Europe Trip 2013: Heathrow to Guangzhou and home sweet home

As with my flights from NZ to the UK, my flights home were on China Southern Airlines. Also, as with the trip over, I was surprisingly comfortable, with 3 out of 4 sectors have a 35" seat pitch in economy [compared to 31-33" seat pitch on most other airlines!]. The one exception was because I had an exit row, so leg room was "unlimited" :-)

Despite leaving London at 5:50pm and a 12 hrs flight, it was continuous daylight all the way to China so a very long day since we arrived in Guangzhou at about 1pm-ish.

Due to a long layover in Guangzhou [ICAO code: ZGGG] of 11.5 hours, China Southern put me in a hotel for about 8.5/ 9 hrs which was nice. The hotel had a very flash foyer and the room was not far behind. Very nice even if only classed as "3 star". The only problem with the hotel was that they were hosting an event and so at about 9pm the extremely loud music started. Ouch! Just as well we were catching the bus back to the airport at 10pm.

The only minor problem was that the flight was delayed 2.5 hrs, so a 3am departure, but such is life.

After arrival in Auckland at 6pm, I stayed in a hotel for the night then arrived home in Wellington the next afternoon. Fun, but tiring. Still, well worth it!

Anyway, on to the pictures. Top to bottom we have:

Night time over Russia :-)
Daytime over China
Hotel foyer in Guangzhou
My [very large] hotel room. Comfy too :-)
View from the hotel window
Airport terminal late at night... not much happening at about 1-2am. :-)
Boeing 777-3DZ/ER, A7-BAZ, Qatar Airways
Boeing 767-381/ER, JA608A, ANA