Photos for our European Odyssey

It seems that loading photos onto the blog takes a very long time. Now this could of course be because I'm not doing it right! But regardless of the reason, to make things quicker, and reduce duplication, I have loaded photos in my facebook page and the story will continue to be in this blog. To view the pix, just follow this link (please let me know if you have any problems)   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=781423265

Cheers!




 

Brisbane to London

AVERY big thank you to Jennie and John Bos for taking us to the airport – much appreciated!
Beware all – Malaysian airlines from Brisbane (and we assume other Australian airports) now weigh cabin luggage! This created a bit of a problem for Renoir who had Flora’s ashes in his cabin backpack. We did a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with moving books and stuff from one bag to another before we satisfied Miss Officious behind the counter about the bag weight, and finally were able to move through customs.
Arrived at KL international airport (KLIA) at 6am, cruised through customs and were at the hotel by 730am (and it’s about an hour’s drive from the airport to KL central). It’s winter in KL and still it was 26 degrees when we disembarked.  We had booked an extra night's accommodation so we could just walk straight into the hotel and sleep – which M did for a couple of hours, while Renoir worked on his script. About 1-ish we decided to take advantage of what the hotel had to offer and had a 75 min spa treatment - scrub, massage, eye pillow ending with a sweet ginger tea - pure bliss!
As we were right in the middle of shopping heaven (not that shopping appeals to us of course!) it was time for a wee explore around KL. A quick refreshment in a bar that promised single malt over the bar - but it turned out you could only buy by the bottle - and you can’t enjoy a bottle of single malt in a rush and we had other things to do!
Next a quick visit to Plaza Low Yat - 6 floors of IT gadgets and a frenzy of buying by the locals. We made it to level 2 before Renoir's eyes glazed over - so another quiet stop in pub to recover – following Renoir's much loved and proved travel philosophy of having a drink in Irish pubs that aren't in Ireland!  

A cruisey evening with a spot of room service and an early night, a 10am flight the next day meant we wanted to be up and out of the hotel about 630am.

 The flight was 13 hours and we thought we had it sorted. Deliberately choosing the penultimate row at the very back of the aircraft (the back row was empty) we had 4 seats to ourselves and no-one behind – until taxi-ing. Then a family of 4 were moved from another seat – mum, dad, a 3 year old girl and a crawling baby boy – who screamed. Often. Loudly. We think our next door neighbours are following us in another form.Groan….

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