Jacqui Thake
Jet off for an all-inclusive week at the four-star Catalonia Riviera Maya Hotel, departing from Gatwick on March 20 for £1,153 or Manchester on March 14 for £1,224. travelrepublic.co.uk, 0208 974 7200 Qantas Business Class
787 Dreamliner Flight QF10 from London Heathrow to Perth direct from £4,189 return (economy £864). qantas.com
Now you can board a flight in London and not step off until you touch down on Australia’s West Coast.
Gone are those timeconsuming plane changes, the dazed wandering in brightly-lit terminals in a timezone you’ve long lost track of.
The Dreamliner takes just 17 hours. It is super-quiet too, has subtle mood lighting – which adjusts to the time zone you’re travelling to, 65% larger windows than normal and 30% of the air comes directly from outside. You do feel different.
The business class menu has been specifically designed to help alleviate jetlag – with beef salads, chicken with rice and fennel soup.
Australian chef Neil Perry, in collaboration with the Charles Perkins Centre at Sydney University, has created an extraordinarily tasty selection of healthy meals to keep hunger and thirst at bay at 35,000ft.
The seats are virtually private little cocoons in calming gold shades with wooden feature walls, big TV screens and a handy L-shaped shelf which wraps around the screen divider for all those tricky little bottles. Of course, there’s the advantage – and comfort – of a fully flat bed. The wash bag contained products by Aussie Spa brand ASPAR.
As the flight wore on, some slept, others watched films and shows from the wide selection. There was a distinctly relaxed feel on board, purely a case of settling in and enjoying the fact that you had almost 20 hours to yourself.
The complimentary snack bar (chocolates, fruit, crisps) in the large galley was the place for passengers to stretch their legs and have a chat far enough away from disturbing fellow travellers.
At the end of the day, it’s how you feel when you disembark that really differentiates a good flight from a great flight.
Gone was my usual heavy, fuzzy head, swollen eyes and overwhelming exhaustion. QUIBBLES: None – honest. VERDICT: The only way to travel to Australia. 10/10 A maiko, or apprentice geisha
When in Japan, I suggest always wearing good-quality socks. Because you’ll be taking your shoes off... a lot.
It’s the custom here to keep the floors super-clean because they eat and sleep so much closer to the ground than we do.
So I was mortified after a morning walking on the beach to see a pink toenail poking through my cheap socks when I removed my shoes for lunch on the first day.
From blushing to flushing – who knew how complicated it could be to use the
Jacqui being taught how to wield a Samurai sword lavatory here? Everywhere you go, from cafes to five-star hotels, you get computerised bidet loos which, depending on the button you push, will warm up the seat, wash your nether regions, deodorise and more. How my hubby would love to blame a computer for leaving the toilet seat up.
These quirks and more make Japan one of the most fascinating places in the world to visit.
I decided to shun the main hubs and head to the island of Kyushu, Japan’s third largest.
After a two-hour flight from Tokyo, we landed in the very modern city of Fukuoka, actually closer to Seoul than