Tuesday – To Philip Island
Up a bit later today, so ended up lazing around in the morning, and just fitting-in a visit to the library. Rod came back around 2pm, and we hired a car for the drive south to Philip Island. Got upgraded to a pretty decent 8-seater, so plenty of room for a party in the back. Hope we get that car when we do the Great Ocean Road in a couple of weeks.
We stayed at Rod's parent's house – thanks Kevin & Sheryl (hope I spelt that right) – which was great. Felt a bit guilty when they departed to stay the night at someone else's home though.
Had time for a quick tea, then at 6pm, we departed to watch the "Penguin Parade", which is meant to be a whole host of "little penguin's" coming out of the water and waddling up the beach to their burrows in the sand-dunes.
There might be a couple of thousand of them at the height of summer (in the breeding season), but right now they're moulting – and can't go near the water. Which means half are at sea fattening up (and stay there for 2 weeks), while the other half are in their burrows actually moulting. So we must have seen around 20. They did look cute though…
Monday – Melbourne & Aussie-Rules
As you'd expect, up early on Monday. Sue needed to call some workmen, so it was then a mid-morning journey into Melbourne centre. A bite for lunch, and time for some severe shopping! Needed to organise a dress for Samantha for the wedding (done) and shoes (not).
Then it was time to meet up with Rod, and off to see the Aussie-Rules football at the Telstra Dome (unfortunately not the MCG). All was even at half-time, when Ann & Sue took Sam home, and it even looked well-set for a good ending after the 3rd quarter. However, the Pies (Rod's team) were well stuffed in the last quarter, losing badly. Oh well..
Sam got a scarf out of that trip, but she doesn't need it while we're up in Queensland… It might be chilly in Melbourne, but we're expecting 31 degrees in Port Douglas.
Sunday – Melbourne Grand Prix
We arrived in Melbourne early on the Sunday morning. Seemed like a reasonable day, and the jet-lag hadn't really kicked in. After a quick search for the car in the car-park, we headed for Rod+Sue's, stopping to grab some juice for breakfast.
We decided against going to see the grand-prix live – expecting to get a poor view with the ordinary general admission tickets. Ann didn't really fancy going anyway.
So we stayed at Sue's, and had a barbie instead, and watched it on TV… gradually succumbing to tiredness.
I vaguely recall having tea too – perhaps – but the bed called pretty early. I was last to go, around 6pm.
Emirates Flights
The first flight was from Heathrow to Dubai, and on an Emirates Boeing 777 with the infamous 10-across seating. For a big bloke, the seat width was definitely tight. In this case, though, travelling with a 5-year-old was a plus! We just put the seat arms up, and treated it like a sofa.
On the positive side, the leg-room was fine for a 6′2″ guy. It is supposed to be 34″, and is much better than BA’s euro- traveller. The downside was that my legroom was hit by an equipment box. I could put my feet either side of it, but it really stopped me moving my legs around.
The second flight was an Airbus 340-500 and definitely had wider seats. Some websites show that this plane has a smaller pitch of 32″, but I can say that it felt the same, if not longer. It also felt better when the person in front reclined their seat. On the whole it was much more comfortable, so much so that I didn’t feel that the flight was really 6 hours longer than the first.
The seat-back entertainment system was a definite hit with Samantha -She was as good as gold through both flights, even though she didn’t get as much sleep as we would have liked.
The system only suffered from the problem that, if you’re tall, and the seat in front is reclined, the LCD becomes only partially visible.
As for the airports, Heathrow was as busy as you would expect for a Friday evening, . plus the first day of school holidays. Dubai was a straight-forward international airport . Busy. but coping, and fairly relaxed. When we left at 10 am, it was starting to get warm out on the tarmac.
Melbourne airport was surprisingly well-staffed for 6 A.M. on a Sunday morning. And they still let us in!
Arrived Ok
Just to let you know that we’re here – arrived all present & correct.
Samantha’s been very excited, and seems to be handling jet-lag well.
I’m not sure that e-mail is working right now, nor is Mike’s phone. Call Ann’s if needed…
I’ll update you if/when things change!
Shopping to do now, then off to Aussie rules football this evening!
love to all
Emirates Online Checkin
The day of departure… so it was up early to use the online check-in. 12 hours before the flight leaves.
And do you know what? For the first flight, we had a good choice – well, 2 different sets of 3 together, so we chose the one’s by the window.
For the second flight – still 22 hours away remember – the system gave us 3 seats with 2 on one side of the aisle, and one on the other. There were no other seats together at all. How did they get all those people on before us?
That done, it was time to pack.
01-First post using PDA
Copy of original post…
Just set up Sharp MT, which is a Pocket – PC program for writing blogs on the move…
