We departed Singapore at midnight, heading initially for Amsterdam, a thirteen and a half hour flight. The first event of note was dinner, which came with a certain amount of confusion as the three of us had swapped seats. While nice enough - I had the chicken satay - I felt the meals on this flight were not as good as the ones on the Auckland to Singapore flight.

Flying east to west meant that the night was drawn out and never seemed to end. At least it was smooth with just a small amount of light turbulence as we exited the Himalayas over Tajikistan.

I watched an interesting documentary on the life of Donna Summer (yes, really) and then settled down to try to get some sleep. Unfortunately, there was a nervous flyer in the row behind us whose coping mechanism was to talk loudly all night. I resorted to using headphones with the best of 80s UK pop music on shuffle play; Linda later reported better results with Mozart. I managed two to three hours of sleep and probably the same amount of drowsing.

After waking, I delved deep into the back catalogue of House, M.D. and then, once it was finally light and the cabin lights were back on, I retreated into my book. Breakfast came and went and then, thirteen and a half hours later, we finally descended into Amsterdam.

We had a tight connection here, made tighter by Singapore Airlines' concern for our wellbeing in choosing not to fly over Iran but to take the longer northern route. Waiting for us when we landed was a very efficient Schiphol employee with a wheelchair and a race walking technique that suggested she could represent the Netherlands in the Paris Olympics in a couple of months. She raced us across the airport to our next gate in no time at all.

She handed us off to another team who loaded us into a vehicle that was part bus and part forklift.

This contraption drive us to the outer parts of the airport where our aircraft was parked, far from the terminal. We expected to be dropped off and climb the stairs but instead, we were lifted up on the forklift bit to the rear door of the aircraft, the driver knocked on the door, the stewardess opened it and we walked to our seats without having to negotiate any steps at any time. Amazing.

From leaving our seats on the Singapore Airlines flight to taking our seats on this KLM flight to Aberdeen took less than half an hour. We wondered whether our luggage had been as quick.

The captain then announced a short delay which he blamed on air traffic control but we hoped was to give the baggage handlers a bit more time.

Once moving we had a long taxi, a quarter of an hour, to the furthest runway, over several roads and canals. And then we were off on the short, one hour (ish) flight to Aberdeen.

An uneventful flight later we descended into the clouds surrounding Aberdeen Airport before the captain thought better of it and pulled back up above them again. He then updated us on the weather conditions around Glasgow and said he would make a second attempt to land at Glasgow. Everyone's consternation quickly turned to amusement 30 seconds later when he made a second announcement confirming that we were in fact actually at Aberdeen (as was obvious from the view through gaps in the cloud), that he was aware of that but that just before speaking to us the first time he had been in radio contact with air traffic control discussing Glasgow as an alternative if he couldn't land at Aberdeen. He assured us he could and would and then proved it by successfully descending through the clouds a second time, emerging just a few metres above the Aberdeen airport runway.

Aberdeen was a slightly smaller airport than Amsterdam with just two other aircraft at the gates and another two in the process of departing. The international arrivals hall was even smaller than Hobart Airport.

The baggage arrived on the carousel quickly and, just as quickly, we realised that the baggage handlers at Amsterdam were not as efficient as their customer service counterparts. We joined a queue to report four missing suitcases which they promised to deliver to our accommodation that afternoon.

This was a blessing in disguise in one way as it gave us a bit more room in our rental car. We had been allocated a Mercedes Benz A180 hatch and it took me a while to figure out where all the controls were. I couldn't even find the gear stick initially. It turned out to be exactly where the indicators are in my car at home. What could possibly go wrong with that?

It was still only 9am and we couldn't get access to our accommodation until 4pm. However, we were in Aberdeen to catch up with family so to family we went.

We went first to Catherine and Adam and then later in the day, after hours of catching up and a walk around the neighbourhood to get some fresh air and sunlight , we drove over to see Margaret and George.

I received a call confirming our luggage had arrived and been delivered. I think this is the first time my luggage has ever beaten me to my accommodation.

In this case, our accommodation was at the Lighthouse Cottages at Girdle Ness, the same place we stayed when we last visited Aberdeen as a family eight years ago.

It took a long time to unpack and we were grateful for the supplies that had been left for us which enabled us to have scrambled eggs for dinner without having to visit a supermarket first.

After dinner we went for a short walk to remind ourselves of the surroundings. Being a lighthouse, this meant lots of dramatic coastline. Sadly, I don't appear to have taken any photos of said coastline (I'll correct that over the next few days) but here are some of the lighthouse, boats and offshore wind farms.

The host at the cottages had told us that tonight might be a good night to catch the Northern Lights so, inspired by the opportunity to see both the northern and southern lights in the space of a week, we tried our best to stay awake until bedtime UK time - or at least until after sunset around 9.30 - but it was a losing battle. Linda gave up around 8pm while I lasted until just after 9.