Category: Travel

Today we got up earlyish and had a big cooked breakfast at the Hotel, then
we hit the road, first back to Denerau Island to look at the other hotels
and the port. Then made our way towards Suva, stopping at resorts and
roadside mango stalls. I just ate what was perhaps the most delicious mango
Ive ever eaten, that we bought on the way.
We got to Suva about 6pm, and then got some food to take to Jane who was in
the middle of her double shift at the hospital.
I then checked into the Pennisula hotel, and relaxed. Im not sure what the
plan is for tomorrow, I left an email for one of the Chris’s at USP, but if
i dont hear anything by about 9, ill head into the USP and see if I can find
them.

The do it yourself airline.
So I rocked up this morning to check in for my flights to Auckland and then
to Nadi. I had the server with me, so I was over my luggage allowance by 5
kg. I didnt mind coughing up the $50 they got me to pay for excess luggage,
but the couple in front of me were 8 kgs over and didnt have to pay. Strike
1 against air nz. So I walked over to customer service to pay the money and
get a receipt. Then they made me walk back and pick up the box with the
server in it and carry it over to oversize baggage, even though once again
it was smaller than the suitcase of the dude who was in front of me. It
better bloody be in Nadi when I land is all I can say.

And it was, after picking it up and meeting Uncle Gordon, we went back to
the hotel he and Emily were staying in and I got changed. Then we headed up
the road to the wedding reception. After eating a tonne of good food and
listening to some speeches, we left and did a bit of sightseeing. Mainly at
the Sofitel hotel on Denerau Island, to see how the other half live.
Then it was back to our hotel and a fiji gold, some tv and bed.

So Ive just gotten back from my visit to France and Switzerland (for Koha
conferences and to visit with Daniela) and I didnt eat 1 single thing I
didnt like the entire time. I wasnt playing it safe either, I was trying
everything that came my way, so I was very impressed with the quality of the
food.

On the last day we had in Switzerland, we spent it in Luzern with Daniela’s
family seeing the sights. It was a fantastic day, we went out on the lake on
paddle steamer and to some of the I guess you would call them resort towns.
It was really beautiful, when Laurel gets back ill put up the photos.
We then had a fantastic dinner and with some sorrow (we didnt want to leave)
we caught the train back to Basel. After that we caught the overnight train
to Marseille, which was pretty cool actually, I managed to sleep the whole
way and the people in our carriage were nice even though we couldnt
communicate with each other.

The summary of the story is Switzerland is a lovely place, things are clean,
everything works and everything is on time. And the people are friendly and
helpful. Its a great place to visit, and if I were to choose somewhere else
to live it would be high on the list of possibilities

We had a fantastic time
in Switzerland, we arrived in Basel at around 3pm on Thursday and Daniela met us at the train station
We went to her house for a few hours, she has a really nice little apartment near to the town center and her university. We went from there to
her parents house (and her house still) in Luzern by the train.
We had a nice dinner then headed to bed, the next day we caught the train to
Zurich for a look around. We spent a good chunk of time in the art museum
there and watched some beach volleyball and then caught the train back to
Luzern.

The next day we headed off to Bern, which is a really really beautiful city.
We had a great day there walking around and visiting another art museum. We
went back to Luzern for the night and had a great dinner.

More to come.

So Russel and I left Wellington
at 6am on the 30th of April, NZ time. Which meant we had to be at the
airport by about 4am to check in. So we got to Australia at around 7.15am
NSW time. Now this is where things started to get tricky. Qantas delayed our
flight out to London, originally it was
leaving at 5pm which meant we could check our bags through all the way to
Paris. But they changed it to leaving at 8pm … which meant we couldnt so
we had to get our bags, clear customs and immigration and find somewhere to
store the bags. We found a storage place that only cost 2 kidneys and 1
right arm so that wasnt too bad, stored the bags, and headed out to meet a
client.
We had a very productive meeting and then headed in the central city
to kill some time before our flight. We headed back out to the airport only
to find Qantas had delayed the flight again. But they did give us a meal
voucher for $15 aus, and we had a fantastic meal at an asian noodle place.
Finally after a few more delays we boarded the plane and started on our
flight to Bangkok. The plane was completely full, but we got seat to a nice
and more importantly small german girl which meant I wasnt completely
squished in the middle. That was all good I think both of us got a
reasonable amount of sleep on that flight. Then at Bangkok Qantas for some
reason decided to move the german girl (Caroline) and replaced her with a
great big lardy english bastard, who didnt even acknowledge my hello. He
also broke the cardinal rule of economy class air travel which is, only one
armrest person, you cant take both. So he sat there unmoving except to jam
me in my side with his elbow every so often for the whole 14 hour flight
from Bangkok to London. Consequently I got far less sleep on that flight
than the other one.
After we landed at heathrow we taxied around on the runway for quite a while
until they offloaded us onto buses to take us to the terminal. We only had
about an hour there until our flight left for Paris, just enough time to buy
some water and find our gate.
Once we landed in Paris we spent a bunch of time walking around trying to
find where the train left to get us into town. Only to realise after about
15 minutes there was a map on the trolley we were pushing around. Once we
found the train and boarded it was all good. The RER and Metro in Paris are
fantastic, well sign posted with logical layouts and a simple ticketing
system.
So we made it safe and sound.

Well, it appears that while we were away the fan in my shuttle decided to
stop working so it overheated it shut itself down. Its up and running again,
with the case open and hopefully enough breeze to keep it from doing it again.

Since I last wrote on the blog, we have had xmas, visited Erie, I went to
Ohio, we flew out to LA, drove to Vegas and back, and then flew home.