eitch’s blog

Day 1, Thursday, February 4 2010
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I packed yesterday, so all I needed to do this morning was get up at the right time eat my last breakfast at home and wait for the ring at my bell. When Iris finally rang my bell, I was imersed in a T.V. show which actually fitted the picture; It was about Africa and its wild animals in the tropical parts. Now the continent doesn’t fit, but the wilderness certainly does.

Dragging myself to my feet, as I was rather tired from little sleep, I grabbed my bags and did one last check of the house before locking the door behind me. In the elevator going down I suddenly realize there is something I forgot: my watch. Pressing the emergency brake I send the elevator back up and get the watch. This is a typical scene for me. I think I am ready only to realize in the last second that there is something I forgot.

After dropping my G.A. off at the train station we start the journey to the airport with Silvano as our taxi. Thankfully the traffic is fine around 11 AM, so we arrive at the airport with out any problems. Finding our check-in terminal was not that simple as they did not yet show our flight at terminal 3. But remembering that Emirates flies from Terminal 2, we moved over to terminal 2 and there was our flight on the board.

These e-tickets nowadays are quite interesting, just show your passport and the print out and the boarding pass is yours.

After a last meal at the italian restaurant, where I found nothing better to eat than potatoe fries, we say goodbye to Silvano for 6 weeks. Iris is definitely a bit down, but she has good holidays to look forward to.

Finding our gate 53 and getting through the security checks would have been simple, had I not been stupid enough to empty my pockets before hand. 3 times I had to go through before it stopped beeping when I went through the metal detector. Stupid me and ridicoulous security checks.

After a half hour wait it is boarding time. We quickly find our seats and settle in. First we hope that the seat next to me will stay empty, but soon enough a man takes the seat next to me, with Iris at the window. Take-off is simple and soon enough we are in the air with the hostesses giving out food and things.

When dinner is served the hostess realizes that the table of the man sitting next to me is broken, so she offers him a seat somewhere else. So the place next to me is indeed empty which gives me a bit more room to sit.

I end up watching a couple of movies, namely Sunny, with a change of meatballs and Up. I wasn’t able to finish Up, as the flight was over before the end.

But Iris and I were both happy to get off the plane and stretch ours legs, yet knowing that another 10 hours are ahead of us. The worse part is waiting in Dubai. There is just so many number of times that you can walk up and down the duty free shops and know that you don’t want to buy anything.

With another 3 hours to go, we sit down on two seats and start to wait for the time to pass. 5 hours is a far to long time to spend at an airport, especially if you don’t have the countries currency. There was no use in getting money from the ATM as we don’t have use for the foreign currency in Australia.

Finally boarding time arrives and after about half an hour we are seated. There is only one caveat; Iris is in seat 28b and I am in 27b. So she is sitting directly behind me, both of us between two people. The two ladies I am seated between are Italians but living in Perth. Iris is sitting between a man and a woman. I know nothing of the two.

This ten hours flight starts off with me ending the movie Up, and then watching “All about Steve”. Both are ok, but not spectacular. Thankfully I managed to sleep a couple of hours and then I awoke in the new day, ready to land in Perth.

Day 3, Saturday, February 6 2010
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When we get up in the morning we all have a nice breakfast together. It is then decided, that we will drive to Hillary’s Boar Harbour and have a little outing there.

Before we went to Hillary’s Magda and Kevin had to go out, so Brian and John showed us their little pond right next door. Because of the ongoing drought it was rather shallow, but there were many birds bathing and enjoying the water and the sun as well. They said there were also quite a few turtles there which we didn’t see.

On the way to Hillary’s we take the scenic route which drives quite close along the shore so we have a beatiful view of Australia’s vegetation, bird life and of course of the beatiful blue ocean.

Halfway to Hillary’s we see a helicopter over the ocean, and realize that a person is being rescued out of the ocean. Since this is quite interesting we turn off to the next beach and end up on Floreat Beach, where we just manage to see how the person is being pulled out of the ocean and dropped off on the beach.

Afterwards the helicopter takes off and we just realize, that at the Floreat Beack parking lot a part of the parking lot is marked off as the landing zone for the helicopter, so we can watch how the helicopter lands. Brian then realizes, that this is a helicopter which he worked on and added the rescuing capabilities of the helicopter.

When we then get to Hillary’s we then visit the AQWA which is the Aquarium of Western Australia. It was a very nice aquarium with many nice fish, big aquariums for the fish and a nice big one where a conveyor goes underneath so one can enjoy looking at massive rays and sharks. There were even people diving with the creatures…

Hillary’s also has a nice promenade where you can walk down and do some shopping, so of course Iris had to see if she finds something, but thankfully she doesn’t spend ages in a shop just more an in and out kind of thing.

We were promised some nice yaughts, but I was rather bored with the motor boats, there weren’t that many that had any sails.

When we went back to the parking lot, we saw many white parrots which were sitting on the trees. Quite nice animals, they made a hell of a racket but they were nice to look at.

The evening was quiet, we just had supper together did a bit of talking and then went rather early to bed as Iris and I were pretty tired from the jet lag.

Day 2, Friday, February 5 2010
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Finally we arrive on time in Perth at 7pm. We have been travelling for 26 hours and we are feeling it in our bodies. I’m quite awake from the couple of hours sleep I managed to got.

Passport control is a pain, as is always the case when travelling into a different country. We didn’t have to wait that long for our luggage, so soon we were on our way to the part of which we had the most fears; luggage control. Travelling into Australia means that your bags get scanned going into the country as well!

Iris had some mushrooms from Switzerland which her mother gave her to give our aunt. We were fearing they would be a problem, so we then just declared them, deciding not to try our luck as there were many signs up, warning about the fines they deal out when they catch you trying to smuggle something in.

The weirdest part of all was, that when we finally showed the guy the mushrooms he tells us they are from China. Now isn’t that a funny thing, we import Mushrooms, namely Morcheln and Steinpilze from Switzerland, bought in Coop and they are actually again imported from China! So stupid. Oh well, thankfully it went well and we got through with no problems as the mushrooms are fine to import.

An interesting fact is that, if you declare something and take the declared goods out of a suitcase, then that suitcase does not get scanned, yet any other luggage does get scanned, so I suppose if you really wanted to import something illegally then just bring something else with you which is in the same suitcase and then you can bring it in. Of course I wouldn’t bet my life on it…

Finally through all the checks we finally meet Magda, Kevin, Brian and John. That was a nice meeting. So nice to see people when so much time has passed since the last meeting. I get into the car with Brian, and the rest into Kevin’s car and we drive the 20 minutes back to their home.

At home they show us their house, with the pool, and rather interesting layout which I quite like. Our room is very nice and we put in our luggage, and take our long needed shower. After talking a bit we then go to bed and enjoy our first nights sleep in Australia.