Day 01 - Saturday 13th July

I didn't sleep well last night - I tossed and turned worrying about whether I'd remembered to pack everything. By the time we arrived at the Qantas lounge at the airport, I wasn't feeling well and so I didn't feel like eating much. Some people were having beer and wine with their breakfast - I settled for coffee.

As the morning progressed, I started to feel better. The exhilaration of our flight taking off probably helped - we were under way on our adventure to southern Africa.

We'd booked to fly premium economy. Suzy had requested an upgrade to business class but none was available - it was a full flight.

It was to be a 14 hour flight diect to Johannesburg and because we were travelling westward, we were in daylight all the way. As you would expect, the service was better than economy but not as good as business class. The seats were ceratainly more comfortable than economy class - especially for someone with long legs like me.

The selection of movies wasn't great. Suzy found a couple to watch whereas I found a couple of documentaries about Ashes cricket. I caught up with the newspapers on my iPad and watched a movied I'd downloaded onto my laptop from iTunes before we left Sydney.

Suzy got some sleep - she can sleep anywhere - but I've never had much success getting to sleep sitting up.

They served us a nice lunch and dinner with silver cutlery (not plastic). We landed at 4:25pm their time - which was after midnight our time.

At the airport we needed to find the shuttle bus to hotel. Two men hassled us wanting to assist with our bags and he kept hassling us all the way to the bus. We refused to let him help but he still demanded a tip.

The Peermont is a very fancy hotel near the airport. There a several hotels and a casino in the complex. Our hotel is called the Peermont D'oreale Grande. Suzy thought the decor was Italian but for me it looked like an outpost of the British Empire.

For some eason, they had upgraded to club floor on the top floor. There were porters and helpers everywhere.

We were tired after our trip and had a refreshing shower before heading out to explore the hotel complex. The first step was to have a complementary drink in the club room on our floor. The Ashes cricket telecast was still running on the big screen TV in the lounge and we watched the Australian innings until stumps.

We walked through the casino and found a shopping street that was an imitation Italian street scene. It had an artificial sky, cafes, and restaurants. One restaurant was Hooters - Suzy let me look but she didn't want to go in. Instead we got a takeaway burger and ribs and took them back to our room. Most of the people seemed to be locals enjoying a Saturday night out.

The hotel has very good WiFi reception in the room, club room, etc. We got two vouchers at reception and another two in the club room and so we had free internet access for almost all our devices.

We got to bed at about 9pm local time - 5am Sydney time. We were exhausted after a very long day.