So my travels have begun, and hopefully this will be the first of many posts let you all know what I have been up to and that I'm still alive and well.
It wasn't the best start, my flight was delayed by 3 hours on the way out of the UK, thanks to a woefully under prepared Heathrow airport to deal with ice that had built up on our plane and apparently many others trying to leave terminal 3. When you have a 12 hour flight ahead of you, the last thing you want is an extra 3 hours sat on the plane waiting for a de-icing crew to allow your plane to take off. When one finally did turn up, they got half way through before "running out of capacity" as the captain put it meaning that we had to wait for another crew to finish the job! You can imagine how that went down with the people on board. Personally, I'd have thought that any aircraft, especially a modern one like an A380 could deal with temperatures barely below freezing. The flight didn't get much better. A horrible pair of brats were sat directly behind me, one of whom was ill and whilst he wasn't wailing like a cat being drowned for half of the night, he was coughing and retching and kicking me in the back of seat. I did feel sorry for the parents who were clearly at their wits end and nearly offered the Dad one of the valiums I'd brought to knock him out, however I wasn't sure how that would have be taken. That pity evaporated though when the parents allowed both children to sing, scream and generally be extremely irritating for the last hour of the flight. I was delighted to over hear that they wouldn't be on the connecting flight to Sydney as they were stopping in Singapore overnight.
On landing in Singapore however I learnt that having missed my connection due to the delay, I too would be staying in Singapore for the night and out on a morning flight. Whilst pissed off that I hadn't made it on the 12.30am flight to Sydney that night, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the sleep in Singapore allowed me to reset my body clock to Australian time and virtually escape any effects of jet lag. I also escaped the kids from hell as I watched every single passenger board the plane in the morning before getting on the plane myself and even managed to get not one but two seats at the back of the plane after complaining about having a window seat after booking an aisle on the original. Singapore airlines rock actually, best food I've ever had on a plane, friendly staff and the entertainment is cool. There is even a USB socket to plug your mp3 player, hard drive or camera in. Cool. :-)
Once in Sydney, it was straight off to the Bondi Beach Hotel (doens't get more cliqued than that) that Lykke had booked for me, since she won't be moving into her new flat until Xmas eve. Bondi Beach is not really what I expected. I some how imagined a very long straight beach, a bit like Los Angeles where it seemed like the the beach is wide enough and long enough for half of the city to hang out at. However, as you can see from the panoramic picture from the balcony of the hotel, it's a cove/bay that whilst a bit commercial is really quite pretty and has a bit of character. I can see why Lykke decided to live here.
Once I dropped off my stuff it was straight into city to meet up with Lykke's other half Daniel for a couple of drinks and a meal.
Next day I spent an overcast day at the beach, talking pretty much non-stop (I know you'll all find that hard to imagine) catching up with Lykke about everything that has been going on over the last 12 months. There was some half decent surf as well to watch the boarders do their thing and in the evening we had some great tapas at a place called Mojo's on the seafront. Today, I'm on my own and aside from spending some time sorting out this blog and uploading all my pictures. I've made the most of the perfect weather (25C and clear blues skies) by getting out for a great breakfast, where I had an awesome breakfast burrito and then heading down to the beach to work on getting a tan in preparation for the brutal heat in India. It was busy today and everyone is so active that it's infectious. I ended up swimming half the length of the bay, running up and down the beach and back and then doing a mini-work out on the bars and benches that are on the sea front. I have to make sure I'm in good shape for when I see Maren next week since she has been doing yoga since she has been out in India and lost several kilos apparently. Tonight I'm off for dinner again in the city with Daniel and Lykke at a place called Wildfire which apparently I will love. It's a hard life eh?
Before I go, I'll just give you some links to the other photos that I've uploaded to picasa. One of the cool features of my new camera is that it has a built in GPS to geo-tag each photo so you can see where they were taken on the map. Obviously I could help playing and managed to get a GPS fix when landing and taking off on the plane which had some fun results. Check it out.
nice... you are such a hippie: i am jealous :)
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