Author archive
6 May 2016
I woke before 0900 after the best night sleep since we left home. After breakfast we walked to the centre of Miraflores, an affluent suburb. Our priority was to get some Peruvian Soles. For Soles withdrawals ATMs had a high local fee of about USD5 and a low maximum withdrawal. For USD, the fee was […]
5 May 2016
We landed about 10 mins ahead of schedule at 2230 and immigration was swift. The airport billboard advertising was all targeted at mainland Chinese travellers! Later in my stay in Lima, I noticed that UnionPay was accepted in a number of places too. Getting to the carousel at 2300 we waited for our bags. By […]
5 May 2016
Leaving New Orleans I woke just before the alarm at 0530 in New Orleans, had a quick wash and downed a cuppa tea before summoning my first ever Uber ride to the airport for USD33 (no tips required). At MSY airport, we tried kiosk check-in for our standby tickets but weren’t able to. A check-in […]
4 May 2016
The plan for the day was not to have a plan, or as little of a plan as possible. After breakfast we walked over to St Charles St to catch the street car to Canal St. We bought a 24h pass for USD3 so that we could explore wherever took our fancy. Just because of […]
3 May 2016
We had a light breakfast of oats, cup-mandarins and waffle at the guest house before setting o ff around 1000 to walk into the French Quarter. It took about 45 minutes through some nice houses in various states of disrepair and gentrification. Arriving into Bourbon St, I thought it was just sleazy. And that was […]
2 May 2016
Getting going We woke earlier today out of necessity and felt better for it. We ate lightly, finished packing and set off for the Houston (Johnson) Space Centre. It was about a 50 minute drive taking the outer ring road but Google Maps suggested that was the fastest way. We got there about 1000. The […]
1 May 2016
We had a slow start. We set off by car late morning to the Hobby Aiport area where Kim said there was an aviation museum. He even had an address but when we go there, there was no museum. We had a light lunch at Taco Bell where we used to internet to find out […]
30 April 2016
Above: With family in Brenham. We woke after 0800 feeling awful despite having more than my usual hours of sleep. It was 0100 in New Zealand, which explained a lot. We swanned downstairs to have a reasonably good breakfast of oats (yes, kinda unprocessed food in USA!), toast and a waffle washed down with plenty […]
29 April 2016
Above: Our dinner. Houston IAH was very quiet for our lunchtime arrival. Immigration and customs was an absolute breeze unlike our previous experience some years ago. There were absolutely no queues for either. And that’s for us visa holders. It gets even easier for people who are on ESTAs. Coming out, we rang the Red […]
29 April 2016
It felt like a normal work day waking at 0630 and walking to the bus for work. I worked till 1 am doing handovers before being taken to the airport by a friend Paul with Kim and my luggage. The flight had about 20+ seats available which meant that we got our boarding passes immediately […]