Part of our 2008 European Trip. See the explanation and summary entry.

Well it all started Saturday afternoon as we took the first leg of our journey to Cyprus, and for me and Des, a little side trip to other miscellaneous parts of Europe.

I know i have been almost utterly silent about this trip prior to these posts, but one of the deficits of having a non-anonymous blog is that you shouldn't really give people advance knowledge that you are out of the country. The summary entry sums up well what we had planned before it all started.

The flight over to Cyprus saw us take Emirates flights all the way across 3 legs: Brisbane to Singapore, Singapore to Dubai, and Dubai to Lanarca.

I was a little apprehensive about flying Emirates: i have previously always flown QANTAS, British Airways, and other slightly-dodgy domestic Australian and American airlines. I was really pleasantly surprised by Emirates: they had the usual friendly staff (except all the announcements were usually done first in Arabic, and then in English), but what really stood out was their in-flight entertainment system. Each seat had a surprisingly large screen which was touch-sensitive, and had tonnes of on-demand movies, TV shows, games, current events, among other stuff.

One other nifty feature of the entertainment system was viewable cameras showing the forward direction of the aircraft, as well as a downward-looking one. Although they weren't exactly reliable (especially at night), seeing the forward view of the plane coming into land at Lanarca airport in the morning was pretty cool.

After almost a whole day of travelling, we eventually made it to Cyprus, where our first afternoon was mainly spent at a family gathering. The drive from the airport to the relatives' place was interesting: acquainting myself again with landscape i have only once personally witnessed when I was last here over 12 years ago, and also getting used to the lack of respect and enforcement for basic road-rules like indicating, and oh yeah, speed limits.

Anywho, we're exhausted after not having a proper sleep in almost 48 hours, somehow I am sitting here i my bed at 10pm (Cyprus time) typing out this entry. To sleep we go, and Cyprus and the rest of our European journey awaits.