Blogs from Victoria, Australia, Oceania - page 6

We’re up in the air again. Smooth check in, well under the luggage allowance (which is 31 kg, which seems a lot) and cruising along at 35000 ft. There was a trick when we saw our gate and the final boarding call but it was just ‘Greek’! Our gate, our flight number, our airline but the final call was for the previous flight from that gate and had not been amended. Only mild panic but really no drama as we knew that over an hour was left before scheduled take off. Flying Etihad as we did on the way over but currently on the A320 which is a baby for their fleet and not one I expect to take us home. It’s just under a 5 hour flight to Abu Dhabi and most of that time ... read more

We awake to that inevitable sad day when we have to start the tortuously long 25 hour trip home. There seem to be a lot of fancy looking black limousines waiting outside our Athens hotel. We can’t tell who’s inside them, if anyone, because they’ve all got blacked out windows. Issy says they’re picking up businessmen to take them off to one of the many nearby sex shops or strip clubs. It’s ten o’clock on a Monday morning, so I would have thought that most businessmen should now be off doing their “business”, although I suppose that word could have a couple of different meanings in that context. We’re flying back to Melbourne via Doha in Qatar. We seem to have struck it lucky at Athens Airport with our airline, Qatar; the check in queue is ... read more

Ahhh English. ‘Common’ topographical terms used on the maps and in the guide books I’m using at the moment include the following: a barton, a beare or beer (and no it’s not a drink!), a bury, a cleave, a combe or to further complicate things a coombe, a cott, a dean, a down or dun, a ham, a lan, a leigh, a lyn, a mew, nose and a mouth, a pil or pill, a stoke, a ton, a tout (but only used in Dorset), a warren, a wide or wake and then there are the particularly and specifically Cornish terms of bal, bod, bos, carn (a walker’s favourite in any language or spelling), Carrick, cos, close, ty, che, Dina’s, du, shut, envy’s or ennis, gwyn, hal, hen, hayle, ken, kernow, lis or liz, loe or looe, ... read more

Today, Sandra & I went to see the lovely Miss Courtney at Flight Centre to pick up all our tickets. Thank god we went through all the paperwork in our folder because Courtney noticed we had the wrong Covid certificates. We updated our certificates to be International and now we are good to go. Just gotta pack our bags and wait another 11 sleeps and then we are off. Can’t wait.... read more

Last night when Bernie was cleaning his teeth the smoke alarm in our room went PEEP, PEEP and then stopped. Then, just as we were settling in to go to sleep, the smoke alarm went PEEP, PEEP and then stopped. Hmmn, it probably means that the battery needs replacing? However, the ceiling was too high to be able to disable the alarm to ensure a good night’s sleep so we settled in regardless. Fortunately, we didn’t hear anything more from the smoke alarm until 6.20am this morning which was sort of about time to get moving for the big drive home anyway. After a shower and a quick breakfast, we packed the car for the final time and checked out. Shannon, our tour guide from last night, was in the reception area and said that the ... read more