Monday 17 September 2007. Day 28. Fly to Japan overnight flight.

Get up and pack our stuff up. Have extended room to 6pm (for the cost of a small car) as we don’t need to be at airport until about 8pm. Divided luggage into stuff to take to Japan (1 bag) and stuff to leave behind (2 bags) as we don’t want to cart loads of heavy bags around in Japan. Speak to the concierge about left luggage at the airport, he is extremely nice and helpful and suggests we leave our 2 bags at the holiday inn for 2 weeks at no charge. He also directed us to a nearby post office to send our latest box of stuff home, which we did, getting told off by the post lady for having too much tape round our box!

Went into town and Ieuan watched the GP on the internet – hindered by the fat boy in charge who seemed to be hogging most of the bandwidth so making the GP take 3 times as long as usual to watch. Go and look for a lunch place, with Ieuan rejecting 3 options and Lou rejecting 1, before we end up on Pasta Mania for some cheap (and fairly nasty) pizza and ok pasta. Go to Carrefour to continue the hunt for a large back to leave stuff in at the holiday inn, finding one for about 6 pounds, then head back to the hotel.

Get packed up, and check out – the helpful concierge secures us a taxi and checks ours bags have gone into storage ok, and we set off for airport. Turns out to be taxi driver from hell as he has an unusual technique in using the gas pedal which means that instead of moving forward smoothly, the car jerks forward every few seconds, then slows down. After half an hour of this, Lou is on the verge of throwing up and seriously starts to consider getting a sick bag ready. At the airport, we check the bags in and explore. Free internet (limited to 15 min session) is so slow, you can just about log into hotmail in the 15 min window. Ieuan has a veggie Thali for tea and Lou has some soup. Walk to our gate which is miles away, to find it not open yet and it’s too cold to wait down there, so we come back and sit in what appears to be a lounge for sick and incompetent people (who need help find the right plane and the like).