Gum Tree Missionaries

I've made an unusual observation while traveling around these last few months.  Everywhere we've been, I've spotted gum trees.  I had to convince our driver in Israel that these trees were in fact from Australia and not endemic - I'm still not sure he believed me.  In Gaza, there are two large gum trees in the park across the road from a restaurant we liked to go to.  In Kenya, they lined a street close to our hotel.  In Jordan, they were about the only tree I saw clinging to existence in the desert. Now here in Haiti, I've spotted a tall gum with smooth white bark and bright green leaves growing in the yard next to the hotel.

I'm sure they're real and not evidence of home sickness. It does however, make me wonder how they all got to these far flung places.  I must be following the footsteps of gum tree missionaries!

Lost in Fog - View form Zero Feet

Well, lost on the radar - or lost the radar to be exact.  We boarded the plane, taxied half way to the runway and sat.  Then we sat some more.  Then the captain told us that a radar somewhere had gone down and we couldn't leave.  So we taxed back to a plane parking lot and sat some more.  Then we sat some more while they tried to re-route us over Spain.  I'm not sure why we had to go over Spain when we were flying east to the US, but anyway, we enjoyed our breakfast at zero feet with a nice view of the Malaysia Air plane parked next door.  We refueled (due to the longer flight time) and eventually took off, 4 hours late.

Of course, all this meant that we well and truly missed our connection to Haiti.  Given my ticket and luggage troubles after my last missed connection, I might never get home. (Don't worry Mum - only joking - I should be home well before next June!).  We ended up overnighting at a nice airport hotel in Miami.

Growing tickets

Speaking of tickets.  At last count I think I have 3 tickets in the system.  Since my missed connection in Vienna, the now familiar remark I get from airline ticketing staff is a slightly dismayed, "Oh, it's an around the world ticket", shortly followed by a puzzled "Uh, hmm, err, I'm not sure what they've done to this ticket".  Supervisors are called, phone calls made and a lot of peering into monitors done.  If I'm on the phone, then I'm on hold, rapidly chewing through the ten quid deposit I put on the line at reception.  If I'm at the airport, I'm anxiously checking my watch, hoping I don't miss the flight.  

Anyway, from what I can tell, when I missed my connection in Vienna, Royal Jordanian put me on the next flight which wasn't part of the ticket.  This meant that they had to reissue the ticket from London onwards.  Except they didn't do it correctly and didn't tell me they had issued a new ticket.  Qantas didn't tell me about the new ticket when I called them a few days later to change some flights.  Luckily my travel agent was on top of things and forwarded me the new ticket (now devoid of the changes I had made). Several phone calls to various airlines has me none the wiser, but with a growing collection of tickets and itineraries in the system.  

In the end I just turned up at the airport hoping that at least my next leg to haiti would be OK.  The very helpful American Airlines ticket person was able to sort some of the mess out, but couldn't complete the task as I had to check-in and catch the flight.  As it turned out, with the delay we could have had 4 hours to get it done, though I'm not convinced that even this would have been long enough!  As such, the last few legs still aren't 100% sorted yet.  At this rate, I'll end up on a clapped out DC10 circling endlessly over the Gobi Desert!

Westending it

Shez and I saw a couple of more shows today - gotta get your fix while you can.  We saw the matinée of Blood Brothers which is a musical that follows the life of twins separated at birth and brought up on either side of the tracks.  It was quite good, though a but has a sad ending.

In the evening we saw Mousetrap which is the longest continuously running play in the world.  The first run of this Agatha Christie classic was in 1952, and it's been going strong ever since.  I think we saw the  23,688th performance (see the pic of the sign to prove it). I remember thinking about going and seeing it back when we lived in London in 2003, but that would have only been a miserly 21,000th odd show.

Oh, and the theatre was opposite the real Ivy (as opposed to the pretender on George St in Sydney).  We didn't go in to star gaze - there's no ten quid pre-theatre menus on offer here - but we did see a couple of paparazzi skulking around outside.  That's about as close to fame as I need to get.

Here are a few more pics of Shez and I out and about in London.

Shez and I headed to South Kensington to find a little cafe that we used to serve the best chocolate and banana crepes this side of Bruges.  Alas, the quality has suffered over the intervening six years, but we did find another great french cafe (pic) just across the road which will probably ensure that we make the trek out to South Kenso next time we're in town.

Ok, so I might be standing in front of an L instead of a D.  Never-the-less, we couldn't resist the thought of a Ditchfield St in the West End - seems a little more impressive than a Ditchfield Rd in the Piliga Scrub!

Wandering around the West End of an evening is great fun.  We enjoy the cafes (I may have mentioned that), people watching and generally just looking at the huge variety of architecture.

Ships that almost passed in the night

As it happens, my uncle, Brian, and his friend Denise are here in London for a day before they fly back to Australia.  I had been in text contact with Uncle Brian over the last month to organise catching up here in London.  Shez and I wanted to take them to a great little french restaurant we discovered when we lived here a few years ago.  It was all set, we were to meet on Wednesday evening for dinner - or so I thought.

Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, Shez and I bought tickets to the musical Wicked which started at 7.30pm, safe in the knowledge that we'd be meeting Brian and Denise for dinner today (Wednesday).  No sooner had we booked the tickets then I received a text from Uncle Brian asking where we were to meet that Tuesday night.

Bugger - I had somehow managed to mix the days up (never get a boy to organise anything).  As it was already 5pm, we would either miss them all together or, at best, barely have time for a quick bite before having to rush out to see the show.

Luckily Denise is a certified musical buff so we rushed through dinner together before we all trooped off to see the show.  They had just arrived from Paris where they had seen a show the night before and were planning on seeing Les Mis today (Wednesday).  I'm pretty sure that  Uncle Brian will have (in the last 36 hours) more than doubled the number of musicals he has ever seen.

Anyway, we bumped into them on the street this morning as we were heading out to brunch.  We convinced them to join us and enjoyed a more relaxed catch up over coffee and pancakes in a cafe near the British Museum that doubles as a camera shop for the serious photographer (none of that digital stuff for sale here).

Here's a couple of picks outside Uncle Brian's very cute hotel near the British Museum - just to prove that we weren't ships that passed in the night - and that I can (sort of) organise things.