Day 4 - Tuesday 25th April 2023

It wasn't a very comfortable sleep because of the heat. There was no temperature control on the air conditioning and there was only a heavy quilt on the bed with no sheet.

Looking out the window, we could see blue sky with very few clouds. The temperature was 9C.

Today we'd be travelling from Tokyo to Frankfurt. This involves a flight of almost 15 hours. (More on that later.)

The shuttle bus from the hotel to Narita airport was due to leave at 6:50am and so we set our alarm for 5:30am. We reached the airport at 7am.

We had trouble finding the correct check-in counter. The display board told us to go to a particular counter but when we got there, it had a huge queue. We thought this couldn't be right and when we asked at the information desk, they directed us to a different counter where there was no queue.

However, when we got to departures, there was a very long queue for the security check. Initially, I couldn't see the end of it. Luckily the queue moved fairly quickly.

Immigration had machines similar to those we have in Sydney. You put your passport face down on the reader and then take off your glasses and stare at the screen. I tried this over and over again but it didn't work. Eventually one of the officials got it to work on a different machine. My guess is that it was confused by my beard because my photo in the passport was taken before I grew the beard.

The business class lounge is called the Sakura Lounge. It's on two levels with dining upstairs and a lounge area downstairs. The food was provided like a production line. When you got to the front of the queue, you point to a picture on the menu and then the team behind the counter puts it together for you.

The plan was due to depart at 9:35am. Boarding started at 9:15 and the plane pulled back from the terminal at about 9:45.

The seats were better than on the flight from Sydney to Tokyo. For a start, the seats faced forward rather than on an angle and so we were side by side. There was no sash seat belt - just a lap belt.

Once again, they served the main meal early in the flight - at about 11am - consisting of entrees, bread, a beef main course and a delicious strawberry tart dessert. Suzy had a brandy and dry.

I was surprised how few people there were in business class. More than half the seats were empty.

To fill in time, I watched a couple of movies: House of Gucci and TAR. In both cases, I had trouble hearing the dialogue over the background noise of the plane even with the volume turned up to maximum despite my new hearing aids. It had Japanese subtitles. I might have had a better chance of following the story if they had English subtitles.

At about 5pm, I ordered a meal from the anytime menu - a pork cutlet sandwich with a glass of pinot noir. At about 9pm, I was starting to get hungry again and ordered a beef curry with another glass of pinot noir.

Earlier on in the flight, I was confused by the position of the sun because it was out my window on the left side of the plane. We should have been heading west towards Europe but it seemed as though we were heading for Canada.

On the map on the screen, we seemed to have flown over the Arctic and Greenland. Then we were heading south through the North Sea.

Later one of the staff explained to Suzy that we had flown over the Arctic to avoid Russia and Ukraine. Apparently the flight used to take only nine hours but now took almost fifteen hours because of the revised route.

We landed in Frankfurt just before 5pm local time (midnight Tokyo time). With typical German efficiency, we got through immigration and customs in no time flat. Similarly we got straight into a taxi for our 20 minute trip to our hotel, The Flag Oskar M which is located next to the Main River.

This is not like a typical hotel. It's more like serviced apartments. Apart from tourists like us, their market seems to be students who live here while studying at the nearby university. It is part of a chain of hotels and service apartments in various cities throughout Europe.

It has nine floors. Our room is on the sixth floor and has a fabulous view of the river through full height and full width windows on two sides. The sunshine was streaming in. It was a bright and cheerful welcome to the city.

The apartment had a lounge area, kitchenette, large bathroom, small dining table, small work desk, heaps of cupboards and a balcony overlooking the river. There were plenty of power points but not on Suzy's side of the bed. There were plenty of downlights except over the work desk. The air conditioning was limited to a maximum of three hours.

After settling in, we went to the Aldi store across the road to get a few basic supplies.  Then we had dinner at the hotel restaurant (Longobardi's) at ground level near reception. This is a family-run Italian restaurant. We didn't feel hungry and so we shared a pizza. The owner organised a glass of wine for each of us.

There was no point in going to bed too early because the sun hadn't set and it was very bright in our apartment. However, by 9pm it was getting dark and after closing the curtains, we managed to get some sleep. This was 5am Wednesday Tokyo time.

By this time we had been up for almost 24 hours without any sleep since we left Tokyo. As you can imagine, we were very tired and looking forward to a good night's sleep.