I have to say that I was somewhat apprehensive about the first long haul flight with our little boy but I’m also glad to say that we survived!!
The longest flight we’d done before this was the two hours to Rome and the additional 10 hours was filling us with dread beforehand – thoughts of endless tantrums, airline meals being thrown through the cabin plus the fact that he’s not renowned for falling asleep easily had us both saying to each other “don’t worry – it’s only 12 hours”…
Apart from about 1/2 an hour when he was trying to get to sleep, however it wasn’t too bad! We started off by luckily finding a great Family Lounge at Heathrow T3 which was tucked away down a small corridor. It was incredibly quiet, with a great softplay to keep him entertained and attentive staff watching out for flight times etc.
Onboard, Cathay Pacific provided a kiddies bag full of stickers, colouring pencils and paper as well as special children’s meals (although these seemed to be larger portions than the adult ones!). The food, generally, was actually really quite nice (yes, nice airline food).
The saviour though were the in-flight movies, with our little boy watching both The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child a good few times. This was, in the end, the only way we could get him to sleep – other methods were tried but he kept on insisting on sitting on the floor or jumping up and down or generally wriggling all over the place. As it was, he got a good 6 or 7 hours – which was more than could be said for Mummy and Daddy… when you’ve got two of your three seats taken up by a stretched out little boy it doesn’t leave much room for the rest of you!!
So we’ve landed tired and jaded in HK but excited to be starting our big adventure. Two nights here to explore and then it’s off to Australia!
