by her of the bumboats at rest



And an interesting one of a plane landing

 

[OZDUCK]

We caught the late afternoon shuttle to Changi Airport for our first taste of Etihad - spoiler in my experience they are not anywhere near the level of someone like QR. I would rate their cabin crew probably below those we experienced on Vietnam Airlines and experienced some worrying behaviour in regards to pax safety on our return flight.

At Changi they use the SATS Premier Lounge in Terminal 2. While not outstanding it was a perfectly reasonable contract lounge.



A bit fuzzy I am afraid



The First Class Area



We then boarded our A380. The setup feels a little dated. This makes sense as Etihad parked their A80's in 2020 with the intention of never returning them to service. However they were forced to do so because of the rise in demand after the end of covid restrictions and delays in delivery of new aircraft and have not refreshed them as far as I know.

Etihad Airways Grounded Airbus A380s - Dj's Aviation

In 2020, Etihad Airways followed the same path as many other airlines, grounding its entire Airbus A380 fleet.

djsaviation.net

Still they are lie flat suites so I can't really complain.





The so so amenity kit. We got two types on our flights. This one and another in a sort of boxy square purse shaped one. Plus quite nice slippers were provided.



The menu



The Arabic Mezze. Different from what I have had on QR but prettytasty. Their bread roll is baked in two different halves with different mixtures but neither my wife nor I liked its taste - it always seemed a bit stale.



I had the steak for my meal but my photo is unusable. It was basically fine.

The blueberry almond cake was very nice.



When we were all boarded and seemingly ready to go the pilot announced that we would not be using our pushback slot. The reason we missed it was not made clear - to me to me anyway. We were told we would have to wait another 20 minutes or so. Then after about another 25 minutes he advised that our departure was again delayed because of possible debris on the runway. Eventually we pushed back a little over an hour late. This delay was going to drastically affect many people, including us, on this flight because of multiple tight connections in Abu Dhabi.

 

[OZDUCK]

During the flight we lost about another 15 minutes. I think this was due to skirting around some monsoonal clouds full of lightning and ATC putting us in a big circle around Abu Dhabi. A few passengers, including myself, asked the FA about our connections and were assured that they would be ok. I certainly had my doubts and thought he was just leaving it to someone else to break the bad news. When I had booked the flights there was a reasonably comfortable connection time of 2 hours and 5 minutes in Abu Dhabi but due to changes in the departure times of both the Singapore and Abu Dhabi flights this had dropped to 1 hour 45 minutes.

Unsurprisingly just as we were due to arrive in Abu Dhabi the Cabin Manager announced that many passengers on our flight were going to miss their connections and that hotel accommodation had been arranged and new boarding passes would be issued. As we entered the airport there were a number of staff in three little groups holding up destination signs for those who had missed their connections. There were at least 12 different flights requiring people to be rebooked and more than 60 pax milling around. We got new boarding passes for a flight in 12 hours time and this meant that at least we didn't have to re-arrange our hotel in Frankfurt. Two other women from Perth were delayed 24 hours.

We then had to enter Abu Dhabi. My wife sailed straight through immigration but I was rejected. Their electronic system takes an iris scan of your eyes for identification purposes. I have been nearly blind in my left eye for over 60 years and this eye has suffered a severe case of 'lazy eye' and has drifted to the extreme left. No amount of telling me to look up, look left open, your eyes etc could satisfy the system so I was sent to the naughty corner with all the people trying to get into the country with dubious visas and the like. After about 20 minutes I was manually processed and sent on my way. I have to say that all the local officials I dealt were very friendly and spoke good English. There seemed to be more female officers than males. We then had to go and join a scrum to get our hotel vouchers and then another one to get a van to take us to the hotel.

One of the many detours in our flight path. I do not like flying over the Bay of Bengal. My first flight over it was in 1976 on a British Caledonian DC8 and we flew through the middle of a monsoon with much dropping, jumping and twisting.



Abu Dhabi. The airport is a fair way out of town.



The striking Control Tower



We were sent to the Royal Rose Hotel which is to quote - "a Curio Collection by Hilton Affiliated Hotel". Whoever designed the interior was absolutely infatuated with Paris in the late 19th Century during the "Belle Époque". They certainly didn't believe that less is more. We got to bed at around 04:00.

 

[OZDUCK]

We were due to be picked up again at about 11:00 and were given an buffet breakfast. The hotel staff were very nice and the breakfast was excellent. There was a tour group having breakfast at the same time as us and afterwards the duty manager came over and apologised for the amount of noise they had generated.

We poked our heads out of the hotel for 5 minutes just to say we had 'seen' some of the city. It was 38 C at 09:00 and we had no hats or sunscreen with us so we weren't going far.





About 16 or 17 people turned up for the transfer back to the airport and just before 11:00 a minivan turned up with a list of names. Unfortunately, he had only about 9 names on his list and knew nothing about the rest of us. Much discussion ensued between the hotel staff and the driver with a number of phone calls being made. We were asked to confirm our names about 5 times. This amused my wife and she pointed out that all the names on the list were 'Indian' ones and she was sure that they were convinced she, being Eurasian, belonged in the van as well. Eventually the Hotel Duty Manager very kindly got his own car out and took 4 of us to the airport and arranged for another van for the others. One had given up and taken a taxi.

It was about 30 minutes to the airport and we got some good views on the way.

The outside of the hotel. Again I think it is meant to look Parisienne but it looks to have a touch of the Moghuls to me.



What I believe to be the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque





Aldar’s Abu Dhabi headquarters From what I can find out Aldar is a real estate development company owned by the Abu Dhabi government.







The new terminal building