As in all our trips in the last few years I booked our international flights using Qantas points, generally in Business class. Sometimes that means taking the “scenic route” home rather than the most direct. For our trip back home this time my only choice had been three legs, Paris to Helsinki with Finnair, Helsinki to Tokyo and Tokyo to Sydney with JAL. At CDG we dropped our car of at terminal 2F and then walked miles to terminal 2B , CDG is a huge airport!
Our short 3 hour flight from Paris to Helsinki was in what they call Euro Business. Effectively, you get the same seats as economy but they block out one seat im the row of three, and you get upgraded service, a nicer meal. I forgot to take a photo of our lunch but it was very tasty! I did remember to take a photo of Neil and the bubbly though 😂
In Helsinki we arrived at one of the Schengen area gates and had to go through passport control to get to the non-Schengen area. It was another quite long walk, but as we’re basically spending over 24hours sitting on planes it feels good to stretch the legs a little. We spent the next few hours in the Finnair business lounge.
The flight from Helsinki boarded on time and we were served an excellent dinner within a couple of hours. The food on JAL has been great.
Tokyo was hot when we arrived but we only had to deal with it on the air bridge. Once inside the terminal we had to go through the whole rigmarole of immigration and customs to collect our bags and then check in on the final flight. Again the queues in immigration were horrendous! But eventually we made it through and got to the lounge, where I went straight to the shower. We have had a comfy seat to wait for our flight to Sydney which is delayed by 45 minutes.
it’s been another fabulous trip, we had such fun with Erin and enjoyed the UK and particularly our last few days in the Loire. The time in Normandy at the beginning was an exceptional experience, so glad that Neil wanted to see it.
but it’s time to go and start planning the next trip.