Mind you, we didn't see much of the 23rd. I'm pretty sure it was the 23rd while we were in Dubai, but basically we got on the plane in London on 22 September and arrived in Sydney on the 24th.
The flight to Dubai isn't too bad - it's the short leg on this trip. And, there was a spare seat beside Paul, which always makes things a little more comfortable. We arrived in Dubai about 7:30am local time and had about 2 hours there. You need to take all your carry-on luggage off the plane here, even though you'll be getting back onto the same seat on the same plane - they say it's all about security. So, even though we're only transiting we still had to go through customs and security but it went pretty quickly. As we did on the way to England at the start of the holiday, we went straight to the Emirates business lounge and had a shower and changed some of our clothes so we didn't feel too bad for the start of the long flight to Sydney.
As I've said before, this flight seems to go on forever, although we again had the magic seat71D for the whole trip. There was no spare seat beside us this time. However, I simply kept looking at a nearby young couple to remind myself that I was really having a comfortable flight compared to some people. This couple had two small children with them, travelling on their parents' laps, and the mum was pregnant. I don't think I would ever have been brave enough to try that!
I didn't feel to bad when we arrived back in Sydney - tired, and in desperate need of a shower, but ok. We had about an hour until our bus came, and I have to say this bus trip was almost the most disappointing and upsetting part of the whole trip. We had thought about a few different options for getting home - driving, flying, bus, train - but leaving aside hiring a car which isn't necessarily a great thing after 30-odd hours of travel, the bus was actually going to get us home before any of the other options and was also the least expensive.
We've travelled between Sydney and Canberra quite a few times with Murray's and have never had a problem. This time though - wow. It started badly - the Sydney-Canberra bus starts at Central Railway station and then picks up passengers at the International Airport. Every time I have caught this bus from Sydney, they have sectioned off a set of seats for the international passengers so people travelling together from the airport at least have a vague chance of sitting together. Not this time though - when we got on the bus the Sydney Central passengers had spread themselves one to a seat across almost the entire bus - there was only ONE pair of seats available. So, I had to sit next to this young man who turned out to be quite nice but probably went home horrified at having to sit beside my sweaty smelly self.
Then, it turned out that the driver was a lunatic - once we got out onto the highway he was constantly hitting the brakes, giving the bus this horrible rocking motion that ended up with me being physically sick. I was very unhappy by the time we got into Canberra and I'm certainly going to reconsider our options in future - I've sent an eMail to the bus company asking them if this was a deliberate change to their seating policy because if so, it's a deal-breaker for me. I got a reply from them apologising profusely and confirming that the seats for the airport passengers should have been roped off and promising that they'll chase up why it didn't happen, so I guess we were just really unlucky.
So, now it's back to work next week and dreaming of the next holiday.....
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