Flying to Sydney - Day 4

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This blog is posted out of chronological order!

We awoke with a start, it's 5am the phone rings and the voice says, your taxi has arrived! Nooooo, we had spotted the day before that it was booked far too early and had phoned to change it to 8am - unfortunately the message hadn't got through. Still at least we could roll over and go back to sleep!

A couple of hours later, a quick shower and we're off to experience the Abu Dhabi airport hospitality. As we arrived an Etihad representative approach as we were unloading from the taxi and asked if we were traveling business class. Flippin' eck, as we had cancelled the first taxi, this was a public taxi, how did you know I ask? Secretly hoping that we looked like business class travellers, he told us that he had spotted our priority tag on our luggage that was still there from the first flight! Oh well, perhaps not!

I'm going for the reiki spa treatment this time, I tell Martin. What's that he asks? I tell him that the therapist floats her hands over your body for a kind of meditation experience which is meant to bring a sense of relaxation and spiritual harmony or something like that. What they don't even touch you? What a waste he exclaims as he chooses yet another back massage. As ever a traditionalist!

We board the plane and wow is he happy, not only does he have a window seat, he has 3 windows! On the first leg of the journey the only seats for couples to sit together were in the middle. That meant for the fist time in I can't remember how long, he didn't have a window seat and he kept remarking about what a waste it was that people were closing the window blinds and sleeping! Today is a Virgin Australian plane and while it is not as posh as Etihad at least he gets the window seat and we get to sit together.

We finally arrive in Sydney to find that the fishing rod saga continues. We arrive at the airport, Melissa is just yards away but we have the declare channel to go through. Apparently the chocs and biscuits which are part of Melissa's Christmas present are low risk but the fishing rod is high risk because of some weed that threatens the ecological balance of their lakes. That is as maybe if we could find the flipping thing! We hang around the oversized luggage collection point to no avail. Eventually we approach a Virgin rep who tells us that he has a message for us - the rod got left behind in Abu Dhabi, now you tell us! Having made the obligatory arrangements for it to get sent on ( at this point I was ready to ditch it) we make our way to Melissa.

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