Round The World and other travels

I like the way that Lufthansa cabin attendants show passengers example meals, so that they can confirm their selection. I already had my eye on the salmon starter and was happy to confirm this when the crew member showed me both available starters. Just as on BA, the starter is served on a tray with the salad and dressing, and warm bread is offered from a basket. I had a very 'seedy' (in the nicest possible sense!) roll, followed by some German rye bread - a treat not much appreciated by Brits, but I'm happy to be the exception to that particular rule. Unlike BA, the tray is then removed and everything else is placed directly on the tablecloth. I had the prawn main course, followed by cheese, followed by coffee. As previously, I noted that extensive use was made of a restaurant-style trolley, which gave a good impression and seemed more worthy of First Class than Business.

Duly satisfied, I thumbed through the somewhat uninspiring movie selection and chose The Bank Job, which was much better than it sounded and which, intriguingly, is based on a true story! I followed this with the dated and extremely daft, first-ever episode of the TV series The Persuaders. After all this, I listened to some Shostakovich music in the style known as Russian Jazz (which, for anyone who is unfamiliar with it, is a genre of light classical music).

A second round of hot towels was distributed about 1.5 hours prior to the scheduled arrival time. Intriguingly, and unlike the first round, these were made of really good quality material, providing a far superior experience to the usual rags. (The same pattern would later be repeated on my return flight : cheap rags for the first round and a quality product on the second run.) This was immediately followed by a drinks run through the cabin, allowing those who had been asleep to have some refreshment on waking up. All this was, of course, a prelude to the second meal service, for which the menu was as follows :-

A very nice touch, I thought, having both choices inspired by the recent Beijing Olympics. I thought that the Greek and Chinese options both sounded nice, but on being shown sample dishes from the trolley, I opted for the selection of Chinese delicacies, washed down with a bottle of Warsteiner beer. Very nice it all was, too! Following this light meal, we proceeded to work our way down the Eastern Seaboard, just off Long Island and passing close to New York City. It was an intermittently bumpy ride and the seat belt signs in fact stayed on until arrival, giving no 'official' time for washroom visits. We made a couple of loops in a holding pattern near NYC before being allowed to proceed closer to our destination. Jackets were returned very early - half an hour prior to our ETA of 1620.

Just when everyone thought they were nearly there, we were asked to hold for a further 20 minutes in the vicinity of Atlantic City, NJ. Philadelphia weather was announced as 25C ( ) and light rain ( ). Oops, things seemed to be heading suddenly downhill!   In the event, even the revised ETA proved to be optimistic and it was 1648 before we finally touched down at PHL. That still wasn't the end of the story, however. We needed to cross the live take-off runway in order to reach the terminal and a seemingly endless queue of departing aircraft ensured that we had a frustratingly long wait. We arrived at the gate at 1659, well behind schedule - an unfortunate conclusion to an otherwise excellent flight.