Home At Last

We're finally home, safe and sound, though I'm still recovering a bit from the journey.

I couldn't sleep the night before we left, so I was awake from 3am. I woke Littletree up a bit after 5am, and carried her downstairs with all the bags (clearly not all in one go), to wait for the taxi to the airport.

I had an amazing amount of luggage... we came with one backpack weighing 23kg, and went home with three large bags totally 45kg, plus I had another 20kg carry-on! Somehow I managed to get it all onto the cart and manoeuvre it all, with Littletree, around the airport without hassle. We even found "Vegetarianism Pies" to snack on!

The flight was relatively comfortable (well, as much as long-haul flights can be). Only we landed in Sydney. I thought we were supposed to land in Brisbane, indeed, I boarded a flight to Brisbane...

This was strange. It turns out that the flight goes to Sydney and then on to Brisbane, but no one told me that. Not the travel agent who sold us the tickets, not the Thai Airways clerk who changed my flights for me, not the girl at the check-in desk, no one at the boarding gate... it was never mentioned.

I'm sure everyone else on the flight knew, but somehow no one had told me. Which meant that I was prepared for a 9 hour flight but it was really 12 hours.

The crazy thing was that we were told that everyone had to get off the plane, with all our hand luggage. Then, dragging a tired kid, and my suitcases, we had to go through security checks, including the removal of any carry-on liquids, and get all our bags x-rayed again. Then we all went right back to the same gate and got back on the same plane, in the same seats. Gah!

At least we made it to Brisbane just fine, and all our luggage arrived, mostly in one piece (the small pocket of my backpack had come open and my glasses were lost, but thankfully the airline managed to find them).

Then of course, Purple picked us up at the airport, but he was too tired to drive us home, so I drove the 2 hours, arriving home at 2am.

I slept most of yesterday, so that was a bit of a blur; today I did a whole lot of unpacking, and two loads of laundry, and Littletree got to open more birthday presents from all the friends and family in Israel and Australia. Here's the dress she got from her grandmother: