The Rabbit Hole

In one week we'll be on a plane to Australia. Or at the airport, I don't know what our flight time is exactly.

Our first trip back in over 6 years, I can't believe it's been that long. I'm looking forward to being back, even if it's only for 3 weeks. I'm not really looking forward to the long flight with Dashiell in tow. He was fine when we took him to South Africa last year in February/March, but he was a hell of a lot less mobile and active than he is now, and he slept more, so it's going to be a real challenge. At least this time he has his own seat, and nowadays you strap in the car seat into the airline seat, so at least I can restrain him during meals and such so I can eat without having to try and consume food with a flailing child. Also it'll be nice to not have to have him on my lap most of the time, though with an infant you do get a bulkhead seat with a cot that they can attach to the wall... but bulkhead seats in economy mean fuck-all leg room (we got bulkhead seats in business class once, when we got upgraded due to some problem, loads of legroom there, hehe).

Apparently Prez's dad told him that the main reason he's excited we're coming is because of Dashiell. Ah, grandparents :P It's so nice to feel wanted.

We arrive in Sydney Sunday morning the 23rd, at oh-god-something in the morning. Every time I've flown in there the flight's been like an hour early due to great weather conditions, so it ends up being close to 6am (airport opening time) when we arrive.

Tuesday through Friday we'll be going out to the Blue Mountains. We had been thinking about a trip out there, and the other day decided on seeing if we could get a cottage and invite some people along rather than go by ourselves. Grandparents were called and invited, and I invited the lovely nikkles along too. A cottage is nicer when you have a kiddo around, and if there's several people that are coming, it's more economical than a hotel room.



The place looks really nice, and I'm looking forward to this little trip. The cottage is in Katoomba, which is well situated in the Blue Mountains. We're hoping to go to Jenolan Caves as well while we're there.

Once back in Sydney on the 28th, we have no fixed plans until we leave the following week on Thursday to go to Melbourne. Our attendance is required at a wedding on Saturday, and that will be very awesome too. The wedding itself is out in the country, and we won't be in Melbourne proper until Sunday afternoon, where we'll stay until Tuesday evening when we have a flight back to Sydney.

A couple more for-now unscheduled days until we leave to go back to the US on, I think, the Sunday the 14th. I wish we were able to stay longer than 3 weeks, but I'll take what we can get.

Bring on vacation!

Tomorrow we leave for a 10 day trip to Holland. My mother turned 55, and one of her sisters also had a birthday (consecutive days), and so they're doing a big joint celebration on the 16th. My mother offered to fly us over there to be there. All fine and dandy.

So, the other week I booked PreZ and my ticket. You can't book infants under 2 online, and I completely forgot to call and add Dashiell until today. Infants under 2 travel as a lap infant, though they still require a paper ticket even though they don't get their own seat (I think the paper ticket is only a requirement on international travel).

I was under the impression that for international flights you pay 10% of the fare for the infant. Okay, fine, that means that we'd be paying around $44 for him. Apparantly, it's 10% of the cheapest fare availible on the date of booking, which the lady on the phone told me would amount to over $500.

Fucking rip-off. He's ON OUR LAP, he doesn't even get his own seat and he's paying more than we are for our seat.

Not only that, I just went online to the airline's website, and the cheapest fare I can find right now for our flight is $2800 roundtrip for 1 adult, and 10% of that is *not* $500+. I've printed off that page as proof/for reference.

It's going to be very interesting at the ticket counter tomorrow...

We are home. We got back yesterday evening. Thanks muchly to anachronaut for picking us up! (And I'm really sorry for conking out asleep so soon!).

Damn it is really frelling cold here in NY. We walked out of the terminal building yesterday and there was a strong wind. A strong icy wind. No matter which direction I was facing Dashiell got it in the face or past his face. He immediately started crying really loudly. Poor bugger. But I'm with him that it was an extremely unpleasant welcome home to NY after having had high 20s/low 30s Celcius in South Africa.

Anyway, updates are forthcoming, as well as pictures and all that good stuff. The latter especially will take a while because I know we took well over 1000 pictures. Oh the joy of digital cameras, 2GB memory sticks and portable storage media devices. I'll probably only put a selection of shots up on my photo gallery, because I know PreZ wanted to put most of them up on his (no problem, he can upload the bulk of them himself then :P). Links to both will be forthcoming.

Right now it's time to have a shower and shower Dashiell as well and I've already fired up the humidifier in an attempt to stop being zapped and to stop feeling so dehydrated and dry.