On our way to Washington

I left the last post yesterday with us leaving the airport lounge to go to the flight VS21 for Washington. We boarded the plane with no problem. We'd picked out seats (20A and 20C, which are beside each other) about 90 days ago as soon as the seat selection option opened. They were three from the front of the cabin on the window side on the left of the plane.

The plane was an Airbus A300. In these planes the Virgin Premium Economy seating is in a 2-3-2 formation, whereas the seats in Economy are 3 4 3, giving an indication of the difference in space in the premium economy cabin. Four years ago my sister, who travelled with us then, took some persuading to fly economy. Her view was that you were going the same distance, so why pay extra for being in a different part of a plane. My view being that holidays aren't everyday events, so a bit of an extra treat makes a big difference. Well using premium economy must have worked as my sister and her husband have upgraded their flight to the Caribbean next year. The advantage of being in a 2 seater part of the 2-3-2 formation is that you don't have to disturb anyone else when going to the toilets or walking around/

The cabin had 42 seats and four staff looking after us, which isn't a bad ratio. In addition there are 2 toilets in this area, meaning the queues which were a curse of my early trans-Atlantic flights are significantly mitigated. So we were comfortable and ready to access Virgin's full range of inflight entertainment.

In-flight entertainment is something which has changed most in the years since I first started travelling long-distances by plane, then it was one film projected on a screen to far away to see. Now I have an option of 30 films, 15 tv programmes (including whole series of some of them - e.g. House of Cards and Game of Thrones) plus documentaries, whole albums of music, games and the flight status maps and information. All these presented at an easy to access touch screen in front of me. On this flight, for the first time in my experience  you could also access mobile phone features (using roaming charges, so I didn't) and on-board wi-fi, which also came at a cost which it didn't seem worth paying.

Before departure we had an orange juice and then as soon as the boarding was complete we pulled away from the gate at exactly 11.15, just on time. While the plane taxied we were able to use the in-flight entertainment, so both Drew and I opted to watch The Hobbit, as we had not seen it in the cinema. Soon after take-off we were offered a hot towel, yes a real towelette one, not a warmed wet-wipe. And we were offered more drink, Drew had a lemonade and I had a diet pepsi. These were served in chunky glasses, rather than the plastic beakers being taken to the rear end of the plane.

The Hobbit is a long film, and this first one only covers about half of the original story, well I misspeak, it covers less than half of the original story and another set of stories and events that have no connection with the original. The first 30 minutes is based on the Lord of the Rings films with Bilbo and Frodo in a scene that is set just before the first scene the appear in during that film. I guessed linking this film to that series is a good marketing ploy as it allowed brief contributions from the two actors who played Bilbo and Frodo in the original, before moving to a younger Bilbo played by Martin Freeman. The same liberty was taken by adding Galadriel and Saruman to the meeting in Rivendell, again presumably because they are famous actors. Radagast, a character only mentioned by Gandalf in giving context to the story in the book, is here played by Sylvester McCoy in his most crazy, Doctor Whoish manner. A real fun character, but a liberty with Tolkien's story.

The cast was littered with famous Brits and New Zealanders, but some of them almost unrecognisable in their make-up. This was particularly true of the dwarves (Note Tolkien uses this plural not the English standard 'dwarfs' for this race in his books - for more on this see) where actors whose voices were instantly recognisable looked very differently to their normal self, Ken Stott was a good example of this it took me 20 minutes to work out whose voice was speaking this dwarf's words.

Anyway between food and drinks and toilet breaks the 2 hour 49 minute film lasted me a good 4 hours :-)

Talking of food (as regular blog readers will know I often do) our first meal, served about 1 hour into the flight was a lovely lunch. It consisted of smoked halibut on a finely chopped tomato and cucumber salad with a light vinaigrette dressing. The sharpness of the vinaigrette  set off the the lightly smoked halibut very well.

For mains I opted for the chicken cacciatore which was served with roast potatoes and cherry tomatoes. The chicken was very moist and the strong tomato, garlic and basil sauce was a delight.  Drew had the beef stroganoff served with herb masked potatoes and broccoli  Drew's quiet attentive eating indicated quite how much he enjoyed it. Certainly he cleared his plate.

Dessert was a forest fruit moose, given my diabetes, Drew was forced to eat two of them - though I don't think he complained, and to be fair he gave me half his hot bread roll for me to mop-up the cacciatore  sauce.

I don't mean to go on about premium economy, but one of the real delights is that this food is served on china crockery with metal knives and forks - something I'd take for granted on the ground, but different from the tin-foil and plastic more common in the air.

Later in the flight Drew had an ice-cream snack on a stick, well again I mean two, mine and his. Then about an hour from the end of the flight we had 'afternoon tea' which consisted of some cheese and pickle sandwiches and a banana and toffee cupcake. For the price of one sandwich Drew had my cupcake. He raved about how moist they were.

Drew watched two more films on the plane while I had a doze, read a little and watched some other bits and pieces on the in-flight entertainment.

We landed at Dulles International Airport at 2.30 p.m. local time and were transferred by a hydraulic shuttle bus to the main terminal where we arrived at 2.50 p.m. then we waited in line (note the american translation of queue, it feels like home already) for 30 minutes and had finger prints and a photo taken by the immigration officer, who was very pleasant  and let us in with no problem. The advantage of a wait in immigration is that the luggage is ready to collect as you leave that area. We went through  the customs check quickly and were in a Washington Flyer Taxi by 3.45 and on the 27 mile, 35 minute, trip into Washington.

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We arrived at the Hotel Melrose at 4.20, more about that in the next post