Dubai to Christchurch - Friday 8 and Saturday 9 September

I'm breaking new records - I even managed to get 30 minutes sleep just sitting and waiting at our departure gate! Well, we thought it was our departure gate, and it's what the board said for quite some time. But, once I woke up I noticed that a different flight was listed beside the gate. Another check of the main board revealed that our departure gate had been changed. Off we went to the correct place. This flight also departed late, but I was pleased to find that I still had a vacant seat beside me. No worries, the passenger on the end of the row helped herself to the space by leaning right across and falling asleep immediately. The cabin staff had to wake her for take-off, but she was back across the seat with her head almost touching me, as soon as she could. After a couple of hours she woke up and then asked me if it was ok. By now I had figured out that this empty seat was because of my cpap machine, and probably an effort not to inconvenience another passenger with the sound of my machine. I tried to explain to this woman (French, I think) that she was fine to use the seat for now, but I'd like it later because I needed to use a machine to help me sleep. Eventually, when the plane lights dimmed, I set up my cpap and leaned into half of the additional seat space. I can't say I got any sleep, probably because I'd had a good 2.5 hours recently, on the previous leg of the journey.

The GF meals on the flights out of Dubai and Sydney left a lot to be desired. There was one reasonable chicken and apricot meal out of Dubai, but no GF snacks available when David was offered pretzels (I don't think the cabin staff member I asked was interested at all - not even offering a piece of fruit instead). The other meals were all dry and tasteless omelette breakfasts - the GF bread was inedible (though may have been ok if it had been warmed up), again no dairy products - so no cheese or yoghurt (although there was yoghurt on the final leg out of Sydney, but given soy milk for my coffee) - so no consistency either. In the end I could barely eat the meals and left most of them.

The flight from Sydney was quite empty - certainly our F section of the plane was probably not even half full, and this time there were two empty seats beside me - unfortunately, by then, I was beyond sleep, so couldn't make the most of it.

One good thing about the flights was that, with that bit of sleep, I was able to concentrate enough to watch four movies over the three flights: 'Churchill' (new perspective added, having been to the D Day Beaches), 'A United Kingdom', 'The Zookeeper's Wife', 'Lion' (a few tears with that one....). 

In Christchurch, we declared the fact that we'd been on some French farms (snails, truffles, caviar), and that I had some food - they needed to check one of the foods, but other than that everything was fine. 

We were delighted to arrive back in Christchurch on a warm, sunny day, and to see the blossom on the trees. We quickly got a taxi home, popped out quickly to get some basics from the supermarket, and then I had a three hour sleep! We both enjoyed some good, basic food for dinner - soup with cheese on toast! We both slept like logs that night!