2nd February - in Nils' words........

We had a good breakfast in the Radisson SAS hotel in Manchester, and went back to the hotel room. Uncle George, Ron and Irene came and visited us at 1100. We checked out of the hotel at 1200, and went to a fish and chips restaurant in terminal building 2 to have lunch. Nils discussed renovation projects to fix up the house with George. He and Ron will come over in Easter and this summer to fix up the floor upstairs and install new door and windows. It was very useful to have Anne's pushchair in the airport terminal, so that he could get easy transport and some sleep. After that, we went back to the hotel reception to pick up the baggage, and sat down to chat and take some pictures. They left at 1600, and we went to check in for the flight to Dubai. The checking was hellish, because we had to wait for a long time, so Oskar got tired and hungry before we reached the checkin desk. At the desk it turned out that one of our hand baggage weighed too much (it weighed 10 kg, but the limit on this flight was 7 kg) so we had to rearrange the baggage whilst Oskar was crying, and other people were waiting. To complicate things, the baggage was locked, and only Lynn knew where the keys were, so we were quite stressed when we finally had got the baggage checked in. After that, we went to have a cup of cappuchino and a bite, to wind down. We got on the plane around 2000, which was after Oskars bedtime, so he was not happy about going on another plane. The trip to Dubai took 6 hours. Oskar was ok during this trip, at least not any worse than the other children that were travelling. One woman had a boy that was really upset all the way, and she finally collapsed on the plane from stress, lack of sleep and fatigue. Luckily, we were only less than 30 minutes from Dubai , so the lady was just about able to get herself together before landing. We later found out that she hadn't slept for 2 nights as she had done a night shift as a nurse prior to the flight!