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Wednesday, 31 October, 2018 – Smooth flight, weather OK in Melbourne

Loyal followers of this Blog. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot see the photos and / or the captions or alignments are messed up, please go to http://www.beauperi.com directly and all those problems should go away.

The meal service begins after midnight, hence the allocation of this part of the journey until the 31st.

20181030_083843 — Curry prawn noodles as a starter

20181030_232213 — Smoked Fish Salad for Julie

20181030_233929 — Malaysian Chicken Curry for Me

20181030_234316 — Elaborate cheese salad for Julie

20181031_000417 — Small cheese selection for me

20181031_002143 — Julie had not slept on the previous flight but it finally got to her

Although I am not interested in any of the movies in the selection and really needed some sleep, there is a stupid Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson movie on at a nearby seat called the Skyscraper. or something like that. It sucked me in although I never totally understood what was going on.

20181031_002438 — My personal server who ensured that I had lots of good Shiraz while on the flight

Eventually I crashed big time. I had had some sleep on the first leg but was obviously quite tired as I slept through the lights on and breakfast service and was only awakened around when we were going to land.

When we land in Melbourne, I go on to the baggage area. The Immigration camera once again rejects me so I go into a regular line but the wait was not too bad and the Lady immigration officer was really nice.

I grab my suit case and go into the rest room, disabled of course, and get some fresh clothes as the 32+ hour of flying had left me in quite a mess. Julie has to pick up the pre-ordered duty free.

When I get out of the rest room I am surprised to have Julie waiting there with her bags on a trolley. The kids had grabbed her bags off of the carousel and put them directly on the trolley. They then left to catch an Uber home. We go through customs fairly quickly and are not searched. We go to take an elevator to the first floor where the Uber rides are from but there is a big queue so we take a taxi instead, Finally home, it was nice to be back.

Observations

* I was surprised at how many same sex couples that we saw along the way in Europe. They were in a variety of age groups from young adults to very senior people.

* Many of the same sex couples were mixed race as well.

* We were quite lucky with the weather much of the journey with “heat waves” caused by the “non-existent” global warming.

* Two of the absolute highlights of the trip were late additions and ones I had been quite skeptical about. The castle outside Versailles where we stayed with the tremendous Emma and family and Luxembourg for different reasons.

* The Kids were very useful in handling our luggage. They did have there share of fights along the way.

* The Peter Allen reference. Although we saw and did lots of nice things, in general Australia has just as good and most of the time better. For example, I could not get a decent Bratwurst in Berlin but at the Vic Market the next day after we returned I had one from the Bratwurst Shop that is really good.

Bonus

Our friends David and Kate had gone one two trips with Captains Choice while we were away. They left before Julie had departed and got back about the same time as us. So to “prove our toughness” we meet them at Dainty Sichuan in South Yarra for dinner that night. They had been to the similar areas as us in Scandinavian and around, in more depth and well before we got there. There second trip was all over South America in a private jet. We really enjoyed the food at DS, the Ants climbing trees fantastic, fish slices, etc. There were no leftovers which was unusual.

Anyway, here are some of their photos from the Panama part of their trip.