We have a 07:30 flight from Heathrow and even though it’s a Sunday morning we’ve decided to stay the night before at the Premier Inn, Bath Road so we wouldn't have the potential stresses of M25 closures. We haven't flown from T2 for many years, if ever.
Check-in was easy although the lady on the desk seem surprised we wanted her to print out boarding passes, but it really does make it so much simpler than clutching our phones all the time. Being early on a Sunday Fast-Track Security wasn't even open but there wasn't a queue anyway so it didn't matter. In fact we were through so quickly we had to wait for the Lufthansa Lounge at A-Gates to open at 05:00. Lufthansa are part of Star Alliance, as are Singapore Airlines and I'd read that their lounge was fabulous. So we asked the lovely guy on the desk at Lufthansa and he kindly checked our gate and confirmed it would be B-Gates (where Singapore's Lounge is) and recommended we have breakfast in the Lufthansa Lounge and then visit the other one too - perfect.
I didn't take any photos in the first lounge but it was fine, if a little sterile, and the cooked breakfast was delicious. We duly headed over to the Singapore Lounge which was virtually empty and as a consequence the staff was a little slow in producing drinks.
No pink fizz unfortunately but this was drinkable.
We didn't bother with the food having breakfasted in Lufthansa but I was interested to see there was a wide variety of Oriental food available. With permission from the staff I did pinch a couple of individual boxes of cereal just in case my iron rations run low.
Singapore's famous Tiger Beer
Ian was quite fascinated watching these little trucks and trailers carrying stuff around.
And then a remote control which I assume was for directioning water but I didn't risk messing with it in case I ended up drenched.
Breakfast on the plane was pretty disgusting as most European airlines are but there was fizz and having opened the bottle for us, the FA was keen on emptying it. We did get individual chocolates, which is far more than BA ever produce.
Landing at Frankfurt quickly proved to us that German efficiency isn't all it's cracked up to be. The queue for Immigration wasn't too bad and we had the farce of putting all our details in at the automated booth only to have to go to an official too. My officer was astounded when I replied to his "how long are you staying in Germany" question with "as shorter time as I possibly can, I estimate about 2 3/4 hours". I'd already read that the driverless Skyline train between terminals had been suspended for safety inspections but what we couldn't get over was the complete lack of signage. There were buses replacing the train but where to find them or even which conveyor belt the luggage was on took detective skills Hercule Poirot would be proud of - indeed our bags were on a belt completely hidden from view. We picked up a solo VJV traveller who then stuck with us like glue whilst we finally found and boarded buses, which took probably 20 mins to reach the other terminal. Then there was nothing to tell us which area we needed for check-in and so I asked someone emerging through a door if she could help and she kindly looked our flight up and told us Zone J in the far corner. Even with that precise info we still had to contend with arrows pointing in opposite directions up escalators. When we finally got to the top it was still well before 3 hour check-in but the queue was massive. I went to the front to see if there was a dedicated Business Class check-in, which there was but the majority of the passengers spoke no English and didn't understand the difference. Never mind we were put in a very short queue (behind another VJV person who we chatted to briefly), checked in without trouble and got details of the lounge to use once we'd cleared security.
Of course we then had to go through the immigation farce once again and this time the queues for the machines were a lot longer and then another wait for an official to stamp us out. I thought the whole idea of this new EES was you only need to register once every 3 years and I did that in Lisbon only a couple of weeks ago.
The Primeclass Lounge was nothing to write home about but it was better than sitting in the main airport and the time past quickly enough until boarding. I'd read several reviews about MIAT (Mongolian Airlines) and the general consensus was they were OK and you got what you paid for ie. a fully flat bed, but I was so looking forward to the turquoise amenity kit I'd seen in the reviews.
There was nothing waiting around the seats so I enquired and this is what I got - what a disappointment!
I also had to press the FA quite hard to produce headphones. But at least the welcome drink was delivered swiftly.
And the food was very nice, for some reason there were two starters and I then had Teriyaki Salmon to follow which was delicious.
No, I didn't pinch them.
The choice of films was limited and quite dated but I found something to amuse myself except the FA took away the headphones and closed the TV with still about 3/4 hour to go!
We landed around 04:45 local time and fortunately immigration was painless and our luggage was out promptly so we were the first out to meet our guide. It took a while for the other 7 to trickle through (1 arrived a couple of days ago) and then we had about a 1 hour coach ride to the city centre. No sooner had we arrived at the hotel than the heavens opened and torrential rain fell for the next 1 1/2 hours. Our rooms were ready on arrival, so after a good breakfast we had a couple of hours rest before meeting up with everyone around 12:30 for a city tour.
View from our bedroom window after the rain finally stopped.
