The day is finally here! After 2+ years of planning and re-planning and being careful of what we say around Bev, tonight is the night we fly out! And as it turns out it came an hour earlier than expected thanks to an (un-notified) flight change. And right there is a very good reason to always, always do your online checkin kiddies. If we hadn't we probably would have missed the flight!

But we didn't and got to the airport with plenty of time to spare - Yay us! Then came the moment we've been the super sneakiest secret squirrels about as we steered Bev towards the Business Class checkin line .

The look on her face as she realised... priceless. :)

Suffice to say that Business class was very, very, very nice, with an almost overwhelming level of service at first. Lovely big seats, a welcome drink of your choice, awesome menu on demand (as our hostess told us - try everything if you like!), a mattress topper for the lie flat seats and even some jim jams to sleep in! Did feel kinda weird to be wearing pjs out in public but most seemed to do it. Better than sweating up your own clothes.

Managed to sleep for a good portion of the flight, then were woken up to breakfast in bed. Both Bev & I had blueberry buttermilk pancakes and Jeff had something healthy so not worth mentioning it. Lady mucks all of us - le de dah!

Just had enough time to change out of the jim jams before we landed in Doha. What decadent souls we are hehehe.

At Doha airport we browsed the shops a little, found the amazing biscuit place from Strasbourg plus lots of shops selling ciggies, arabic women's wear, perfume, nice jewellery plus some very blingy gold jewellery, sugar almond flowers and some really lovely looking silver teapots and bowls. Resisted buying anything this early in the trip. Must. exert. some. self. restraint.

Our tickets allowed us entry to the Qatar Business lounge. More wow... it's massive, has it's own dancing water fountain and in addition to the usual tea / coffee and snack stations, has an actual restaurant on an entirely different floor! These Middle East countries sure know how to do impressive.

Next stop - our 5hr flight to Vienna.