Our magic carpet ride

Another lovely flight. We are beginning to prefer Korean Air over all others, and we're not the only ones. Others on our flight commented how delighted they were to be flying with them again. Their service is outstanding, the crew dainty, coiffured, tiny, we felt like giants among them; the meals neat, sectioned, with interesting flavours. It was all quite lovely. 

Again, there were spare seats around us to move into and sprawl out on, our third trip in a row. Not that they were needed as the actual seating was amazingly capacious. As plane seating should be, but usually never is. We settled back and watched a non-stop movie stream, among them La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, and the extraordinary Snowden, which I fast tracked and started re-watching before we landed I was so gob-smacked. Our privacy is no more. There is nothing that cannot now be discovered about us if someone wants that information badly enough. I thought I understood that already. But Snowden killed any last fragile illusions I may have clung on to.

We were offered a night's stopover in Seoul before our connecting flight the next afternoon, well, Incheon really, as Seoul is an hour and a half away from the international airport. This time a coach took us, and a load of pilots, just around the side of the airfield to the Grand Hyatt. One of the nicest hotels we have stayed in for quite a few years. With soaring public spaces. Amazing floor art. Stunning stairwell. And fragile plantings. No gaudy gilded Trump tower this. 

We had vouchers for dinner and breakfast in a vast and competently busy dining room filled with an amazing number of guests who seemed just to appear, given the quietness of the giant corridors as we walked there. Filled with endless white starched cloth tables loaded with food, and wait staff in tall white chef hats positioned about a metre apart behind each: fresh crab claws, fresh giant prawns, and fat fresh oysters in the shells to start. There were too many choices to pursue but we might have eaten Japanese sushi and sashimi, or Korean barbecue, English roast with the trimmings, or Chinese, Thai, Indian and Italian mains, among others, had we so wished. Not your standard buffet, either. Food was being cooked to order for many of the dishes, on open-flamed kitchen hobs with red-hot ovens and behind each set of serving tables, all within view. I would love to tour the kitchen here, just to understand the food ordering, the logistics of serving so many people, just the management of it all. Which is as fascinating to me, these days, as is the spectacle of serving it.

The bed was sublime, the bathroom unusual in that things like hair dryers and toiletries were stored in pretty lacquered boxes somewhat similar to ones we found in the airport shop. We slept like babes. Breakfast was similarly special with designer omelettes on demand, the full English if that was preferred, or various congees, yogurts, cereals and fruits from afar. Suffice to say we ate well. The coach collected us mid morning and we were back at the airport in time for check in and a look around at the fragile displays of Korean cultural wares in the Departure hall. All very pleasant. 

London, when we arrived, was dark, damp and cold. After the heat of home, we luxuriated in it. Tho' not the immigration station where the queues of the incoming were endless and took the better part of an agonising hour to get through. Ugh. Brexit is not helping either; rather adding another crowded section: EU v non EU arrivals. More than a little tedious. We took the tube to Hammersmith as it was just there, then a taxi from the station, and were dropped off in our quiet street of rather gracious three-storied residential terraces, all in darkness. Luckily I remembered to carry a flashlight so we found our apartment, coded the key holder, and climbed the small set of stairs to the door behind which we found our two-bedroomed bijou abode for the next three month, with its miniature bathroom, nicely tiled; its compact kitchen, recently fitted out; one bedroom down a narrow hall and one or two steps that had a deck to the outdoors giving a feeling of space, and another bedroom tucked off the tiny living room and dining room. Minimalist, with pops of minty green everywhere, I noted, before we dumped our bags, showered, and fell into bed. We left the unpacking till morning. 

Stairwell dripping with lights

Blue poles as art

Vast marble and glass foyer

Minimalist birds and branches