Front view
Back and wing span view
With last minute shopping completed, showers and packing done we headed off to the airport. Our flight was 10.30pm which was great and allowed us to become tired throughout the day. Packing the car was quite interesting let's say.. We arrived with 4 half full cases and departed with 8 full cases plus hand luggage. Getting it all on the car required the expert packing skills of the Chauffeur, that is Dad. He did an excellent job and Mum and I ended up with a case between us on the backseat. We waited around at the airport for only a little while, ate dinner in the other time before going through the usual things and boarding the plane. It took us a ridiculous amount of time to taxi, probably from one side of the airport to another, but eventually we made it up, up and away!
I slept or napped should I say, for most of the flight after taking motion sickness tablets, which knock me nicely and I was only awake for the last 4 hours or so. Mum was much the same and managed a lot more shut eye than the way there. Dad got a reasonable amount too, but Daniel, not so much which he has paid for yesterday and today. It was more turbulent than the pilot initially said, with a few very rocky patches amongst smaller ones. Luckily they were nothing of the capacity of the flight over! I had the window seat and watched the beautiful sun rise and peek out as the shoreline of the land Oz emerged into view. The view was stunning over the mountains, which Daniel later informed me were the Alps. I took too many pictures out the window probably a few which you will see below.
The dreamy land...
Gorgeous view!
We arrived back into Melbourne a little earlier than expect at 9am on the dot on the 8th of December to an expected top of 37 degrees! The flight was about 14.5-15 hrs and we lost the 7th as happens with the time zones, as we left on the 6th. We quickly made it through immigration and customs and Gran was there to pick us up at the airport. We got back to home sweet home at 11am and began unpacking soon after, which we have been doing ever since. I had to work today (Sunday) but everyone else starts tomorrow. It was SO nice to sleep in our own beds again, eat food we are used and for me to go to the pantry and know what I can and can't eat! The best thing of all to come back to was Opal. We had missed our little girl so much while we were away and were given regular updates of her antics by Gran and Pa (The dog sitters). She was a little shocked but so excited, especially when she was given a new Mickey Mouse toy. She has carried it around all day and it will no doubt became her new favourite toy replacing the old and tattered Mickey from last trip.
Oh and in case you were concerned, the boys, that is Goof and Mr Mick have settled in nicely to the Australian way of life. Opal was a little partial to Goofball but likes her own Mickey far too much to be interested. They were introduced under supervision and all parties were well behaved! We have had an endless amount of laughs out of the two of them, with the laughing fits often ending up with us questioning how old we all are, before we justified it as being delirious and very bored, especially on long the long car trips.
On the trip we drove for some 80 hours as calculated by our car and did a ridiculous amount of kilometres. Our average speed was about 70-80 miles which is about 120km and more. It seems crazy, but trust me, we had cars going past us left right and centre. Cars over there can safely do 10miles of above the speed limit with no issues by Police, infact if you don't you are a hassle on the road!!
Dad was a fabulous chauffeur, Daniel was quite the Chief Map reader, always getting us to where we needed to be, and yes, the loose hanging head did make many reappearances!! The iPad Updater was in fine form, constantly updating her album with the pics taken of her new camera and Chief Photographer here was up to her usual tricks taking some 2700 photos before the culling stage!
We all had a blast and the time of our lives. It was such an amazing thing to do as family, with the memories and many laughs had, held close to our hearts for a long time to come!
Thankyou for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!!
Here are some photos that I have not yet uploaded...
Some Disney ones first up:
Sir Donald Duck
Reindeer eared Pluto
Minnie in a gorgeous dress!
This Woody was very naughty and came up from behind me to engulf me in a hug that was so hard it hurt.
He then proceeded to deliberately to move closer to the camera to be a nuisance to Mum taking a photo before he peered over her should to check out the photo she'd just taken of him. Satisfied he skipped off to annoy the people in front. The characters or should I say people that go out of there way really do make the difference and bring smiles to the faces of everyone, irrelevant of age!
Tigger!
Chrissy Goofball! He was also very cheeky..
Family photo with the one and only Goofy! One of my favourite pics of the trip.
Mum and Daniel on a ride in Cars land. This was just before the ride started, to which we got thrown around and sent sliding. I managed a photo of her with her gob open but thought better of putting it up here!
Some Universal Studio's ones now...
The Simpsons Bart and Lisa
This was the creepy character from the Revenge of the Mummy that sneaked up behind me and scared the living daylights out of me! My red face and uneasiness is evident here. He must love his job.. sneaking up on people, including hiding behind walls to scare people that are walking in the entrance to the ride.
Another funny story to this one.. Just for a joke and to hopefully make the cleaner smile, I put Goof on top of the Tv. I placed Mickey below hanging upside down and the sweet cleaning lady must have though that poor Mr Mick had fallen down and we arrived back to to see that he had been placed up alongside Goofball on top of the Tv.