21 August 2011

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The last day in Sydney started in wonderful sunshine wiith no hint of what was to follow!

Samantha and Neil were out about 8am to run up and over the Sydney Harbour bridge and back before breakfast, while Stephanie and Tux ran round to the next bay and back, plus ran up and down the steep climb to the shoreline in Lavender Bay.

I'd realised that when I booked the car to pick us up and take us too and from the airport to our accomodation that I'd not known the actual address we were staying at in Arthur Street. I therefore rang the company to let them know but only got an answerphone message. I rang about an hour later and another Russian (they all seem Russian for some reason!) confirmed that they had got my message about number 35.

We were all ready and packed in plenty of time for the pick up at 11am to the airport. On arrival we couldn't check in our bag until 4 hours before the flight was scheduled to leave at 16.05. Bags checked in we were advised to stay this side of immigration as there was more choice of food.

Everything at first seemed OK, with the plane due to take off on schedule from Gate 10, but then it changed to say there was going to be a 4 hour delay and wouldn't be taking off until 20.00. Tux went off to investigate and came back with a sheet that said there had been a problem with our plane and they needed to fly another one out! More importantly he also came back with a $30 voucher so I went and got another 6!

There was free wi fi so hence I managed to post the Blog I had been writing.

Went through immigration about 6pm as things looked reasonably certain and the plane took off at 20.00. It arrived at 1.30am, slightly quicker than expected.

That wasn't the end of our problems! We were grateful to see a lady standing there with my name on it from the hotel, but she was obviously only expecting 2 people!! I checked my booking and confirmed that they had said they would provide a 12 seater. She went off to make calls and then came back to say that she was organise a taxi for Michael, Tux and Neil and she would drive the rest of us. She had a nice Merc but it wasn't big enough for the 4 of us and our suitcases. Stephanie and Samantha had a large suitcase on their lap which wasn't very acceptable.

It was a drive down an empty tree lined thoroughfare with lots of people undertaking cleaning and tree cutting. The lady was very pro her Government and what they provided.

We arrived at the hotel after about 20 minutes and the others arrived very shortly. It took a while for 3 people to check us in as they wanted to check all passports. Our room were on 6th, 10th and 13th floor, which wasn't ideal. Eryl and I had Michael sharing with us and to our disappointment we had single beds although fairly large ones. Stephanie and Tux found their room on 13th floor hadn't been made up so they were moved to 20th floor.

Finally when I opened my suitacase, one of Eryl's bottles had broken and gone over my clean clothes!

We turned the light off about 3.15am only for the phone to wake me up at 7am with a wrong call!!

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