Sunday, July 1, 2007

ALLY GIDDY TRIP TO LONDON JUNE 2007.

My trip to London


MY SISTERS
My three sisters used to live in London. I was lucky enough to be able to go and visit them.

WINTER OR SUMMER
The journey to London started long before we left on the airplane. First we had to work out when it would be best to go there. England is in the Northern Hemisphere and so if we went in our summer it would be winter there, and may be too cold to do much outdoors. If we went in our winter the school holidays are shorter but we would be able to really take advantage of the warm English Summer. In the end we decided that June was the most suitable mouth.

BOOKINGS AND PASSPORTS
Next were the airplane bookings and the passports. Obtaining a passport in Port Elizabeth is not easy as we had to wait in long queues, have finger prints taken and then wait for the passports to come from Johannesburg.

BAGS PACKED
Finally all the preparations were complete. We had our bags packed and ready to go. My dad likes to pack South African Biltong, and Chutney which is not easy to buy in London.

PE TO JOHANNESBURG
We flew on a Boeing 737 from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg and the flight took us just 90 minutes. When we arrived in Johannesburg we did not have to collect our luggage as we had sent it straight through to London. It was quite a long walk to the international departure hall. There we went through passport control and then we had a long wait before our airplane left that night.

BOARDING FOR LONDON
At seven that evening we were able to board the airplane. The airplane that took us to London was a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet. Does any one know the different between the two planes.
Yes (name)

THE BOEING 747 JUMBO JET
A Boeing 747 takes off at nearly 300kph and flies at more than 900kph. There are over 400 passengers on the plane. The wings are big enough to park 45 cars on each one. The Jumbo Jet is 70meters long which is nearly as long as the Clarendon field and 10 meters high. The 747 has 18 tyres for take off and landing. The cost of a 747 Jumbo Jet is over one thousand Million Rand.


THE FIRST AIRPLANE
The Wright brothers built the first airplane 94 years ago in 1903. It flew for only twelve seconds and the distance it covered was shorter than the length of a jumbo jet.

SUPPER
On the plane we were served a meal and watched TV. The movie that I watched was Wendy Wu. It’s a real sporty movie.

SLEEP TIME
I soon fell fast asleep and only woke up when they told us that we were already flying over England. England is 11 000km from Johannesburg and the whole trip took 18 hours from the time we left home in Port Elizabeth to arriving in London. A Boeing 747 is able to fly 13 000 kilometres without stopping for fuel!!!

ARRIVAL
Finally we arrived in London at 06.00am.First it was passport control and collecting bags and then we took an underground train from the airport to a station near to my sister’s home. And that was the end of our journey