All good things must come to an end. And so, after 10 days and a whirlwind tour through the UK and Ireland, our vacation was coming to an end too. There was only one thing left to do, and that was to fly home.
We were booked on Singapore Airlines business class for the direct flight from MAN to IAH. As I’ve previously described, we managed to book these tickets using miles, meaning we saved more than $6,500 on the price of our tickets. We’d already gotten to experience the Singapore service on our way to Manchester, but we actually had an even better service on the way home.
First of all, for the return trip, we were booked in the bulkhead aisle, which is the primo spot on the Singapore Airlines “new” business class A350s. As you can see in this photo, you get a full foot “ledge” in the bulkhead rows instead of a crowded foot “cubby” in the non-bulkhead seats.
So, if you’re looking at booking this business class trip yourself: aim for seats in row 11 or 19.
The food was still a little “meh” — good for airplane food, but not particularly good, generally speaking. Once again, I started with champagne, which the staff kept refilling whenever it got low.
Next, I perused the menu, as there was not a “Book The Cook” option for this flight — I’d need to pick my selection once onboard. In the gallery below, I include our full menu (including the menus for the flight origination, from SIN to MAN.)
Our lunch service started with a chicken and lamb satay with a very tasty peanut sauce.
Up next, there was a salmon salad appetizer. This was really the weakest link for me in the whole meal service, as the salmon was bitter and almost metallic tasting. Needless to say, I didn’t finish this.
For my main course, I chose the seared chicken breast with polenta, while the hubby chose the Chinese style ribs.
Unfortunately, I chose wrong. The sauce on the chicken was bitter and salty, to the point that I found it nearly inedible. I nibbled on the polenta, but other than that, avoided my dinner. In their defense, a stewardess did notice that I wasn’t eating much and came over to ask if I’d like to try something else…but I just wasn’t feeling it, so I passed at the time.
Luckily, dessert was a nice redemption for the airline: the chocolate brownie was more like a flourless torte, and was quite tasty. I also partook of the cheese course, before ultimately concluding my meal.
With our lunch concluded, I set about to find a movie and was pleasantly surprised: since we had departed in May but were returning in June, we had all new movie and tv choices on the entertainment center! While the Star Wars movies were no longer on offer, they did now have all the movies in the X-Men series.
I wasn’t feeling X-Men, but, um – OMG LEGO BATMAN!!! I got to watch that and the new live action Beauty and the Beast, not to mention several episodes of Top Chef on the return flight. This was great.
Sleep-wise, I still didn’t find the flip-down beds particularly comfy. I managed about a 2-hour nap during a particularly boring documentary about an Antarctica trekking expedition, but chose to do so while reclined to only about a 150-degree recline, propped up with my two pillows, instead of at a lie-flat 180.
This is also when I noticed that you can’t turn off the screen without turning off the audio as well. Kind of a bummer, if listening to white noise helps you to fall asleep.
But, I wasn’t really that tired anyways, since it was still mid-day in the UK which we’d just departed. So once I decided I wasn’t going to sleep, I realized that not eating my lunch earlier meant I was pretty hungry.
However, not to worry! As soon as a stewardess saw that I was awake, she came over with the “delectables” menu and asked if she could get me anything. I chose to have the warm chicken salad sandwiches, which was actually quite good and tided me over until the “light dinner” service.
The light dinner began with a shrimp salad of sorts.
Up next, both myself and the hubby chose the lamb shank main course. Again, this was REALLY salty, but overall I would say that this was the tastiest meal of the entire flight experience, either there or back.
Finally, they served a lemon meringue tart for dessert, and this was actually really good. It’s clear where Singapore Airlines food really shines, and that’s their dessert courses!
After clearing the dinner service, we were on the ground within about an hour (though we’d been re-routed along the way, and so were running about an hour behind our scheduled arrival time.)
Deplaning was easy, and with our Global Entry status, we flew through Customs and were back home in no time to reflect on the wonder that had been our trip.
I hope you enjoyed this trip review series, and learned some tips in case you ever visit these locales! Please leave me your feedback in the comments – and thanks for reading!
