After having finally arrived at Frankfurt following my delayed flight from London, I followed the connections signs for the first time and wondered what laid ahead of me. Speaking to friends before travelling, I’d mentioned my booked 45-minute connection and had been wished luck as Frankfurt was supposedly a horrendous airport to transfer through. Having missed my original flight out of the German city, I was under a lot less pressure with 3 hours to kill and so was a lot more relaxed about the whole process.

Since arriving back from Madrid in September, I had been yearning for an adventure and whilst my day trips have been great, the 2-night trip to the Ukrainian capital is what I’d really been looking forward to. Most of my trips have an element of similarity, be it the destination, airline or some other aspect. This trip to Kiev would be a dive into the complete unknown for me with a new country, new airlines and my first time using connecting flights.

After a soggy but interesting day exploring Oslo, I headed back to the Oslo S to catch the train north to the airport.

On a cold and foggy morning in November, I woke to a 4AM alarm at Heathrow Terminal 4’s Premier Inn. Despite staying near Terminal 4, I was flying with British Airways (BA) and so headed downstairs to get a bus round to BA’s home at Terminal 5.

After an tiring but thoroughly enjoyable day in Dublin I jumped on an airport express bus outside Heuston station and started to make my way back to the airport. Heuston is the far end of the 747 route and for most of the day buses depart here for the airport every 10 minutes. Between the 747 and 757 routes most of the City Centre is directly accessible by bus from the airport, allowing minimum time on a day trip to be wasted on travel.

t 0530 on a clear but cool morning in late August I arrived at Hampton-in-Arden station to the southeast of Birmingham to start my day trip to Dublin.