Flight
As this post is about flight, I'll defer writing about destinations to other posts.
I normally like window seats, for the obvious reason - to see out. But on long flights an isle seat is far more practical - it means I don't have to trample people on the way to use the facilities. And on a twelve-hour flight, everyone needs to.
My outward journey consisted of a nine-hour flight to Hong Kong, a two-hour stopover, and a 12hr flight to Rome. The plane left Sydney at 3pm, and arrived at midnight (time in my head; 9pm local). I decided that spreading my attempts to sleep across two flights may be counterproductive, so I stayed awake for the first leg. Modern planes have these wonderful little video screens set in the back of the seat in front of you, and a handset in the arm of your chair you can use to select movies, tv shows, cd's, or just a representation of your flight-path progress. So I saw two movies and two tv shows, read my magazine and tried to absorb a couple of useful phrases in Italian from my phrasebook.
The movies: Stranger Than Fiction: in which Will Ferrel has a surrealist version of a mid-life crisis (...projecting? Moi?);
Happy Feet: in which a penguin - exiled for dancing instead of singing - saves the world from overfishing.
The tv shows: the civil war cannon episode of Mythbusters, and a food porn show about how to make the perfect Black Forest cake, using a vaccuum cleaner and a sealed plastic bag.
Then two hours in the wide, long, sterile corridors of Hong Kong Transit Lounge... where I found an ATM to conduct a proof-of-concept experiment: my card did indeed allow me to withdraw money in a foreign country! I pulled HK$100, (about AU$50), and spent most of it on a soft-drink and snack(!).
Then onto the Cathay-Pacific flight, which in one night would fly me over the major portion of humanity - both China and India. I somehow felt I was cheating. And I slept for most of it, and their inferior vid tech did not display the flight-path. Oh, well. I felt well-rested when we arrived in Rome.
The flight to London from Rome was luxury by comparison - only two hours, and I had a window! The best bit was flying over the Alps; they looked like dunes of fine white sand, half overgrown by weeds.
And the flight home from London would achieve in less than a day what Captain Cook took six months to do by sea. Once again, I had the vague notion I was cheating. Traversing a world shouldn't be so easy. And no, the fact I had more trouble sleeping on the return trip didn't make up for it. But boy, was I glad to land on a drizzly humid Sydney evening, and catch a cab home.