In KLM We Trust

It was a restless night, wondering what the day would bring.

What it brought, after we had changed into our emergency clothes, was a buffet breakfast complete with a robot that took all the plates back to the kitchen. Sorry, no pictures.

I guess this was one perk from our unscheduled stop.

As long as everything ran to time, there would be no problems. We would arrive in Rome at 11:45, meet Badea, our driver, at 12 and be on the boat around 1ish.

I was sceptical.

Shuttle bus to the airport: on time . 

Message from KLM: flight delayed 6 minutes, then 11 minutes. Hopefully no later. Eventually we got on board, and left around 25 minutes late. Somewhere between the dodgy tasting cheese sandwich and touchdown we arrived at 11:45. Back on time.

To the luggage carousel we went to wait. You get the impression in Italy that nothing is urgent as dribs and drabs of bags came out. The only saving grace was the large number of people still waiting for luggage showed that we were not alone in our eternal wait in the eternal city. We kept our driver informed: no problems.

One hour later we were reunited with our bags. 

I've always wondered who the people are that have drivers waiting with their names showing on a card. Today that was us. I would have loved to have seen the name of O'Brien on one, but choose not to be a neo-Nazi (2 Seinfeld references in 1).

After a short walk we hopped in the van and ended up in Civitavecchia as previously scheduled. Getting dropped off right at the ship did help with the dissonance of the cost.

The buffet was open and we hopped right in to the family tradition of leaving no plate unturned.

The afternoon seemed like a good time to start the new running program so I did my 9 minute test run. 

Buffet dinner and then time for a well earned sleep, when the cabin crew decided to knock on our door and then let themselves in with me pantless about a metre from the door. I managed to make it the 30cm I needed to reach the bathroom. Unfortunately in my haste I did manage to kick the step.

Rome if you want to

Unfortunately KLM didn't want to get us to Rome. Bordeaux to Amsterdam, no problems, then halfway through her extremely overpriced bacon wrap, the Editor received an email.

Flight cancelled. They had put us on a flight to go to Rome via Paris, arriving 11:45pm (we had just come from France).

We had previously changed our original flight, which was going to arrive at 11pm  so that we could arrive several hours earlier, and paid for the pleasure. So, no KLM, we aren't paying extra to get in even later and have to pay extra to get to our new accommodation.

We walked and walked trying to find someone who could help us. Eventually we found the KLM Lounge who pointed us in the right direction.

We explained our situation to the trainee KLM assistant, who offered us business class seats but still on the same late night flight. We finally were able to rebook a flight at 9:30am next morning with the promise of free accommodation.

Next we got a ticket and waited our turn to get our free hotel for the night. They said we could apply for a refund of our extra payment.

(I am writing this the next day while listening to 25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago. At the moment they said "pay" I was writing "pay" as in "payment". Oooh. Just as I picked the 2 Arsenal players who would miss penalties in the ECL final and somehow knew there would be a flight problem, I feel my psychic powers growing. I just wish I knew where our luggage that we haven't seen for 25 hours is).

Back to yesterday. We took our vouchers, found our free hotel shuttle stop by just walking out of the building without going through any immigration (Europe is weird), got to the hotel and waited for free dinner.

We cancelled our non-refundable hotel in Rome, went for a walk to the hotel gym, thus missing the end of the partly watched John Wayne movie The Searchers, and then got ourselves some free toothbrushes for today, tomorrow and hopefully never again.

Annette went and had a sauna and then I had the vegan curry for dinner. It was so much better than the plane sandwich of pesto cheese earlier. 

We did a short walk after dinner so at least we got some pics of our fun day.

Next problem. We still have to get to Civitavecchia, the port in Rome where the cruise leaves from tomorrow.

We have booked (yet to be confirmed) a car at about Aud$250 because we are beyond taking chances.

Gee I hope our luggage arrives with us.

Swimming day

Emma goes swimming on Saturdays and went in the pool with Annette and Claire whilst I got to push her down the mini slide. Sorry but no photos. 

We got to feed her after the swim and the combination of the pumpkin and duck seemed to end up on me quite a lot, especially when a sip of water and a human raspberry quickly followed. 

From there it was a 15 minute drive to the shops, with my task to keep Emma awake for the drive. Mission accomplished. 

At the shops we lunched first, then I headed off to buy some shirts while the others sought groceries.

Unfortunately whilst I looked for clothes, the Editor decided not to buy me frozen snails.

While wearing the new thongs I had purchased when my old ones started cutting my foot, I went searching for a Decathlon store, only to start a cut on my other foot. I limped back to the car and we drove to Decathlon and I got the shorts I needed/wanted/didn't need but got anyway.

The arvo was spent packing for our upcoming cruise and making sure not to wake up Winston the cat in the process (who was relaxing on our bed).

Boy George For A Day

A nice and easy start to the day for some. Claire had taken Jeremy to the airport at stupid o'clock. Let's say 4 to 5ish, so when Emma announced to the World that it was breakfast time, Nanny Editor sprang into action to give Claire a bit more sleep after her taxi run.

She collected Emma, changed a nappy and then gave Emma some food (I was sleeping so she will fill in the gaps here). She read the instructions on the milk formula tin and prepared Emma's favourite. Unfortunately the instructions were lost in translation. Any future job applications as a bartender will be able to say "ability to water down drinks". One scoop of formula instead of 7 were administered and Emma hoped that Mum would wake up soon to fix the current crisis. She did.

At 9, while Claire had an hour of work to do, we headed out on a mission de pram, to put Emma to sleep. Instead of the walk, I could have just told her my greatest sporting stories.

Mission accomplished, it was back home for lunch before heading off for my once a holiday effort to maintain my level 1 Culture Club tier.

Through the unseasonable heat we walked to the tram stop, making a mental note to take a photo when we returned of the rocks in a cage that have me confused.

3 stops later we walked to an old concrete looking warehouse type building. It was in fact an old Nazi submarine facility. (Bassins des Lumiéres)

Inside there were animated video exhibits of two artists all over the walls and ceiling with music playing, one by a guy (Henri Matisse) and one by the girl who apparently features on the Editor's pyjamas (Frida Kahlo). It was pretty good. This is the highest accolade I can give to any type of art.

Finished with the exhibit, we somehow found the toilets where the 2 in 1 tap and hand dryer blew my mind (the highest accolade I can give to a public toilet innovation).

We headed back in the heat via the French equivalent of the $2 shop as well as an Aldi, then a tram and walk back home.

On the way back I remembered the photo.

We did it!

That's right. The heat bubble over Europe got us to a record temperature for this time of the year. It's so hot, as they say in France, that an old lady will put a shopping bag on her head.

Well she did, and I tried to take a sneaky no look picture, but only got one of her with bag in hand. Look, I'm a writer, not a photographer so I get an A for effort.

We walked through the city, went into some interesting shops, saw the sights and wondered why most of the food market was closed at lunchtime.

I saw a fountain that I said was so ugly that it didn't deserve to be photographed. And it wasn't until later that I decided I had to take a photo so that I could show you. So I got myself into one of those loop situations where I didn't but had to and shouldn't have but needed to times infinity (if anyone understands this, please explain it to me).

I want my fountains to ask questions like "are the serpents turning into horses or vice versa?".

Ever since I gave up cigarettes (I never actually took up cigarettes but the whole paragraph will sound heaps better if I start the sentence this way), I sometimes wake up with a craving for a good smoke. Luckily, in France, all you need to do to satisfy that craving is walk past a couple of cafes, past any open windows of a house or pretty much most places where two people are talking, in order to get enough second hand smoke for a year.

When was the cold war? When did the Berlin wall come down? When was the Korean war? These were the questions we were asked by senior school students as we sat in the park eating our quiche and poulet burger (two French words in the one post). They were studying for an exam in the afternoon so thought that the answers of two older Australians would be better than looking in a book.

Back home at 3 and got to play with Emma for a couple of hours while Claire and Jeremy worked.

We even got to change a nappy and can confirm that the green mixture she ate earlier, did indeed stay green and turned into a rock-like formation in her nappy.

I made chips for dinner (or is that French Fries?) and it seems as though any oven problems have been solved.

I'm going to try on my new pants (purchased from Bordeaux Decathlon). They may make an appearance later in the holiday blog.

Another Edinburgh?

I'm sure you all remember when the Editor, me and Jeremy went to Scotland and they recorded the highest temperature ever. I ran 10km with Jeremy that day to the beach and back. We've only just got over the sight of those British bodies on the beach.

The last few days, the weather forecast has been predicting 'near record' temperatures.

What should we do today? Let's go on a 8km hike. To be fair, a lot of it was through a forest so it was a bit cooler.

There was a lake and a toilet halfway and we were allowed to go to Maccas after so there can't be too many complaints.

We went to a shop called Auchan. It was massive in its enormousness.

While most people would have headed to the wine aisle (or perhaps in France somewhere a little classier), we headed straight for the cordial aisle. We took home heaps last time and we're going close to our baggage limit again. "Anything to declare?" they will say, with us replying that we are addicted to sucre. How goodly is my French coming on?

Anyway, the ingredients for lasagne were purchased to satisfy Jeremy’s longing for Mum's cooking only for the oven "to be funny".

On a positive note, the lower layers were good and Colorbond are very interested in the top layer for roofing.

We played a game called Codeword where mother and son cheated their way to victory and called it a night.

I trained for this

Luckily there was lots of climbing last week as today, in the process of playing 18 holes of golf, 264m were climbed. Yes it was hilly. Yes it was tight. Yes I putted many greens. Yes I scored 100 for the first time in maybe 50 years. But we had fun and Jeremy only lost 3 balls whilst my Srixon lasted the entirety.

4 and a half hours. If you're ever in Bordeaux and fancy a game about an hour out of town, this is the course.

The electric fences that surrounded most holes sure speed up play by stopping you looking for your ball for too long.

Of course after golf, French Maccas is a must. My 5 euro value meal of fries, strawberry shake, double chicken burger and Coke cost 5 euros and 9 cents. I chose to pay the sugar tax. Jeremy's dessert was a chocolate sundae and was the smallest dessert I've ever seen.

The drinks and desserts were all in reusable cups which is a great idea but would probably fail in Australia. Oh, we ate in.

From there we strolled to Aldi for a fake Coke (hit with a sugar tax again) and also went looking for Munchers (chocolate covered peanuts in Australia and in France they are called chocolate peanuts).

The editor did her own thing today and may or may not let you know what that was.

[Annette's day: I caught the tram into the city to check out the antique, fabric and other interesting shops. 

I didn't buy anything but it was nice to browse. Some beautiful fabric but out of my price range. However looking at the lovely French clothes and fabrics has encouraged me to up my game and not dress like a slob in retirement! Unfortunately the art galleries are closed on Tuesdays so that will be for another day. 

I saw a woman on a bicycle with a trailer, which was a mobile tattoo studio.

I had a nice lunch at French House before going to a lovely spa (Caudalie) for a body scrub and massage (a Christmas present from Claire and Jeremy), a fabulous experience.]

I hung clothes on the line, went to the creche to pick up Emma, ate Annette's curry that Jeremy craves and then, in what can only be called a massive upset, managed to win a game of Scrabble after my brief retirement.

Luckily I've been stretching my stomach in preparation for the cruise next week.