macdonaldj2

This will be broken up in phases to make it easier to read

Part 1. Background
Part 2. GRU-SCL
Part 3. Where is the LAN lounge at SCL again?
Part 4. ETOPS? SCL-AKL-SYD
Part 5. Do you have yellow fever?
Part 6. Wait, a pint isn’t 16 ounces? What’s an ounce?
Part 7. BEER ME please…
Part 8. Never attempt to keep up with them
Part 9. Let’s go hiking with a six pack
Part 10. In Search of...
Part 11. Take me to planes…
Part 12. Welcome to Abu Dhabi
Part 13. Come on number four, be cool
Part 14. 36 hours in Lisbon
Part 15. Surprise
Part 16. Where are my eggs/¿Donde esta meus ovos?
Part 17. Well, I forgot we went to Segovia –
Part 18. Let’s bang out a few days -
Part 19. Yeah right, soon he said -

Background:

This trip has been in a few years in the making. My wife and I recently relocated to Sao Paulo from Houston. We usually travel in March to celebrate our anniversary, however this year was we needed to finalize our move down to Sao Paulo. We needed to push our trip back a few months.

Given that American was planning on devaluing their program, we knew that we would need to book prior to March 22nd in order to lock in the old levels. Our first redemption was GRU-SCL-AKL-SYD at 50k AA miles. This was booked through LAN on their 788/789 respectively. We booked an award stay at the Park Hyatt for our time in Sydney.

After Sydney we wanted to fly Etihad’s A380 in F, again award levels were 80k per person one-way in First class. A no brainer, so we found availability SYD-BNE-AUH-LHR. We would spend a full day/night in AUH before continuing on to LHR. A few weeks prior to departure I saw direct SYD-AUH on the day we wanted and in order to connect to our existing AUH-LHR flight. Changing that was easier said than done, it required multiple calls to AA’s Australia call center, but after 9-10 calls it was all settled.

Now our original plan was to spend time in London and fly home from there. However, earlier this year, TAP neglected some YQ on their US/Europe routings and knowing my parent’s wanted to go back to Europe I promptly booked them to Madrid. Now our plan was to meet them in Madrid and spend a week in Spain with them. They made the mistake of letting me plan the trip, so I figured a nice side trip to San Sebastian would make for a magical ending to the trip.

Now we needed to figure out how to get to Madrid, simple enough you would think, but we waited and a few months passed then we got word of friends from Houston going to Lisbon around the time we’re due in Spain. So why not stop in Lisbon and hop onto my parents TAP flight from LIS-MAD? We fired up good ole BA.com and booked an avios redemption LIS-MAD at 15k per person in Club World it was an easy choice; we also got a bump because we moved some MR over.

The LIS-MAD flight was a little more difficult, I didn’t want to blow 25k per person on United to book it through TAP, thankfully my wife and I had some TYP collecting dust, so I found the flight and booked it directly through that using TYP to cover the cost. Not the greatest redemption, but no cash out of pocket yet.

You’re probably wondering what the surprise is, or perhaps at this time was. Well my mother’s intent was to surprise my father for his birthday and cleared everything with his job including time off. She pulled this off with precision I could only imagine. On their anniversary my mother eventually told him that they were going so he could start planning the things he wanted to do, while secretly I took care of everything. At this point (as I’m writing this the day before we actually leave) he has no idea that my wife and I will be meeting them in Lisbon and will be traveling with them for the week that they will be in Spain.

On the return flight we planned on taking the Singapore flight through BCN, but SQ ditched that flight a month before we wanted to take it, with that out our options were TK through IST, but the political situation there makes that a no-go unfortunately. I saw some interesting routings MAD-BRU-ADD-GRU, but United wanted to play the game of not booking that at the proper award price. We were left with MAD-BOG-GRU and will wait and see if some LH space opens up closer to departure.

We've since completed the trip and I am getting around to writing the report. Stay tuned/Subscribe for updates.

roadwarrier

Oh wow, taking the looong way 'round as per FT ways.

This looks like a great one - cannot wait to get reading.

Duke787

Looking forward to this one!

macdonaldj2

GRU-SCL


So the day as finally come (and since gone) that starts our trip around the world. Our first flight will take us from Sao Paulo to Santiago on one of LANs new 787-800s. Getting to GRU is always a bit of an adventure, if you’ve never traveled here, know that traffic is an absolute nightmare, it can take up to 3+ hours to drive from where we live to GRU. Opting for not doing that, we decided to beat traffic and leave a few hours earlier so we could sit in the lounge. We were on the fence about driving ourselves and leaving our car there or opting for the uber + guracoop (airport taxi at GRU). We decided on the latter and took an uber.



Once we got to GRU, we needed to wait to check in as we arrived more than 3 hours before the flight was due to leave. We made a few phone calls, my wife grabbed some last minute items from the pharmacy and before we knew it, we could check in. Our bags were tagged through to SYD and we made our way through security and into the lounge. We usually go to the Star Alliance lounge as we are usually flying back to the States on United, but since we were flying LAN we visited their T3 outpost. While it wasn’t the FCT or the Private Room at SIN, it wasn’t a Domestic United Lounge either. There were finger foods, Pao de quiejo, some soup and fried polenta (which I never got). They had the usual selection of beverages available and a bar on the other side just as you enter the lounge.

After a few minutes in the lounge my wife got bored or hungry, and declared she wanted to leave and walk around. I obliged; as I wanted to get some shots for this report of the plane at the gate. As she was grabbing something called a tostex I was taking some pictures of our 787 that would eventually take us to SCL.

And here it is.


On board, it’s time for the gratuitous legroom shot:


Once situated Pisco Sours were offered up as a PDB, along with WHOLE CASHEWS:


Menus were distributed:




We eventually got underway and were ready for take off, when I spotted a brand new LATAM plane, their A320neo:


It was a relatively short flight compared to the rest we were about to fly, lunch was served and I chose the Sirloin with Anise demi glace and the Flight Attendent said I should pair it with a Malbec, so I agreed.

Pardon the feet/socks/sneakers and lighting:


Lunch was surprisingly good, after dinner I switched to the “liar’s wine” a torrents from Salta, which was amazingly good as most wines I’ve had from Salta.



We were getting close to the Andes and this flight was scheduled to fly over just as sunset, it made for a very pretty part of the flight and final approach into SCL.

A quick video of what I mean:
https://goo.gl/photos/5NDiuBxDMg7BfHcLA



We landed in SCL in the dark so no pictures on final sadly. Stay tuned for the next part, “Where is the lounge in SCL”

macdonaldj2

Where is the LAN lounge at SCL again?


Well…I’m still not entirely sure; I guess if you check in at SCL and are flying business class or whatever “ruby”, “black” level of their program, you go through a separate security and enter the lounge. HOWEVER, if you are connecting in SCL it’s a bit of a different story. We exited our flight from GRU and went through connecting security and wound up back in the terminal, which is normal. Started following the signs for lounges, AA lounge, sure we found that, oh the priority pass/amex/chile vip card/prettymucheverycardonearth lounge, we found that. Where is the LAN lounge? Well if you go on their website it directs you to level 4 - https://www.latam.com/en_us/about-us...lounges-latam/ Ok? Where is level four? Is it up? Is it down? What floor am I on?

We ended up walking back and fourth through the terminal looking for the lounge, eventually we gave up as my wife was hungry again. She spotted a Dunkin Donuts. In Sao Paulo we don’t have any and we miss donuts. So we walked in, and oddly no one was working, but there were donuts, the lights were on, just no one was home. We stood around waiting, eventually someone came out and said they were closed, my wife almost broke down, she really got excited for donuts, only to have the chance snatched away, by “We’re closed”. She went so far to ask what happens to the fresh, leftover donuts, do they “throw them away”? Sensing her disappointment I thought she might have gone rummaging through the garbage looking for donuts, she wanted them badly. Eventually she gave up and we walked a little further into the Food Court.

In Sao Paulo we don’t have “chicken tenders” for some reason, don’t ask, don’t know. We spotted Johnny Rockets, and my wife felt like chicken tenders, we got there, sat down and noticed they had FREE REFILLS on drinks! That’s a dark art in Brazil, you get a CAN, you want ice, and you ask for it and you get a class with a cube, we‘re used to the good ole’ USA ways. We browsed the menu, my wife of course knew what she wanted and promptly asked for tenders, welp, they were out. The look of utter disappointment overtook my wife, this is a look I’m familiar with (read donuts) and I knew it wasn’t going to be a good next 20ish hours before we got to eat normally again, no donuts and now no chicken tenders...She settled on a children’s burger, and I got some sort of chicken cheesesteak. Our meals eventually came and if you said a children’s burger means you get TWO burgers, well, you win. Although living in Brazil, you learn to roll with certain things, getting strange things brought to your table is part of the norm here. Our meals we’re passable, but it didn’t matter, we weren’t planning on eating close to 3am local time on the flight, so it hit the spot.

We paid and went on our way to see if we could track down the lounge, because at that point, we were pretty damn defeated. Now, I have a slight stubbornness about me, I like to think I know airports and how they work, but SCL I felt like a tourist, eventually after walking up and down the terminal four times I gave up and walked into the lounge that had an entire window taken up by credit cards they took to get into the lounge and asked where the LATAM lounge was. He goes, “oh it’s in the duty free, use the elevator” IN THE DUTY FREE? I asked. What the hell? Ok, so we walked back and found the duty free, walked in the "out" door and turned right and found the elevator. OHHHHH there is the lounge. Great. Scanned our boarding passes, grabbed the Wi-Fi password and did the quick “let’s find two seats not near anyone else search but close enough to the bar and food so we don’t have to travel far” seat game. We found something upstairs near a decently stocked bar, not decent enough because they had bad gin and at this point I needed a drink.

So I poured one, the bottle slipped:


Wouldn’t you know it, I needed another one, the damn bottle slipped again:


It was the night that VP debate was on TV for those of you in the US, you know, for those that get to live outside the US, I’m sure you know too, but watching that required more alcohol than the lounge had or my liver could handle, I’m not sure which one. I gave up on watching that and changed into “something more comfortable” for the flight.

It was getting close to boarding, so we packed up and ventured over to our gate. We had to walk by the closed Dunks again and if you said they’d be opened, well, you win; you win reading more of this drivel, enjoy. We stocked up on donuts, don’t know why they said it was closed, don’t care, just grabbed six something around that number of donuts for our flight. I ate two before we got on the plane, don’t judge me, I haven’t had a donut in six months and now writing this, I want another one...

macdonaldj2

ETOPS? SCL-AKL-SYD


So for some reason my father gets paranoid when I travel. When he found out that I was going to Australia he was a bit distraught on how I would get there from Sao Paulo. He was also a bit saddened that I wasn’t going to be going with him to Spain. For a few weeks leading up to our flight he began looking at my flights to see the route we would take. He mentioned that to me and I began to explain to him what ETOPS were. That sent him over the edge, so much so that my mother called me that night and explained to me that my father was panicking and that our flight would end up like MH370. I soothed him over and said if anything we needed to divert it would either be to Easter Island or Fiji.

Eventually we made our way on board of our 789 taking us to AKL. Since I had changed and since departure time was around 1am local, it was beyond past my bedtime. After we took off I decided to put out the bed and SLEEP. However I took some pictures for the report.



Bonus points if you can tell where the PJs bottoms are from:


I did not eat dinner on this flight because of well, donuts and it was late and just wanted to sleep as long as I could. I had no trouble falling asleep, however about midway through the flight there was a mad dash to the economy cabin and an announcement was made, I don’t remember what it said, however we started turning north towards Easter Island, we started to divert. Not a good situation, but eventually everything calmed down and we continued on our normal route to AKL and I went back to sleep. Now that could have entirely been a dream, but I’m fairly certain that it happened.

I woke up around 3am AKL time after sleeping on and off for 7ish hours, I felt OK, not great, but better than I would if I had been in economy. I watched an episode of Mr. Robot and once that was over the crew were waking people up for breakfast. It consisted of eggs/bread/fruit and yogurt, you know it’s plane breakfast…we ate, and landed in AKL. The flight was uneventful.

We deplaned, went through security and we found the Qantas lounge, which was shockingly easier than finding the lounge in SCL. I called my father and told him that I was in AKL, to which he said, “I know, I’ve been following your flight”. Ok then. I did the walk around and looked to see what they had for breakfast, because I prefer ground eggs over in air eggs. I noticed they had vegemite and that should have been where my mind told my body, no, please don’t eat that. I ignored my best judgment and grabbed a packet and a fork not knowing the proper way of eating it. I grabbed a drink and sat back down and opened the packet of vegemite and grabbed a giant fork full, smelled it a bit and down the hatch…now if you’re a fan of it, good, if you’ve tried it and you know where I was at that point. Full on salt/umami, I kept it down but it was hard. I only later discovered a VERY THIN layer goes on toast.

It was close to our boarding time so we ventured back to our gate to hop back onto our 789 to continue onto SYD.



Same seats, but I swapped with my wife and grabbed the window:


So I could take some shots of interesting planes:


This flight was again, uneventful, same breakfast as the SCL-AKL leg, didn’t feel like eating anything as I had plans for a meat pie and some golden gaytime upon landing in SYD. I finished up season two of Mr. Robot and before I knew it.

There was the coast of Australia:


Passing Sydney on approach:

macdonaldj2

Do you have yellow fever?



We oddly sat at the gate in SYD for what seemed like 30 minutes while papers were being handed back and fourth. We stood there trying to figure out what was going on and why we couldn’t get off the plane, don’t these people know I need to consume meat pies and ice cream? Do they simply not care? What I gathered from the conversation that the plane was supposed to be fumigated or sprayed for something prior to leaving AKL, apparently it was, however due to some new rule, some sort of paper was to be shown. At some point the paper was shown and off we went.

“Do you have yellow fever”?
“Why no, no I don’t why do you ask? “
“Oh you live in Brazil, do you have your yellow fever card?”
“No, I do not.”
Types away on keyboard…
“Ok, well you’re good to go”

Ok then. My odd interaction with a boarder guard, I was confused. I’ve been vaccinated, I live in Brazil, but I don’t travel around with my card, do I even have a card? Probably not, but I’ve been vaccinated right? Sure, or probably, who knows? Hmm, I wonder if I have yellow fever, these are the things I pondered while waiting for our luggage.

Who is this strange lady walking around asking questions to people, must be random checks as I grab my bag she starts talking to my wife. She was some sort of, you know I’m not sure, a boarder guard? How long will you be in the country, where are you staying? Where did you come from? Etc…when we told her this was our first time in Australia she got genuinely excited, this was mildly irritating to me because I flew for 18 hours and I wanted to not be bothered, but good for her.

Bags in tow, customs line, what are these fast pass cards good for? I asked my wife as we’re standing in a huge line. Eventually we make it to the front of line and my wife flashes her passport and card and walks on. I show mine and I get a stern look and get told to go to a desk and stand there. Looking around there are long metal tables filled with what looks like suitcases exploded on them. Wonderful, this country must be against my pie/ice cream time. My wife got confused when she turned around and saw I wasn’t behind her. I’m now just standing at this desk not knowing what is going to happen. Ten minutes goes by (or what seemed like it) and I’m still standing there wondering what is happening. Do I just start unpacking here? What’s going on? Eventually my wife comes over and then two more people come over and look at her passport, then they look at mine, something was shouted over and I was handed a card…On that card it stated if I display any symptoms of yellow fever I should hand this to a doctor or something and they should take that card into consideration. Great waste of time.

FINALLY we cleared customs and were officially in country. I had arranged a driver from the Park Hyatt and we met up with him and he mentioned that we needed to purchase a SIM card and he said we should go to Vodafone, which we did, it took five minutes and we were on our way to the sanctuary or what I thought would be the Park Hyatt Sydney. I may get some pies after all.

nequine

LOL at your attempt at eating Vegemite (Marmite is the UK equivalent) and yes, its best just putting a thin layer on your toast rather than trying to eat it direct!

So glad I was able to do the eGates at Melbourne this time (we transited through SYD on route to NZ) as it was much quicker to get to the quarantine check, which we breezed through after a quick chat.

Carq

Nice, funny writing. Getting used to new standards goes both ways.

macdonaldj2

Yeah it got convoluted, but we finally round up going through IST even though I tried to avoid it...

Thank you

I'll need to try it on toast next time

Thank you, glad you're enjoying it.

macdonaldj2

Wait, a pint isn’t 16 ounces? What’s an ounce?


So our first 24 hours in Sydney went something like this. We arrived at the Park Hyatt, a hugely popular, wildly expensive (by my means) hotel, I read the reviews, I knew what to expect. I’ve stayed in Park Hyatt’s all around the world, I’m used to their service. Needless to say I was looking forward to trying to crème-de-la-crème of the Hyatt world.

Our driver called ahead and let them know that we were arriving, upon arrival our bags were collected and were going to be brought to our room. So far so good, get to the check in desk:

“Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald, welcome to the Park Hyatt Sydney”
“Thank you”

Pleasantries exchanged, our check in agent explained that no rooms were available to check into at the moment and we could sit on the giant sofa and look like fools until a room was ready. We just stayed at the PH Mendoza and upon check in they said that they would offer me a scotch, however they did not have any and I should try some local wine, I wondered how they knew I liked scotch, where did they get this information from? It dawned on me that the last time I was in Chicago (and if you guessed I was at the PH Chicago, you’d be right) I had quite a few and expressed my adoration for the adult beverage.

What’s up PH Sydney? You don’t have access to said information? Not even an offer of water…ok, I’ll let it go, about 20 minutes went by and we got called back to the desk and told our room was ready and we could proceed. Oh good, what type of room did we get? We were staying on points and a diamond, so I was hoping for some sort of upgrade, but alas, no. We got a room on the bottom floor in the back looking at the bridge. The room was nice, but the view was lackluster, we were slightly disappointed, but who cares right now? After almost a day in and around airplanes and airports as much as I love them I need to wash that feeling off my body ASAP. To the shower I went, after the shower we changed and discussed our options.

The PH is wonderfully located if you don’t mind a 10 minute walk to the nearest train station, we had decided to try our first meat pie at Harry’s, I don’t want to start a pie war, or perhaps I do, but this was a magical beast, chicken curry, something called tiger style with mashed potatoes/mushy peas/gravy, it was glorious.



After the pie I knew my next step to go full Australian would be to find a GOLDEN GAYTIME! As luck would have it, there was a 7-11 around the corner.

Oh, it was soooooo good:


To complete the trifecta of it all we decided we needed to stay out or we wouldn’t be able to sleep, so what does one do in that situation? Well you find the nearest bar. We navigated ourselves to the Lord Gladstone. We arrived and beers were poured, we sat outside and marveled in the fact that we were in Australia after all our travels. We had some more pints, and I noticed on their menu that they had a deep fried golden gaytime, some real dark art stuff. I tried to order one however the kitchen was closed, oh well.

My wife was getting bored and needed a change and I agreed, we decided on going to a new brewery called Staves. It was a short walk from the Lord Gladstone and we arrived just as they opened at 4pm. We were the only ones there and we started chatting with the bar tender, he said that they just started pouring their own beers about 3 weeks prior to our arrival. Interesting, so I browsed the 5-6 beers they had and ordered a pint of their IPA.

Hrmm, that pint seems big?:


Eh, I didn’t care that much as cold beer is good beer and the best beer is the beer in front of you. Don’t complain about things, just consume and be merry. So we did, and did some more…and some more. After a few beers the brewery started to pick up and two locals sat down next to us and started chatting with the bartender and one of them started handing him beers from his bag, one was not Australian (I can tell these things, I’ve got a keen ear for accents) he was American and looked like an expat, hey, we’re expats too. Wondering what those beers were and feeling the need to start a conversation, I nudged my wife and said, “hey, find out what those beers are” She asked, and we wound up learning he just got back from Seattle and worked for a company we knew of and we started chatting about expat life over many more beers.

We’re about 6-7 pints in and I finally asked the bartender:

“This doesn’t seem like a pint”
“No, it’s a pint, it’s a old type of pint”
“Isn’t a pint 16 ounces?”
“What’s an ounce, get out of here with that imperial measurements”
“Ok”

This set off an argument on why the US can’t get on board with the rest of the world, I had to explain the oil and gas industry would never let that happen. I may have been drunk-spalining, but it sounded right. The two guys were asking us what we’ve done and what we had planned on doing, we explained to them well we just had a meat pie and a golden gaytime and they were amazing. The American told us about a new pie place and after he found out of my new fondness for a golden gaytime, he said I absolutely needed to find a beer called “Golden Stout Time”, I made a mental note by asking my wife to make sure she added it into her notes on her phone. We explained that we had dinner at a place called Automata shortly and we needed to head out, but not before the American invited us to a new brewery on Saturday. We said our goodbyes, said we'd totally meet them on Saturday and made it off to dinner.

We arrived at automata fairly inebriated and very much jetlagged so why not sit down and order a wonderful bottle of natural wine from Patrick Sullivan called Haggis. I enjoy wine, hell I just got back from a wine based trip in Mendoza where I drank nothing but wine. Natural wine is not a new concept, but it’s gaining traction in some places, Sydney is one of those places. Automata is a well known restaurant with interesting (to me) ingredients so I was looking forward to trying it out.

Menu:


Haggis – Patrick Sullivan – natural (orange) wine, if someone wants to know more about it, ask:


Bug tails:


Duck Hearts – stunner of the evening:


At this point my wife fell asleep at the table, I do have a picture but, that’s not going to make the TR, sorry.

Pork Belly:


Dessert – yogurt sorbet:


So let’s see, around 10-11 “pints” of beer and a bottle of wine, hopefully just one, I don’t remember ordering another one, but I don’t know what happened. After dinner we tried to get an uber back to our hotel, but our driver decided to cancel on us and then flip us off as he drove by, nice…we tried to order another one, but it was the same guy and he cancelled on us again. Ok…so we walked to the train and grabbed that and headed back to circular quay. It was a long day and we just wanted a bottle of water, a nice shower and a good nights sleep.

We arrived back to the hotel, the desk attendant noticed us, and stopped us and mentioned that the power had gone off in our room. Um, why? Oh the circuit was connected to the other room and we can’t resolve the issue tonight, so we’ve set up a spot light in your room so you can pack and move rooms, Oh joy, this is what I want to do after a day and night drinking after flying 20ish hours to get here. Let me pack everything I’ve already unpacked 10 hours beforehand. Let me do that while under the influence; let’s hope we don’t lose anything. In disgust and under a heavy spot light I’m just cramming things in our suitcases, not caring if things are folded, clean, dirty, indifferent, mine or not, I didn’t care.

Off the to the next room we went, I wondered if we had gotten upgraded because of that situation. Well we walked next-door, to a room with a view of more of the road and less of the water. Ok then. Unpacked AGAIN and took a shower, and was getting ready for bed when I plugged in my trusty fan that is USB, flipped it on and poof, the power goes out in that room. Wonderful, it’s now midnight and I just don’t care, but I needed to charge my cell phone so off to the front desk I go, the same desk agent was there and saw me and looked at me and knew the power had gone out in that room. Thankfully that was just a flip of a circuit and we were back in business. He apologized and said we would be upgraded tomorrow to a room with an Opera view.


We passed out, woke up the next morning and went to breakfast. I wanted an ice tea/lemonade aka an Arnold Palmer (RIP)

What I got was so ostentatious


I ordered eggs benedict for breakfast; I like to test the chefs to see if they can properly poach and egg, not bad:


After breakfast we planned on taking the ferry to Manly and bike around there, we were heading back to our room and one of the agents stopped us and mentioned that we would be changing rooms again but at least this time it would be an opera view room. He mentioned just pack up everything and they would take care of everything while we were out. No problem I said, as we were still packed from the night before where we had to repack everything…

Stay tuned for our Manly adventure where I either throw up or don’t while biking up what the Australians call “hills”. Fun fact, I did.

nequine

Tea and lemonade!!! I have never heard of that one myself but I am not a fan of Aussie lemonade, its much more bitter than the type served here.

I loved taking the ferry over to Manly, so looking forward to your next posting.

Guvner067

Subscribed.

Re: "After dinner we tried to get an uber back to our hotel, but our driver decided to cancel on us and then flip us off as he drove by, nice…we tried to order another one, but it was the same guy and he cancelled on us again.".

You should report this guy. Uber is pretty strict on the cancel thing, especially twice.

krazykanuck

This feels like something that would happen to me! stumble back to the hotel to find you have to move rooms. Reminds of once when my coworkers and I got so hammered one night I lost my glasses in my hotel room, had to pack a coworkers suitcase while he showered, and then have him drive me to retrieve my company rental car from the restaurant we were at the night before. But thats a story for another thread

macdonaldj2

BEER ME please…


After breakfast we got dressed in our workout clothes and I’ll preface this with I’m not very fit, I’m far from it. When we lived in Virginia I would go to our gym in our building to buy sodas before work, as they were 1USD. My wife on the other hand enjoys walking up 17 flights of stairs to get to our apartment here. Sooooo with that being stated, we were off for a nice and I was told easy bike ride in Manly.

We started by taking a nice walk to Circular Quay:



We scanned our Opal card and jumped on the ferry. We were sort of late and got stuck inside on the side not facing the harbor, so no pictures on the way out. The trip takes 25-30 minutes and they sell snacks/water/Gatorade on board, which were needed as I had a pretty dehydrated from the night before.

We landed in Manly and quickly found our bike shop, we had a rough idea of where we wanted to go, here is that rough idea - https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Manl...33.8229979!3e1

You see, a short easy-ish looking ride, I mean, how hard could biking 4 km be? The bike rental guy said, Oh there is one hill that everyone walks up and after the arch it’s smooth sailing. I was trying to be positive and actually was looking forward to the ride. As soon as I sat on the bike was another story, bike seat too small, but not set up properly, whatever, just wasn’t right, but I toughed through it and off we went. We were told to ride along the beach and then turn left; you can see from the map what we did. Riding along the beach was nice, something SFO777 would enjoy if you catch my drift.

It all went pear shaped after that, we either went to far or not far enough but when we turned left there was a giant hill. I thought ok; this must be the hill he was talking about. Tried to ride up, made it 10 feet, hopped off and started to walk. I stopped for some water and looked at my phone, realized we were on the wrong road and needed to turn left on the next road, oh good, another hill. Ok, started walking up that hill, it kept going and going. At this point I’ve paid to walk a bike up hills for about 30 minutes, while I rode it for 10 minutes. This is going well. I kept a positive attitude though, but I was miserable, I was dehydrated and miserable. We kept on going; eventually we got onto the road we needed to be on, and oh good, the hill everyone walks up. Ah after this I can start to actually ride this bike. Gasping for air causes a terrible dry throat, so more water, more gasping, rinse and repeat. Finally we reached the top, when I say we, I mean I, and my wife had been there, laughing at me.

I saw the arch way and that was the entrance to the park, so I jumped back on my bike and tried to ride some more, there was a slight incline but I was gasping a attempting to not walk, it was working, for a little bit, but eventually I needed a break. It was becoming a real wake up call about my health at this point. My wife asked if we should turn back as she knew I was in a bad way. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t walk this bike here not to see what I came for. A few more minutes on the bike and it was getting worse, I had to stop; now if you’ve worked out hard enough sometimes things happen like losing breakfast all over the side of the road.

After that lovely episode, I felt a little better, but eh, I was over it at this point. I stuck with it though; we eventually made it to the lookout.

The views were wonderful:




When we arrived we heard very loud birds, which we later learned, were magpies and that area apparently was their nesting area and they were getting violent. My wife still had her helmet on and she was getting attacked while I couldn’t be bothered because I was about to pass out on the ground from exhaustion. Turns out they are attracted to bright colors, use this as PSA folks.

After the bird attacks and I caught my breath it was time to leave. We topped up our water and now the easy part, riding the bikes back downhill the WHOLE way. So what took almost an hour getting there took about 10 minutes to get back. We dropped our bikes off and well, I needed a beer and thankfully there is a brewery called four pines.

The best beer is the beer in front of you:


Refreshing, wonderful, cold, we had a light snack/lunch even though it was almost 5 at that point. We noticed we could grab the next ferry back to town. This time we sat on the proper side and snapped some pictures on the way back.



We docked and headed back to the PH, we needed to swing by the front desk and exchanged room keys. Our new room was on the second floor and this time we had a view of the opera house.

I’m not leaving the couch view:


Ok, well maybe I’ll go on the balcony:


That night we just crashed, and used deliveroo and ordered from the Spice Room which was a restaurant I wanted to try anyway as we don’t have good Indian food in Sao Paulo (that I know of…hint hint).

Stay tuned because tomorrow I think we’ll go drinking some more. That’s always interesting.