We arrived and went through the immigration gate - using our passport and it taking a photo. We then went and waited for our bags.

About 10 minutes later they arrived and we walked straight out since we had nothing to declare.

We had a driver (courtesy of Emirates) to take us to our hotel which was a 90 minute drive. I assume something like that would cost 100-150 GBP.

Once we landed in Dubai we went through another security check but it was quick and painless.

We then went and found the lounge.

We had eaten breakfast not long ago so food was not really needed, but a shower was on the agenda.


  Last flight off to London - a bit under 7 hours.

We had a good time in Melbourne airport lounge. Nice food & wine.

The lounge in Melbourne


Some of the very nice food in the Lounge (yummy)


A large glass of Cognac to go with my smoked duck.



Our flight to Dubai was about 14 hours or so and it was very nice compared to Economy class.



Chris slept for at least 8 hours on the flight, Pam about 7 hours.

Once in Dubai we had another lounge and we were only there for 3 hours.....

We flew business class on Qantas and Emirates to London. This means lounge access and a nice seat alone with good food and drinks.

Qantas is severely lacking on Christchurch to Melbourne. The plane was small , a 737 with 12 business class seats.

The seat was large and quite comfortable.

The food was pretty sad for Business class I thought.

here is the promotional photo


I guess my dish looks similar. But nothing flash

Very sad looking headphones, not wrapped, probably not cleaned, and ripped.

After an early start to drop the dogs and cats to their temporary homes, dogs in Erwell forest and the cats in Mairehau we were picked up by Rebecca and off to the airport.

We arrived early at about 10:30am, but the check-in counter did not open until 11am.

No problem with check-in an we go our boarding passes from CHC-MEL, MEL-DBX, DBX-LGW

We then went to security but found it closed to 12:30pm, it was only about 11:15am so sitting around was a pain especially since we had lounge access.

Security when it finally opened was pretty quick.


The photo above was taken out the aircraft window on my phone.