Round The World and other travels

Even more so than on my San Francisco flight in January, I really pigged out on the starters, accepting the caviar and all three of the other options   Sometimes it's difficult to say no   Next, the delicious Franconian soup gave a nice link with my recent trip to that region. My remaining knife was changed for a fish knife prior to the arrival of my main course, which was also very nice. I switched from Champagne to the Swiss white wine early on in the meal, and an excellent choice it proved to be. The crew member suggested a small pause after my main course - gute Idee! Ten minutes later, however, I had to concede defeat and settle for a cappuccino to round things off. I was paying the price for all those starters!

As we crossed the coast of North Africa slightly west of Algiers at the curiously low altitude of 32,000ft, I selected my first movie, Frost / Nixon, which I enjoyed. Or at least, I enjoyed what I saw, as I only later realised that I'd missed a sizeable chunk of it through dozing off. Pausing only to fill in the landing card and massive Swine Flu questionnaire that had been delivered to me, I proceeded directly to my second movie choice, the old James Bond classic Dr No. During the film, we took our leave of the West African coast at Dakar and started the relatively short Atlantic crossing towards Recife. I once again dozed off during this film, but I don't think I missed too much of it. Third up was the latest in the same series, Quantum of Solace, and I know I stayed awake throughout that one. The crew kept me topped up with refreshing apple juice, so perhaps that helped.

Three movies down and it was time for the mid-flight snack of canapés, small sandwiches and fresh fruit which, as ever, was very nicely presented and went down a treat with a pot of Earl Grey tea. Our arrival over the South American continent was marked by a bumpy patch, as we passed through some clouds. I noticed that we'd finally made it to a respectable cruising altitude of 38,000ft. With some 5.5 hours still to go, I decided to go for a personal record and started up my fourth movie of the flight, the recent Indian success story Slumdog Millionaire. A bit of a slow starter, I thought, and then I realised that it had me hooked.

The timing worked very nicely and I'd only managed to read a couple of chapters of my book following my movie marathon when another hot towels service indicated that it was time for the second full meal of the flight. Strange as it may seem, I was actually starting to feel peckish again. This menu had a somewhat Middle Eastern flavour to it :-

I had a selection of starters (not the lot this time!), the lamb main course and the fresh fruit, washed down with more of the Swiss white and a couple of glasses of the French red. As we approached our destination, there was the most amazing red sunset to the west and a number of crew appeared on the scene, in order to see it better from the top deck. The Purser commented that it was the best she'd seen in 25 years of flying.

A short time later, the Purser returned to say goodbye. We flew what I can best describe as a small letter gamma, starting in the north-east corner, descending all the while and finally positioning ourselves for a north-westerly landing. We touched down at Ezeiza at 1918 local time and were parked on-stand a mere three minutes later.

And so another unforgettable flight was over, in this amazing year of 2009. For the second time in a few months, no doubt helped by the economic downturn, I'd had the best cabin on the aircraft all to myself. While some might think that the crew have an easy job in such circumstances, I would argue that they still went out of their way to make it a very special experience for me, and their sterling efforts were very much appreciated. Despite issues with the ageing hard product, Lufthansa First is truly a class act