Departure Adventures

Before even leaving the Melbourne Airport, we had a few adventures.

After a wonderfull farewell dinner with family followed by a couple of hours sleep, Dad & Cheryl woke us up at 2:30am to take us to the airport.

We had a few things to claim back via the Tourist Return Scheme (getting the GTS back on recent equipment purchases) so we arrived at the airport at 4:00am for a 7:45am flight. We had no idea whether claiming these items would take 5mins or 90mins, so we figured the earlier we got there, the better.

Claiming the tax back took about 5 minutes, so we figures we'd have a couple of hours to kill before heading off. That was... until we hit the check-in counter and discovered it was going to cost thousands of dollars to take the luggage we'd packed!!

It turns out that the travel agent had massively underquoted the excess luggage cost; and we'd packed our luggage a lot more efficiently than we expected. So, if anyone is going from Melbourne to London, the going rate is $75 per kilo. Yikes.

Anyway, the end result was that, standing right near the check-in counter, Hannah & I had to dump half our luggage there and then. Losing the Camino hiking gear wasn't an option: we'd spent months researching and weighing every single item in the backpacks and had whittled it down to bare essentials. Losing the camera gear and laptops wasn't an option: they're as essential as oxygen. So it was most of our normal everyday clothes and toiletries that we dumped. We hit London with enough everyday clothes to last a couple of days... if we re-wore things on some of those days.

I don't know what we would have done if Dad & Cheryl weren't there to see us off... and take things back home. A huuuuuuge thank you to you both!!

I was definitely in need of a wardrobe renovation anyway, so it's a good excuse to go SHOPPING!!

(The piccy is us with the excess luggage we had to leave behind. Oops.)