Well, the sickies finally made it to Chris' and Kelly's. We got picked up by taxi (driver - Attila!) at 2:30 pm on Tuesday with further snow threatening. The roads were passable and our driver was canny so no issues and we arrived at the airport in good time for our connection to Heathrow, which, thankfully, wasn't running too late - unlike a number of other services from Aberdeen.
Plenty of time at London too and again the plane was only a little late in departing for Sydney via Singapore. We had been a little confused as we only had one boarding pass each, which said LHR-SYD with no mention of Singapore. Were we going to stop there? If so, do we stay on the plane or get off for a bit? The answer was the latter - we had approximately 90 minutes stop at Singapore - barely enough time to make it to the lounge and back in time to go through another security check.
It was the same plane, same seats - but we'd had to remove our stuff so that it could be cleaned. We survived the second long flight, despite the ever-changing times - was our next meal supper or breakfast? Should I really have a gin and tonic with my breakfast cereal?
We got to Sydney in very good time and were lucky enough to get through passport control, immigration and baggage collection quickly. So quickly, in fact, that we could have caught a much earlier domestic flight to Adelaide than our scheduled 11:10 am departure. It meant a further 3 + hours wait in the airport (no lounge access now!) but we got through that ok and Kelly met us at Adelaide and drove us home to Old Noarlunga. It was now Thursday afternoon - almost exactly 2 full days on the clock since we left Banchory - albeit we were now ten and a half hours ahead.
We both felt not too bad at this point, despite the long journey and our lingering bugs. We slept pretty well in our newly created room in the outhouse next to the pool - call it our isolation ward - but felt a bit rough on Friday. Thankfully, we had no plans to do anything exciting then anyway, but we did manage lunch with Kelly, Miller and Asher at the local Sushi Train franchise.
On Saturday, Jo was still struggling with her cough and I seemed to be going backwards - I now had a sore throat and had lost my voice. Chris and I did manage the very short walk to the main road through the village to watch the Tour Down Under whizz by - but that didn't take very long at all. Here I am watching the start of the peleton go by (red shorts and light top):
The boys were in the pool - again. Kelly and Chris supervising:
We went to pick up beer and throat medication later on and that was that.
Jo had a bad night but I felt a good deal better on Sunday. I sat on the lounger in the morning and took in some rays while watching the boys in the pool. Here's a reflective view:
We all travelled over to Aldgate in the afternoon to view the piece of land that Chris and Kelly had bought to build their new house, but the boys had to be bribed so we paid a return visit to Melba's Chocolate Factory first of all:
We skipped the adjacent cheese factory and headed over to Aldgate to picnic on the bare land, now owned by Chris and Kelly:
Sunday evening now and it's back to work tomorrow for Chris - and Kelly too, although she mostly works from home. It's the final week of the boys' summer holidays coming up - it's back to school for them in just over a week's time.
