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Nearing Abu Dhabi, a shot out of the toilet window, the rest of the plane was asleep and dark with all the shades closed,
yet it was bright already outside about 2 hours before landing......



We land and park away from the terminal due to no space there, a purpose-built wide body bus takes the passengers to the terminal where we wander around and then do the full security thing where shoes off (only leather shoes off, sports shoes OK =?), belts removed, all pockets emptied and all goes through the X-ray and we walk through a metal detector gate. Some buy the usual bottles of water after we go through that security.

Next we queue to get a stamp on our boarding passes......



....then we queue for another bag search where all the just bought water bottles are taken away, then a short queue to have our stamped boarding passes scanned into the computer and then stay in a holding bay until boarding is announced. The flights are full, no spare seats and quite a few upset babies on both sectors so peace not attainable. Flying is such fun.

Final holding bay at Abu Dhabi before entering the plane, this time a sky bridge so no outside heat (due to go over 40 C today) or transfer buses.......



This sector to Sydney in a Boeing 777-300, I don't like Boeings, very noisy compared to the Airbus planes, though the seats on this 777 were not as awful and narrow as those  on the horrible Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Sadly Etihad is buying a huge bunch of Dreamliners, they were torture for me on a previous trip of 8 hours from Japan, for 12.5 hours they would be intolerable.  Anyway, back to the Boeing 777 with unavoidable window reflections.....



That curvy thing above the catering container is the new control tower as seen from the plane window.....



Making the final turn from the taxiway onto the runway........