Wednesday, 16 January 2008

On the home straight...


It has been nearly a week since my last posting (St Peter's almost made me want to convert...) . Almost all my (meager) online time has been spent trying to get home. Our agent in NZ has been doing battle on our behalf with both Lufthansa and Air NZ to get us back the seats that were cancelled by mistake. We had duplicate seats held by a nice Lufthansa agent in Nuremberg who was trying to help with a flight change (but actually couldn't from her end), which caused a bit of a system problem and our seats to disappear on our (now oversold) flight out of Shanghai. However, we will get home - still to be confirmed whether it will be via Tokyo or Shanghai. Flight Centre has fronted up with tickets Pusan-Tokyo in case we need them, so yay for that.

Anyway...not interesting, but has taken a lot of time and energy to sort out the options across the world and between time zones. Luckily the internet cafes in Rome were excellent, and even smoke free. That has been fantastic these last two weeks - hitting Paris on January 2nd, going to have dinner and realising all of a sudden that NO-ONE was smoking! We didn't have to rush through our dinner as everyone around us lit up as soon as they finished! Yay.

So. we had a lovely 5 days in Rome. We really did and saw a lot. Hen walked around 5 kms most days, fuelled by excellent pizza and gelato. Oh yes, and just a sip of the best coffee in Rome, at St Eustachio Cafe. Soooooooooooooo good, I reckon they may have a secret ingredient.

We saw so many cool things - when I have more time I will add more and links too. Our accommodation was wonderfl. A little out of Rome proper, but so peaceful and lovely friendly people. Self-catering is so much easier with little people too, evening s at home. We were sad to leave.


Yesterday we arrived in Shanghai - all was ok despite no visas, as we have ongoing tickets to Korea (today). We didn't have the time or energy (those all night flights - seem like such a good idea but C and I can never really sleep) to go far from our hotel (which is excellent - another very good deal through expedia.com). We did manage a great meal which, with beer, cost 20 NZD for many dishes - incredible. Managed to restrain myself from ordering fried pig tails, various stuffed tripey things and sliced snake heads, much to Hen's disappointment. They all ate little hairy-looking cold fried fish as a starter - rugged stomachs, this family!

It is spectacular here. The skyline, the efficiency at the airport, the range of amazing food and, I expect, shopping. It feels safe and pretty friendly, and we have provided much entertainment for the locals with our little blonde children - they are like rock stars here, it is very funny. Ok - now for a couple of pics as we must go off to breakfast before getting back on the maglev to the airport (400kph!!!)


: )

1 comment:

Mike Riversdale said...

:-( for you and :-)!! for us ... see ya soon