Rundle Street Market

Much refreshed after a good night’s sleep. The hotel is great – spacious and modern, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms – and views to die for (Not!!!!! Have a look at the pictures!) Brilliant location also, so we’re happy with our choice.

We’ve been to the market today – quite a food emphasis there too. We sampled Dutch baby pancakes, nougat, fudge and some clever battered and fried spiral cut potatoes (see photo). Didn’t really need lunch, but we had some anyway!

Also had a lovely walk along the river bank – it is a very pretty city, and the walk was very pleasant – until it rained again!

Saturday - where we lose our duty-free

We’re here!! A very early start – a 3.30am wake up for a 6 am flight, all in a gusty Wellington wind. The rock and rolling started on the runway, but apart from another bumpy patch towards the end of the Sydney leg, it soon calmed down.

The day was most memorable for an encounter with Aussie border control. Even though we were completing customs at Adelaide, with just a transit stopover in Sydney, we had to go through security to re-board. Of course the ‘no liquids’ policy was enforced – if only someone had told us before we bought our duty free refreshments at Wellington airport! So each couple had to forfeit a bottle to the Border Control Christmas Party stash! Gutted! Luckily, I was allowed to keep my two bottles of perfume.

It was raining when we landed at Adelaide so we headed straight to our hotel, checked in and then grabbed some lunch – some indulged in some very sweet treats (but not me, of course!) Then it was back for a nana nap – it had been a long day!

We found a little French Bistro down the road for dinner – fairly rustic, and they had run out of a lot of our choices from the menu, but friendly and cheerful.

We're off to Adelaide tomorrow

We’ll it’s been 15 months since we last journeyed overseas so it is definitely time! We are off to Adelaide tomorrow (Saturday) with our friends Phil and Janet. It’s the first time there for three of us, so looking forward to new experiences and sights.

The End

We awoke to another glorious sunny day - it was nice not to have an alarm clock to wake us, but a 12 noon check out meant we could take our time. We headed up to the hotel’s roof top restaurant for breakfast. It was a bit posh, but what views! The bay went on for miles and it just added to the elegant ambience, so it was a wonderful start to our last day.



Santa Monica has a gorgeous tree-lined promenade where the shops are, so it was lovely to stroll and pick up a few bargains in the sunshine.

A street seller tried to get our attention by calling out ‘Hey, newlyweds!’ - that was a bit of a giggle!

LA customs was quick, although not intuitive! The big disappointment was no significant duty free shopping once we’d completed the formalities - I had planned for a final fling!

The flight was a whopping 13 hours 45 minutes, made longer by a 340 km per hour head wind, which made for a bumpy ride in parts. We were able to sleep a bit, although Allan has picked up a cold which made him a bit miserable.

Sad to think it is all over - the seven weeks went amazingly fast. It is interesting for us to look back on the early parts of the blog - England seems so long ago.

The three parts of our trip (London, UK and Europe) were each different to each other but all equally enjoyable - there were no down parts really, its been a wonderful experience, and I am ready to go back (as soon as this one’s paid for!)

Hollywood

An early start for our day at Universal Studios, via Beverley Hills and Hollywood. We were pleasantly surprised with the Studios. They’re very well organised, friendly, clean and not over hyped. Of course, you could buy plenty of souvenirs, but mostly we just had fun with the shows and rides. Passed on the roller coaster, but had a cool and wet Jurassic Park ‘log-flume’ ride with an 84ft vertical waterfall drop, and watched a brilliant ’Waterworld’ show, with pyrotechnics, water stunts and much splashing! A nice day out, although Allan has managed to pick up a cold unfortunately.

We survived Terminal Five!

Luckily, it was a bank holiday when we left London, so the traffic was really light. We had some trepidation after all the publicity we’d seen about delays and lost baggage at Terminal 5, but it was a piece of cake really. We had to use the check-in machines like we do at home, and were amazed to find that the default seats we were allocated were the last two together seats on the plane, even though we were early checking in. They were the middle two of the centre four, so we didn’t even have an aisle. We were on a British Airways flight, which was the only one of our trip that we weren’t able to pre-select our seats on.


The terminal is beautiful, and as I said to Allan, “this is what I call duty free shopping!” Miles and miles of shops selling all sorts - didn‘t buy much tho‘.

Security was extreme - we had to remove jackets, shoes (even my open sandals) and belts. Even so, there were only small queues.

The terminal has its own underground train to its other two buildings, so it is pretty vast. The flight was a long 11 hours, leaving at midday local time, and arriving at our hotel at 3 am on our body clocks - we didn’t sleep much either. I prefer to fly at night as we do on our homeward trip - more conducive to sleeping.

Security in LA was extreme as you’d expect, although again we were lucky with queues. We were finger printed and iris scanned, but there is no MAF type checking as we have at home, so the biggest delay was getting our luggage.

Took a shuttle to Santa Monica - our hotel is beautiful and the beach endless, and only a block away.

Homeward bound

After all our farewells, we headed for the Eurostar. Our booked carriage had an air-con malfunction, so they upgraded us to first class - that was pretty special.

Now in London getting organised for our little detour to Santa Monica (Los Angeles) on the way home - another early start tomorrow (Sunday) morning.