Gracie left NZ in Dec 2013 on a one-way ticket and hasn't been back since. After a lot of travelling around the Americas, she's found her way to London in August last year, where she's forging a career in the travel industry.
Fortuitously our niece Olivia (Cindy's brothers daughter) decided to get married this month which has provided us with the perfect excuse for the rest of us to head over to the Motherland, where we can all get together.
Cindy and I figured that since we're going all that way, we'd make the most of it and have a decent break - six weeks and two days to be precise.
Oldest daughter Holly flew out to England a week before us - she's a bridesmaid and needs to do the normal bridesmaid prep duties. She's decided to also buy a one-way ticket and will be making the UK her home for the foreseeable future.
So that just leaves me, Cindy and Jack. We're all travelling over the together. Jack's only staying for about 10 days as he needs to get back home for his last semester at Uni.
After a bit of pressure, I've been talked into writing this blog. So this is our story for the next six weeks or so. The grand plan reads something like this..........
Leave NZ at midnight on 16 July and fly straight to London, getting there on mid-afternoon Friday. Knowing how crap I sleep on a plane, my expectations aren't great for how I'll be feeling when we touch down. And then it's the STAG and HEN parties on next day!!!!!!!! OMG what the f%}&@ing hell was I thinking only arriving the day before. I'm getting old for god sake! Oh well, I guess it's just a case of 'suck it up princess'.
Having successfully negotiated the respective Stag and Hen parties it's time to chill in London for a few days and check out a few of our old haunts from when we lived here back in the 80's.
Next on the to-do list is to head up to Flitton, Bedfordshire on Wed 22 July to help out with the final few days leading up to the Wedding (Sat).
On Monday following the wedding we'll be bidding the family farewell and heading back to London. Jack flys back to NZ that night and we catch the early train to Paris the following day.
We've got a couple of nights in Paris, then head down to Barcelona for another couple of nights before finally getting to Casablanca, Morocco just in time to start our trip with Intrepid Travel on 02 August. The trip is for 15 days - it's called Best of Morocco and hopefully this link will take you to the trip plans.
http://www.intrepidtravel.com/nz/search/trip/Morocco
If the link doesn't work and you want to know more about it, just go to the Intrepid travel website and search Best of Morocco. Or if you want to be surprised, just keep reading this blog and find out as we go.
On the last day of our trip, 16 August, we fly to Lisbon, Portugal where we pick up a Camper-van which will be home for the next 8 days. We don't have a fixed route that we're following - just winging it. Doing what we do best I reckon!
Our first idea was to head south from Lisbon and check out the Algarve, but now we're thinking we might head north and follow the coast up to Porto, then loop back round into the middle of the country and follow our noses back to Lisbon.
If anyone's got any ideas on where to go etc, feel free to drop a comment.
We head back to London on the 24 August for a few more days of hanging around and doing nothing much - just chillin and relaxing before heading back to NZ, arriving home 29 August.
So this is the start. WIFI permitting, I hope to keep this going throughout the trip.
STOP PRESS.....STOP PRESS.......
When we got on our flight from Auckland to Hong Kong, we got talking to one of the flight attendants. An awesome dude who was telling us the flight was empty and that perhaps we might like to use the sky couch instead of being cramped in the back of the plane - what a start to the trip!!!!!!!! Hope like hell this luck continues.
Sleeping time now - sky couch style.😴😴😴😴😴😴😴
Wakey wakey hands off snakey.......
Well, that was an interesting nights sleep. I'm writing this after nearly 11 hours flying and we've got about another hour before we land in Hong Kong. But there's no rest for the wicked. We've only got an hour 40mins before we head off on the leg to London.
As to the sky couch or cuddle class experience, it was pretty. It's pretty cramped when you've got two adults. As I said, I'm a crap sleeper on planes, BUT with the extra space and ability to lie down, albeit bent across three seats, we actually managed to get some sleep. It wasn't the most comfortable, but definitely better than being in a seat. I reckon I would have slept about 5+ hours in total.
Oh and I forgot to mention, that the very kind flight attendant also got Jack sorted out onto a sky couch. Lucky little bastard had one all to himself!!!!
Time to close iPad for landing......
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