京都に行こう！ Lets go to Kyoto

Night time flight from Dubai to Kyoto. 3am departure and 5pm arrival. Flight time is about 9.5 hours. Emirates has stars on the roof of the plane that give some light but otherwise it is mostly dark. Cool feature anyhow.





After getting the passport stamped and the Visa validated and getting through customs, this is what Kansai airport looked like.














The convenience store was the first stop after getting past customs. The MK Taxi (shuttle) to Kyoto and our dorms would take about 2 hours. We need some snacks.

Duncan had saved lots of coins from his previous trips to Japan since he couldn't exchange them. He paid the taxi driver 4500 Yen (£35) in small value coins.

Thistle Hotel London Heathrow 1.5/5 *

This is not a hotel that I would recommend if you are travelling into Heathrow and staying overnight and catching a connecting flight the next day. I booked a room at the Thistle because it was the cheapest option at that time, but still cost me £60 for one night. Holiday Inn had a room for £50 but when I went to book it, it was no longer available.

The service at Thistle hotel is terrible. Slow staff who are not service orientated, not enough staff to take care of all the people checking in and the fact that check in time is at 14.30 . This is not good for travellers flying into Heathrow early as I did, around 0800. All I could do was leave my bags in their luggage room and walk around London.

Furthermore, for this price you would expect free Internet and odour free rooms. They charged £5 for 1.5 hours of wireless Internet access and the room smelled of some strange cleaning product. Also, the hotel shuttle was not free, and cost £8 return from arrivals.

However, the only + that I can think off is the free bus from outside the hotel to T5 where the underground runs from Heathrow into London.

For all travellers I'd recommend you to pick another hotel, either the Sheraton or Holiday inn,