We had a great time in the UK and the weather was perfect. We set up camp in Bertie outside Nick and Ems house, and spent time catching up with family, swims at the beach and visiting an aeroplane museum.  We had both been putting off booking our flights, both a bit nervous about visiting to US due to nightmare stories I had heard about the border. But we decided to push paranoia to the side and go for it anyway.

I decided to book a flight directly to Las Vegas, just to make it less stress. And it was actually considerably cheaper to book return, so we also have a return flight to use at some stage if we choose. We’d been given a chance to order our meals in advance and we both ordered the chicken tikka masala.

We’d only been able to book middle seats though, so I was keeping an eye on our booking for any window seats coming up. Every time I did this, it offered me an upgrade to upper class, but it was quite expensive, so I ignored it. But then, with less than 24 hours before our flight, they offered us an upgrade for a very small amount. We did um and ah, but eventually decided, fuck it, let’s do it! That’s what credit cards are for! 

The next day we left Bournemouth at around 8am and had an easy drive to London, virtually no traffic. We arrived at the airport 6 hours early for our flight, but no surprise there.  This is where the upper class upgrade comes into its own. We went through the upper class security, no queues! Then straight to the Virgin clubhouse lounge. This is also pretty cool. Everything is table service. You order through an app and they bring you food, drinks, anything you like. I had a terrible headache, so I went and had a lay down in the chill out area. Calm music and aromatherapy soothed my headache away.

Then we boarded the 787 dreamliner. The seats are at an angle like on AirNZ. We sat down and prepared for take-off, only to be told there were storms, and we’d be an hour late taking off. When we finally took off, there was a little turbulence, but it soon died down and was calm. 

I looked at my menu and was very disappointed to see there was no chicken tikka masala on there. There was only a choice of haddock, and two other dishes with lots of cheese which didn’t sound appealing. So we both opted for the haddock. I had a fish dish in the lounge and it was really yummy, so I figured this would be nice too. After all we were in “Upper” class.

Anyway, our fish arrived and it was disgusting. I couldn’t eat it. Mike forced his down. I told the cabin crew I had ordered a Chicken tikka when I was in economy, and asked if they still had any. She went and had a look, and sure enough, there was one left. So here I am eating an economy meal in “upper” class, and it was infinitely better! Even Mike agreed. I think sometimes they try to be too fancy.

It was a smooth flight, and we both watched the Bob Dylan movie which was good.

We landed in Las Vegas, and there was nobody there! The queues were empty, a start contrast to LAX. So we got straight through, no wait. We arrived at our hotel about 8.30pm. It was still really hot in Vegas but we went for a short walk anyway. There are way less people here this year from last year.