We have a day and a half(ish) between adventures and once the luggage finally got delivered (at 8pm – luckily we were still awake! ) we got ready for the next part of the odyssey. Because the dryer decided to pack in the night before we left for round 1, we knew that we had to get all the washing done straight away to allow time to dry before repacking. A quick 30 minute eco wash, a full drying rack in the spare room and we could finally get some shut eye.
And then it was Monday – a real work day and back to the classroom for me! A wonderful colleague had been kind enough to cover 2 lectures while I was gone so now it was time to reclaim my module and get into the nitty gritty of modelling and logistic regression. Woo hoo! It was interesting since there were quite a few students who had missed the first week due to visa and relocation issues and they had NO IDEA who I was or why I was in front of the classroom.
Once I had dazzled them with my amazing knowledge, it was back to marking dissertations and preparing for round two of travel. The weather gods had been kind enough to give us a few dry hours to get the clothes out on the line so repacking was possible. We needed a quick trip to the shop to pick up a ready meal for dinner (shepherd’s pie – yum!) and a nice bottle of French red before the entertainment commenced.
We had a big decision to make: check bags or no. We only had an hour to change planes in Amsterdam and having just been through that we decided that the AMS ground crew could not be trusted to get our stuff to the 10+ hour flight to Johannesburg. So we played the “how much can we fit in a regulation size carry one bag” game. Luckily, this half of the trek had fewer business attire requirements: the first week is strictly holiday and the second week is an IASSIST conference which is WAY more laid back than the central banker gatherings. Given that we had successfully done 10 days in Portugal with just a carry on and we were staying in an AirBnB with a washing machine, we decided to give it a shot.
The taxi collected us at 4am (!!!) for our 6am flight. Another airport breakfast and a short hop to AMS and we were power walking through the airport to get to our gate. KLM had notified us the previous day that for “operational and load” reasons, they had changed our seats so we got the bulkhead row in premium economy – yay! Lots of leg room and no one to climb over to get to the loo.
It was a very smooth and uneventful 10.5 hours – I paid for the in-flight wifi and got all my marking (including second marking) done and the outline of my keynote speech drafted before my brain shut down and it was time to watch the latest Indiana Jones movie. (Cute but nothing special.). We landed on time and made it to the airport hotel where we stopped for a snack and a glass of South African wine. Then off to get good night’s sleep before our short flight to Cape Town tomorrow. All in all, a successful pitstop.
Data for today:
- Miles from Aberdeen to Johannesburg: 8500(ish)
- Weight of our carry on luggage: 4 pieces @ 6ish kg each = 25 kg
- Time to ABZ at 4am: 17 minutes
- Number of white wines KLM was kind enough to provide: 4
The Cannon Family's travel blog 