From Melbourne to Pisa in 36 hours!!!!

Dubai....Well our adventure has begun!! We have now been travelling for over 18 hours! Everything has gone very smoothly. Our Royal Brunei flight from a very cold, wet and miserable Melbourne left on time and after a two hour stop in Brunei we were on our way to Dubai. Arrived in Dubai on time at midnight...it is 30C here. Had a very brief stop here, the airport is huge but we did not really see it. Back onboard now and ready to take off to London.

Now flying over the Middle East at 36000 feet in the middle of the night. According to my map I can see the lights of Damascus to the left. We have been flying about 2 hours or so. I slept quite a bit on the last flight, so I'm not really tired now. Lauri is sound asleep now though.

London.....It is now 8.30 am Friday. We landed early in London at 5.30 am. All the flights were great. We made our way through customs really quickly as it was so early. So now we are waiting in the Heathrow bus station for our 9.30 bus to Luton. One more flight to go! Will be in Pisa by this afternoon. It is quite cool in London this morning, about 14c and very grey, very similar to the weather we left behind in Melbourne yesterday except no rain. Have no Wifi here so still cannot post anything on as yet.

Pisa....Have now arrived in Pisa...our bus trip to Luton was good. There was no traffic and we travelled through some lovely countryside. I had forgotten how much I love England. It is so pretty and green, we must come back and stay there soon!

We arrived in Pisa about 4 pm and it was warm and sunny about 30c, so much warmer than London. However we have been having some trouble with our phone since arriving here. It was working fine at home but we could not get it to connect to a network. I was trying to contact Tommaso who I had rented the apartment here from but nothing would work. In the end we decided to take a taxi and hope that he would be there. Well he wasn't, but the taxi driver was happy to phone him for us so at last we made contact and he was around to let us in in a few minutes. We love it here!! It is in the old part of Pisa, very old buildings full of character and narrow, cobblestone streets. Our apartment has it's own private courtyard garden where we sat out tonight and had a drink before dark (not dark til almost 10). We have decided to have an early night tonight after a very hectic flying time. Nice to sleep in a bed not an airline seat! And tomorrow we must address the phone issue and find some wifi so I can post this!

The cover photo is of the front door to our apartment....