We have arrived!

Wow, we've done it! We're in Adelaide!

The last 48 hours (or so, I've lost count) have been the craziest most surreal hours in my life so far! It seems like such a long time ago that we had our emotional (but managable) farewell with Mums and Dads, Sam and Trev at Heathrow, yet we haven't had a proper sleep since!

As I say, the farewell went ok, though a fair few tears were shed. It was horrible to walk away from everyone but equally really exciting and I was crying with both sadness and excitement.

I'm proud to say we had a whopping 96kg of luggage, which even exceed Singapore Airlines generous allowance of 40kg each for our visa. Luckily they let us take it all - and free of charge at that!

Our flight from London to Singapore took a bizarre twist as John, who I have been doing consultancy work for over the last couple of months in London, was randomly sitting in the seat in front of Dan! We said goodbye to John at Singapore as he continued his regular trip home to New Zealand!

Other blips included one of my fillings coming out as I munch on a packet of nuts at the beginning of the flight (no drama, it isn't painful!) and quite a bumpy ride the whole way. Generally good though, and the 13 hour flight did go quite quickly.

Had a great time at Singapore Airport with four hours to kill! We had a massage and showers, followed by pizza! Dan wasn't happy when his brand new bottle of Molton Brown shower gel purchased in Heathrow duty free was confiscated in the departure gate at Singapore.

The flight from Singapore to Adelaide was great, but did seem to drag! The worst bit was once we knew we were over Australia it seems to take (and it did take) hours to get to Adelaide! We watched a glorious sunrise as we were appoaching the south coast which gave me quite a lump in my throat.

Flying into Adelaide was amazing. The city was lit up by the morning sun and the long shadows along with the stunning Adelaide Hills as a back drop made it look like something in a dream! The city itself looked like lego but really amazing - that's a view I won't ever forget! And then a huge rainbow (yep, it had been raining, which remember is a good thing down here) appeared as we got to the airport. Magic!

So then we had to queue to get through immigration and were one of two parties migrating in our queue! The 'getting in' process was quite daunting but compared with others stories ours was very straight forward! We've now got the 'arrived' stamp in our passport! It's done, we're permanent!

We picked up our hire car and set off for our bed and breakfast which so far seems ok. A few aussie guys laughed at Dan for being in shorts and actually, it has been pretty chilly today! We soon changed into jeans, hoodies and scarves! Weird to see autumn colour leaves on trees too! Though when the sun shines it is lovely and warm!

We decided to deal with the jet lag/lack of sleep head on and just kept going for as long as we could (Dan has now crashed which has therefore left me trying to stay awake by writing this blog!). We went into Adelaide and got ourselves mobile numbers - I don't know how we managed it as we were both on another planet by then!

Before crashing into bed, we decided to mark our arrival as we always intended and have fish and chips on the beach! We went to Henley beach which was huge, open, empty and glorious and had Baramundi and chips. Lovely.

So now Dan has crashed, I am desperately trying to stay awake to get my body ready to be alert and awake for my first job interview tomorrow. I figure that if I can stay up a little longer, then maybe I will just sleep through the night and wake up refreshed in the morning... watch this space!

First impressions of Adelaide so far are:
1) It's Autumn! Sunny but a little chilly. Autumn trees and huge blue skies!
2) Big wide roads - very easy to navigate around the grid system but a lot of traffic lights which always seemed to be red! (and I was struggling to stay awake as I waited)
3) Much greener than I expected - loads of trees! Beats London any day! Also much flatter, not that I'd ever given that much thought!

We really haven't been able to take it all in yet - even the fact that we are here! I hope that tomorrow we will wake up with some energy for exploring...

Becks
x

Arriving in Adelaide!