Farewell Australia
We suffered prolonged jet lag after our flight home last month. Quite a paradox, considering that for once we had the luxury of travelling business class and stretching out and actually sleeping (on BA’s flat beds) on the 14-hour Singapore to London leg of the journey from Sydney. We felt very emotional boarding the flight and leaving Oz, not knowing when we’ll next see our precious family again. We had a wonderful three weeks and the happy memories will stay with us forever. It’s been a totally amazing and at times surreal experience finding ourselves involved in BA’s social media marketing campaign. It was fun having our reunion with little Esme (and the rest of the family) filmed at Sydney airport that early Thursday morning. The film crew had arrived at 5 am to film Esme waking up and...
Read MoreBack in Sydney
How fantastic to be back in Sydney spending time with our two lovely daughters, sons-in-law and grand kids once again. We have our grand daughter Esme and British Airways to thank for this particular trip – Esme for her starring role in BA’s social media campaign, which unwittingly involved ourselves and included complimentary flights out to Oz to film the final part of the promotion (BA.com/visitsoon) . The video encourages UK grandparents like us, with families living ‘down under’ to reunite through BA’s new direct service to Australia .The original video has had nearly a million hits on YouTube and the BA website, and is beautifully done and quite moving. A local camera team was waiting at Sydney airport to catch our early morning arrival and reunion with Esme and the rest of the family. We were...
Read MoreSamoa disappointment
Following weeks of planning (phone calls, emails, flights), our proposed ‘add on’ four-day trip from Sydney to Samoa is not going ahead. Despite obtaining several national print and online commissions for the trip, the Samoan Tourist Authority decided these were not sufficient and it was too late to make the necessary...
Read MoreAlmost there – Sydney, that is!
With our trip to Oz in just a few days – I reluctantly decided that with so much still to do before we depart (work and personal stuff) – that I just can’t fit in a couple trips to London that I’d planned. Unfortunately, this means missing two of the year’s most important travel events – TravMedia’s International Marketplace, held today at the Marriott, Grosvenor Square and the World Travel Market 2014 at Excel next week. I’ve had to make apologies and cancel meetings with a number of interesting new contacts. I also had to decline a party invite on the Thames and an opportunity to meet up with the lovely people who hosted my press trip to Mallorca earlier in the year. I was disappointed about that as it would have been good to see them...
Read MoreIndian summer – Spanish style!
A whole month in Spain – what better way to spend September! We were more than ready for our break after an exceptionally busy (even for us!) summer that included a family wedding and family arriving from Oz for a month. We squeezed in a 4-day visit to Javea for seven of us the week before the wedding and afterwards helped another son move house and all that that involved. Somehow, I managed to finish a major work project and also kept a date with a surgeon to remove my troublesome gall bladder. We lost track of the number of trips we made to and from Heathrow Airport – picking up or seeing off family members on their journeys across the world – it was a summer of happy reunions (even at 5.45 am!), wonderful memories and...
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