Jess and I set off for SA on Friday evening, it was quite a flight and she was amazing to travel with. The flight took off 2 hours late which was my waiting time in Abu Dhabi to get the connecting flight to SA, needless to say I was a bit concerned about the connection. We bought a few gifts at the airport for everyone and then flew the 55 minutes from Doha to Abu Dhabi. Jess at this stage was still awake – 1:30am, we were so late for our connecting flight that we ran (Jess in tow) to the next terminal and gate, to find that we had to run back to where we had just landed as the gate was next to the one we had landed on, they had changed it…..
Once on board, we realised that the plane had come from another city and people had chosen their spots already, by laying things over the seats. There were grown men lying across 4 seats, ok won’t bitch on about this but really…..Jess lay across my lap for 8 hours and we squeezed into 2 seats….ok that was all we paid for but that was all they had paid for too.
When we arrived in SA, I was exhausted it is hard to sleep with a child on your lap for that period of time, but at least Jess had a good sleep and was not tired.
The best part of the trip was when Jess woke up and in her childlike wisdom sees all the windows shutters are down and asks if it is still night time. So I pulled the shutter up and she looks outside, with a huge sigh she looked at me and said “Mom I can see the whole world from up here, the whole world” Isn’t that so sweet and honest.
We then went to get our hired car, which took a while as they gave me a manual and I needed an auto, with having driven on the right of the road for so long, it was a necessity to not have to worry about gears. so 18 October started….