25.08.2014 Day three Jacksonville 30' and rain Started the day with a trip to the Bank of America sorting out access to money while we are here. Note to self "don't use Loaded for Travel" again. You can only access your money via ATMs and if they aren't BoA ones you get charged $8 for every withdrawal. Also you have a daily limit on withdrawals from ATMs so it's tough if you need to pay a bigger bill. You can't use your card in any other way. A trip to Ken...

23.08.2014 Day one Jacksonville We woke remarkably fresh (thanks humidiflyer) to a 35'C day a little bit late for our free breakfast at the hotel, and took a drive down to a local breakfast buffet. For US$8 we must have been able to choose from over 20 breakfast dishes. With our complimentary iced tea we managed to tuck away a quite delicious breakfast before we headed to Ken's place to meet his Mom's partner. Bill must be in his mid 70s now and has been a mu...

Caught the shuttle to the airport at 4am and finally took off on 3 hour flight to Sydney at 6.45am Arrived in Sydney and had 5 hour wait until caught flight to Dallas fort Worth. This flight was 15 ½ hours long and was awful. We shared a three row in economy with a nice guy from Maryland, but both he and Ken were tall and the seats were so jammed in they couldn't fit their legs in. They were basically unable to move. I on the other hand was jammed in the mi...

Ok, we have 10 days to go, but at the moment we are sitting in Wellington in New Zealand, wondering what we have forgotten. For me, I haven't been overseas anywhere further than Australia since 1971, so this is quite an adventure. I am not a comfortable flyer, I know the physics of it, but I still think planes don't look like they should stay up in the air. I also think that when I am in the plane, so our 22 hours of travel which predominantly is in the air ca...