Australia Day!

26th of January - AUSTRALIA DAY

Australia day, everybody goes out, barbeque, picnics, beach,concerts,flags flags and more flags. Dad and I went up to the Harbour Bridge to see the boats ferry race on the BAY and took a few pictures. We later headed through the Rocks as a few bands were playing, got some free water and later had a hot dog at Hyde Park. We even saw the Qantas A380 flying around!! My dad got all excited and bought a flag which we walked around with and I was given some small plastic flags and tatoos with the Australian flag that I put on my arms and face :) All this took us almost 6 hours. Exhausted we came home. Later at around 7pm we headed to Darling Harbour to see the night and fireworks show!! Now just have to wait for 26th of January 2012 for the next Australia Day!

STOP!! Kangaroo on the Road!

I had not taken the car in about 5 years.... I decided to drive around 150 Kilometers...and in 7 occasions I had Kangaroos jump infront of the car! Luckily I was alert and on the watch for animals, so I was able to stop on time. My dad taped this as I drove.

You have to be extra carefull around 6-8am and between 6-8pm when the sun rises and the sun sets as kangaroos jump onto the road. During the day they are resting under the trees. We found a lot of dead Kangaroos by the road. Kangaroos dont always follow a straight path, and therefore you are adviced to keep driving straight as most accidents caused by kangaroos crossing the road are car frontal crashes. When you rent a car, some companies do not insure your car if you are driving at dawn in areas in which it is known kangaroos tend to be.

Hurray!! I’m sitting in the airplane direction Adelaide with my dad’s work laptop and typing this! Whenever I get some proper internet connection I will post it.Unlike during some other trips like the Northern Australia in 2009, this time I’m trying to record what goes on. Let’s face it, having a laptop also facilitates the task; pen and paper are becoming at fast pace too old fashion. No way to go back and delete or reededit and the worst, not possible to write what I’m thinking at a proper speed.

We are flying with Jet Star a low cost Australian airline. Jetstar and Virgin Blue are the Australian “vuelings/easyjets”. Im not too happy about being in a plane AGAIN, this is also my dads fifth plane of the week as he has had to fly to Melbourne a couple times this week for work and he isn’t too excited either. My travel sox helped a lot in my Barcelona to Sydney flight, and I arrived with minimal leg pain, but now I just want to arrive to Adelaide!!!

Something that I like to do at airports, whether I’m leaving myself or going to pick someone up is stare at the list of departing flights. Obviously the list changes radically depending on where in the world you are. So these are the flights that were leaving this morning from the domestic terminal of Sydney Airport. Ironically, if you fly domestic you can be taking a flight that is up to 5 hours, this is way longer than a Barcelona-Moscow flight! This obviously implies various time changes. Now flying to Adelaide, a “short flight” of only 1h45 minutes…so in other words as long as my Barcelona-London flight! There is also a zone change of 30 minutes between Adelaide and Sydney.

A rather strange thing in the airport is that we did the check in, went to baggage drop, passed the security check, got on the plane and nobody checked our ids. This has happened to me every time I take a domestic flight in this country. They never check that you are the person whose name is on the boarding ticket, somehow surreal in particular after all the security alarms there have been in the past years.Another thing that I really like to do in a foreign country is go to a local supermarket and stare at their products. I went to one yesterday and took a couple pics of products that I have not seen in Barcelona. I’m able to point out products which I would clearly not find in a local supermarket in Spain, but it’s hard for me to list what there is in Spain that is not here. I suppose Jamon Serrano would be one of the things. Due to the amount of mixed cultures that there is in the city the supermarket had a wide variety of Asian (from Japanese to Pakistani) food . Something which is found in the USA but also hard to find in Spain was Salad Dressings. In Spain and Italy we are way too used to using oil, vinegar salt and pepper for our salads , while here you can find any kind of salad dressing imaginable

Finally in Sydney!

5 pounds went for a set of sushi. Clearly not worth 5 pounds, but the best way to spend exactly those 5 without getting back change. Sat down ate it, ate tons of mandarins and walked around. Sat down again and kept staring at the screen for my gate to be announced. There were 4 different flights to Sydney! Mine via Bangkok, a Qantas one also leaving same time also via Bangkok, one via Singapore and one via Hong Kong. Seriously it is hard for me to understand why so many people would be traveling to Australia. The flight was packed. So think about it 4 747 flying to Australia via south east asia. That is around 400 persons per plane = 1600 persons…and those were only the flights leaving from my terminal, there also Lufthansa, Emirates, and other airlines heading to Australia. Id like to know the story behind all these people moving up and down the globe. . .

The wait in Heathrow became long, and it included a kid spitting on me. At the end, fed up of the child, his dipper smell which was getting mixed with the smell of fried food his dad got and his attempt to spit on me again I stood up and finally the gate was announced, gate 42, the furthest possible gate in the terminal. I remembered it when I saw it, I had been there before. So we got on the plane. Had a girl next to me which was good, she was quite didn’t seem to want to talk too much and wasn’t taking up any of my space. I luckily had an aisle sit so I stood up and down quite a few times. Got offered some chicken with coconout and lime which was delicious and I ate quite a few mandarins. I dosed on and off during the entire flight, which made it go pretty quick. We went through Turkmenistan, Delhi, Varanasi, Myanmar and finally we made it to Bangkok. Spend my time watching a couple few films, start the book and got a bit drunk with some Bacardi coke. I ordered one and they gave me two…so yeah J I saw they had music so I tried to listen to it, but it was mainly crap. I saw they had “sleeping songs for adults and kids” so I put that on and this song started … “twinkle twinkle little star…” I couldn’t believe it! I stopped and moved on…in the search of some proper music. I did not find the entertainment system of BA particularly good, but it kept me bussy for a while. The BA crew gave us the welcome on board by letting us know that they would leave in Bangkok and a new crew would join then, but that crew was not at as good looking as the one flying to Bangkok. Haha.

The airport in Bangkok is very new but its so big that its very exhausting to have to do a stop over there. They made us get off the plane so they could clean it, but what we had to do, as always is walk for about 20 minutes, pass a security check, walk another 20 minutes pass another security check and finally show our passports again and board. Each security check of course with its own queues… just never ending. I saw that at least in this airport you could get free internet. Only 15 minutes and you had to register your passport number and nationality but that was good. Finally was able to connect my laptop to let people know where I was…and then I boarded again… the plane ran and ran and ran through the runway and up we were again. 9 more hours of flight ahead…

The girls sitting next to me got off at Bangkok and this fat, smelly guy sat next to me for this part of the flight I did everything possible not to talk to him. He kept trying to chat and I seriously stopped myself. He was or seemed drunk and kept ordering beers…and his smell.. bleh :S I watched a film and we were still over Indonesia… I read a book and we were still not in Australia… Finally we reached northern Australia…but we still had 4 hours to go to Sydney. It seemed never ending. They gave me chicken again but it wasn’t that great so I finished up all my mandarins and finished the other half of my jamon baguette, which gave another opportunity for the drunk fat guy to talk to me. He was jealous of my sandwich, who wouldn’t have ;-)

I filled in the immigration form…they sprayed the cabin to prevent any pest of entering Australia...

We approached…

Finally the 20 minute to landing announcement

Finally 44 kilometers away from Sydney “ Crew take your sits for landing”

And finally …. Touchdown!

Grabbed my luggage which seemed to never come out, went through quarantine check and took a taxi “home”. I didn’t really know where my parents live since they have changed apartment twice since I last came here.

Finally homeeeeeeeeeeeee, woman in black was home!!!

A bit exhausted…but it was time for a shower and to go for a walk J Australia, its sunny, its warm and it feels great. There is such tranquility. I don’t know the neighborhood around although my parents live very near the center…so we went for a short walk with my mom around the area…ah … I love it!! Sydney seems to me like an American city, but there is this relaxed atmosphere to it. It’s hard to describe it, but I’ll do my best in the coming up posts.

Im taking a plane tomorrow again…. To Adelaide!

In London with No Internet! :(

This is really annoying, at a Hub like Heathrow and without internet. In Singapore you walk out of the plane and you have free internet, even if its s standing stations its available. But no, in terminal 3 of Heathrow there are huge signs saying WIFI and when you turn on your computer you are directed to a website where you have to pay. Is this the future life we face? Is this modern? Is this user friendly? This is crap! This is a monopoly. So I guess you only get internet if you got to a VIP lounge, which I cant go because I’m no longer a silver member (was only for a few month back in the time…) and I’m not traveling with my dad either. So here I am, bored and pissed off. I have 5 hour wait and I would have much prefer chatting to someone than being stuck in this carpeted KFC smelling room, with people moving up and down and kids crying. I’m not happy, and I’m tiered.

I realized I left my bb charger at home. Last night I packed it but I took it out again this morning to reacharge my phone. Since I don’t have much battery left I decided to turn off my phone (so no music either L ) because I must call my mom upon arrival in Australia so she comes to pick me up at the door of the building to pay the cab (no aussie dollars with me…) .

The day has been hectic. I woke up at 9.30 (OH YEAH!) and the first thing that came to mind was “hahahaha everyone is in the office…I imagine my department and ppl shouting around… and thought this was just wonderful I was under my covers with no need to go to the office”.I stood up and I literality didn’t stop running until 13.15 time at which me, woman in black, left the house. I had to sort out quite some stuff, had long chats with Lufthansa and Singapore to try and book with miles my flights to attend Dina’s Wedding, but was unsuccessful at it, called a few friends, made sure I said bye to grandma!! (done!) and then I went for a walk in town to finalize some things that I never have time to do. I’m so not used to walking in Sant Cugat during normal walking hours Monday to Friday. Oh man, how snobbish that place is. At a point I found myself staring at a woman with a discuss face. I was simply thinking “Seriously?” I mean, are there really so many snobbish people in this planet?

Once all was sorted I also stopped at the supermarket to buy a bunch of mandarins, jamon, bread and tomato to make a good huge pa amb tomaquet sandwich for my lunch. I knew id be getting no proper food until my departure from London. Indeed, I got some crap crackers on my flight from BCN- London, at least managed to have two orange juices! J I have a bunch of mandarins with me which I must eat between now and arrival time in Sydney as it is forbidden to take out of the plane and enter into the country any type of fruit or vegetable, among other things. You are thinking ”whatever?” Well controls are strict and they would catch me anyways. Gona eat them all within the next 28 hours.

So one of the random things about Barcelona Airport, is and I would have put my hand on fire that before at El Prat they used to announced the departure of flights. However now, there is simply a sign that says “proceed to gate that has been announced by your airline, you will not be called” and indeed there were no announcements. As I was flying outside of the “EU” I had to pass passport control and it clearly said “this is a point of no return”. The policemen said “are you sure you want to go through, there is no going back, there is no shopping in here only a McDonalds and 1 duty free shop”. I looked at him and said “SURE”… point of no return, there were signs everywhere NO RETURN BEYOND THIS POINT. The situation was just funny. Headed to McDonalds got myself a McFlurry, atehalf of my sandwich (which is huge…) ate a few mandarins, checked the duty free , ordered a cortado and headed to boarding gate. Here is a positive point about El Prat you can have a croissant and a coffee for a normal price. It’s a bit more expensive than in the city but not much more, and that I very much appreciate, that is why I had a cortado while enjoying a British woman try and order a “British tea” “we have early grey” “No! That isn’t British” “we have..” “No, that isn’t British””we have” “argh, whatever just give me that tea”. Hilarious.

Where I sat for more than 20 hours...

Again, no internet in El Prat either!! At least the area where I was (the D gates) I saw no WIFI signs. This is seriously crap. So much for the amazing rating of certain airlines and airports online…internet services at Heathrow and El Prat sux! And you better not be thinking I’m exaggerating because I’m sure quite a few people would enjoy talking to me right now as I would do myself! Ahhh!

Moving on… as we approached London the first thing that came to mind was “Oh Rigutto is here…” by the touchdown time it was pitch dark, I saw the cars on the other side of the road, everything is carpeted and there are Harrods signs. Im in the UK. I love the fact that there is a WHS Bookshop. Got myself two books as they had a get 1 get second half price. I didn’t take a book with me and really wanted to buy a specific one but….they didn’t have it L So now I have some reading for the plane. This is something I like about airports like Changi,Heathrow or Schipol… a wide range of English books available!! Although according to my opinion Schipol tends to have the best selection of books! I bought the books with Euros, so I got change in Pounds. I decided to go spend the 1 pound 63 pennies and as I was at the shop I saw another guy looking at prices of coke fanta and counting coins, looking at price of water and counting coins. It should have been taped, both of us trying to get rid of our pounds and optimize the best usage of them. I got myself a waterbotle which said 1.60 and then as I went to buy it the woman said “if you get the paper with it its only 1 pound” I thought she meant I had to pay 1 pound for the paper and I said “no thanks” but she insisted. The water was only 1 pound plus I got a free paper. Just strange!

Miquel before leaving gave me 5 pounds he had! J So in the coming hours I will decide on what I spend them. He said I should go for a starbucks which I have in front of me, I most probably will. I feel tiered, which makes me hope that I will get some sleep in the plane. If I fall asleep by the time we are flying over India ill be happy!! (I never truly fall asleep before that… if I do). However my legs are already hurting, and generally the pain is a major reason why I don’t fall asleep. Exhaustion kills me eventually and I fall asleep a few hours before touch down.

I’m sitting in a terminal in Heathrow I’ve never truly been to. Actually the security area I am quite convinced I have been to, it rang a bell, but this waiting area really doesn’t. I’m a bit deceived, I thought all BA flights would be leaving from the new terminal 5, and I had been hoping to go there. However departure is from this old terminal 3. Not truly sure why I’m here, there is a PIA flight leaving for Islamabad, one from Emirates, a couple to Barcelona, Hong Kong and others. Not sure why my BA flight is also leaving from this terminal. Here I am, and I truly feel in a hub, people don’t stop running up and down. People watching is interesting, quite a few pakis, which makes me think someday ill have to fly there and makes me really think Irum should be here L. Its clear this are long haul flights, most of the people are dressed properly for flying. I mean sneakers, loose clothing, etc. . . when I was in BCN it was so full of business men flying to London , when we landed, I was the only one walking to “Connecting Flights” the rest all went to “Baggage Claim”. I suppose that the business men that are gona be on my flght are all in the VIP lounge.. darn!

Multiple flights to Sydney!!

Gona go spend my 5 pounds!

(im in transit in Thailand currently, i have applied for 15 minutes of free internet and its taken me 20 minutes to log in, finally its working! gona send this and get on my plane again!! im in ASIAAAAAAA :):):) still half way to get home! :(

My beautiful 747-400!!

How to Survive

Yes! I have tricks to travel with the least pain possible.I can not sit too long in flights, my legs swell a lot.

Tip 1 To cure it I used to walk up and down the aisle. In fact I have just changed my seat to make sure I am sitting in the aisle and do not disturb anyone by standing up every hour. However even walking,drinking liquids after 8 hours im exhausted and in great pain. How then to survive 32 hours? The travel socks are one of my secrets. These socks help in blood circulation and therefore make your legs swell and hurt less. They prevent deep blood thrombosis which is rare but happends when people take long flights.



Tip 2 are natural tranquilizers like Valeriana. I have recently gotten on these ones, but it helps me sleep a bit, be less anxious and specially if the pilot sais it is predicted to fly over a turbulence zone over X country I take one.
Tip 3 learned from Miquel a rhum and coke or two will get you sleeping in no time.
Tip 4 take a night flight to properly sleep.
Tip 5 travel with someone you can lean over, put your legs over them etc. If not, take a pillow with you and hope for the best.

The truth is that if you are not traveling Business or First class, a 32 hour trip can be physically painful. Space between seats are not any bigger than in a normal 1 hour European trip. The only difference, the plane is wider so you have 3 seats, aisle, 4 seats,aisle and 3 seats again.

These are the seats in the new A380 in economy class of Qantas. As you see, this is anything from luxurious. What I feel has made travel more enjoyable and less painful is the entertainment system that planes have adopted in which even in economy you have your own tv with movies,games,shows and news to watch. This to me has been the best change to keep your mind bussy. Also, its hard to believe it, but when I was younger people would smoke on planes! Still sounds surreal to me!

24h for Departure!!

Skype Tijd!Dank je wel!

Whoever saw me this morning walking in Barcelona must have thought I was a total dumbass. My smile couldn't have been bigger as I crossed Rambla Catalunya and strolled down seeing the sun rise while my fingers danced to the rythm of the song that was playing on my phone. The first email I saw this morning at work stated "Gisela, don't bother sending us an email. We know it. YOU ARE GOING ON HOLIDAYS.Bitch". I knew it, last day of work and then 3 weeks of holidays!!!! Its ironic how happy I get now with 3 weeks of holidays when before I used to have never ending 3 months. In 2007 I spend 5 weeks in Australia as part of my around the world trip... and it flew by.These 3 weeks will simply run, but they exist, those 3 month holidays were the good times, something to look back and dream about.

This morning so many people seemed, irritated,tiered,bored and following their routine... but I had something to hope. Australia, Summer,Family. After 9 months its finally time for departure!!! It still sounds surreal to me and I know that I will only trully know Im there when I hear the magic words "ladies and gentlemen welcome to Sydney, were local time is 5 am. Please keep your seatbelt fasten until the plane has come to a complete stop. We thank you for flying British Airways and hope to see you onboard again soon." A sign that I will have survived a 32 hours trip.

I always have to hear the same repetitive speech from people: "you have traveled so much""you have seen the entire world""you cant get nervous". There is so much to see and discover that the words "so much" "the entire" are in my opinion completely out of place. I surely have traveled widely, part due to life circumstances but also and mainly to my interest and eagerness to do so.The magic about each trip is that even if you go to the same destination you were before, despite going to the town next to yours, you get to experience and see things that are completely different from eachother each time. The people you go have a great influence on what you live. Any opportunity to get out of our daily routine is a reason to get me nervous and excited. Today, I recieved an email when I had exactly 24hours until departure " less than a day before you start flying, We are looking forward to welcoming you onboard flight XXXX from Barcelona Terminal 1 on 19 January 2011". I dont like it when airlines remind you of flights, specially when its a return flight. However this mail put a big smile on my face..... and then:

5.00 Out of office message in the Office. Back on the 9th!
7.00 Grandmas Goodbye. Sweet
9.30 Skype ;-). Thanks.
9.50 Check in Online - Seat Selection
10.00 Booking Flights for Morrocco. Happy!
10.15 Gmail Chat. last detail plannings
11.15. Should maybe consider having dinner?
11.30 Tagging luggage
11.50 Hand luggage.
00.00 Should I have dinner?
00.01 Change alarm clock to make sure I dont wake up at 06.30 tommorrow
00.02 Take out work badge, leave it on the table. Not to be touched in weeks!
00.30 Clean the stair case of the house
00.42 Take out dishwasher
00.45 Should I have dinner? No, only some milk and cookies.
01.00 Clean part 1 of Kitchen.
01.15 Now. . . sleep? Dont feel tiered at all.

Strange. Grandma hasnt called today. Must do it myself tommorrow.

Padres no podemos tener más que una vez; se promete demasiado el que entra en la vida con la esperanza de hallar muchos amigos.

Samuel Johnson

Too much excitment

Despite the queensland floods and my clear exhaustion yesturday the nerves bout holidays kicked in. I was moving from right to left last nite in my bed, staring at the celing of my room, moving my pillow around.

No way to fall asleep, thinking bout the ba security video w the kid and a teddy bear, long live the king in bangkok airport,Manly,ferries,Bondy,fish market@sydney,lindt shop,australia day,fraser,kangaroo island,adelaide,security check at kingsforth,darling hatrbour,aussie accent,aussie flags,summer,holidays! And the WELCOME TO SYDNEY sign!!!!The day for departure is almost here. sleepinhg issues are starting. Im excited like a small kid and still have to wait 6 days for departure.

7 days to Australia - Queensland Flooded

Anything but excited about the current situation in Queensland, particularly the water raising in Brisbane. Seems like its geting from the outback into the city.

So much for day dreaming about Fraser Island, Noosa and Rainbow beach during my previous trips to Sydney. I now see how the waters are raising and electricity is being shut in the city to avoid electrocutions. So far my flights to Brisbane are booked but I've decided to wait for the bookings of my trip/hostel to Fraser. We will evaluate the situation later in the week and figure out what we do.

This reminds me a bit of the big /disaster that we lived on August 12th 2002 in Prague and eastern Europe when an unprecedented flood wave left parts of the city such as touristy Mala Strana underwater. Not to say waters rose quickly, aftermath was tremendous, borders closed and Prague had to go through a lot of renovation with no metro working for a while etc. However, once the water came down tourism was still functioning, so I think we will be fine. Fingers crossed.

So this should be the title of my post!

And here comes the body of my post! This is great,i think iyt works!magnificent!! It is has simple has writing any email and sending it to go@ blogger.com and it immediately gets posted online. So say im crossing a street in vietnam, i can write SoS im about to geyt smashed by a motorbike,send it and you will all know about it!!

Great.So testing is done. How about if i email a picture? I should try that has well!okay,picture attached! We will check!

Testing the Phone Blogging

So i think i made it.lets see if this gets published, if it does it means i can blog from my phone. Which is just great!! It will save me time and also allow mw to blog from my mail during my travels!

phone test im trying to blog from my phone which clearly isnt working out! :(

13 days till Departure

Time is here. Holidays Again. After 21 months heading back to Australia. This time the flight is BCN-SYDNEY via London and Bangkok. Ill take this opportunity to visit two places that I have long wanted to see, Kangaroo Island (via Adelaide) and Fraser Island (via Sunshine Coast and Brisbane). Hope to keep you updated through the blog.

“¿Por qué la gente se empeña en buscar otras salidas cuando la puerta está abierta?”
Confucio