Up…Up…. and Away !!

Welcome to the Cousins European Vacation blog – the name inspired by the famous Griswold family vacation, but we hope our adventures will not be quite as extreme as theirs. We are flying to Europe where we will be doing a river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam with Travelmarvel. After that we will be travelling by train to London, picking up a motorhome and driving around the UK for 3 weeks.

We flew out of Brisbane at 2:30pm on my birthday, Friday 15th September. Our first leg to Singapore was an eight-hour stint – no sleep and I watched 2 movies. During the trip, I was surprised by several flight attendants who brought us a couple of glasses of champagne and a birthday cake with dry ice providing a substitute for candles. Nice touch from Singapore Airlines.
We were met at Singapore by a guy in a golf cart to transport us to meet our connecting flight from the adjoining terminal – much appreciated by Merryl who would have had difficulty walking the distance with her ankle recovering from a bad break and operation three months ago. With a few hours to kill, we checked out the shops and the butterfly house, before boarding an A380 for the thirteen-hour flight to Frankfurt. We tried for an upgrade but the plane was full so had to make do with “cattle class” but it was comfortable enough and we both managed to get a few hours’ sleep.

We were glad we were picked up by the golf cart again at Frankfurt – the airport is enormous and we would probably have got lost trying to get to our next departure gate. Our last leg was a one-hour flight to Budapest and we were glad to arrive at our hotel at 11am after about 27 hours travelling. Too early for bed, so it was time to start sightseeing.