Oot & Aboot: Stairs on a Plane

So I managed to sleep the night before my flight. It must have been the 12 odd months of getting used to the fact that I was doing this that helped me sleep. But it surprised me none the less. I'd spent the previous weekend worried about luggage and how much Singapore Airlines would slug me if my luggage weight was over. With luggage there is always two schools of thought. One is that they say 20kgs but really mean about 25kgs, and the other is that they are going to be strict to get the excess baggage money out of your pocket. I tried to be cautious and ended up only 2kgs over. We (be 'we' i mean Dad and i) had managed to book our seats online over the weekend so we had seating in the 'upper deck' of the A380. Love it. We got to the airport to find that we could have 25kgs and that we weren't over. Phew, no money to spend. We had two hours to kill at the airport before boarding so we grabbed some lunch and i bought a koala soft toy complete with an akubra hat as a reminder of home. They started to board the plane about an hour before take off. Given the size of the plane they would have to. Economy on the lower level had to go somewhere else to load and the smaller economy class on the upper deck loaded in the ususal way (sounds like cattle right?). The plane was rather fancy-pants inside. Dad and i had two seats at the window, i took the aisle as i knew i'd be getting up a lot. The plane went off on time and was surprisingly quiet. The food was great and the service was impeccable. I definently rate Singepore Airlines. I was able to get up a lot to move around yet i still felt like i wanted to run a marathon. I did make one discovery that i was curious about, i found the stairs! I'd wondered if the passengers could go up and down the stairs, and they can, so i did. It was a good opportunity to stretch the legs and so crazy to see stairs on a plane.
After a stopover in Singapore where i tried to sleep off a headache on the floor of the terminal, we headed back on board for the longer lef of the journey, to Heathrow. By the end of the longer leg, i concluded that unless i can fly Business Class the long distance flights are not for me. We got into Heathrow and after travelling on about 6 escalators, 4 tunnels, 3 sets of stairs, and a bus, we were finally on the British Midlands flight to take us to Edinburgh. Heathrow is frickin' huge. I knew i was closer to my goal when i started to hear a whole heap of Scottish accents....which i still love to hear! All the flight attendents had Scottish accents. A nice and quick flight and we were FINALLY in Edinburgh. I was absolutely desperate for a shower and change of clothes as i had been hot the entire time during the flights over. I wore only a singlet most of the journey in the plane over, it just wasn't cold on board. Funnily enough the first person to see when leaving the plane was a dude with red hair. Yes, i was now in Scotland. It wasn't as warm as London (30 C) but probably about 18 C.
We got into a taxi and it was at this point that i was sightly scared about not being able to understand Scottish people due to the accent because of the life of me i could not understand the driver! We got into Toll Cross and into our self-contained apartment. It was a case of you get what you pay for. Overall it was clean enough but it was quite run down. Having said that i was thankful to have somewhere to sleep and shower and it not be a hostel...