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I was dreading, in fact, I cannot express how much I was dreading, the 15 plus-hour flight across the Atlantic to Johannesburg. Long flights are painful.
We boarded the plane last night with our carry-on totes loaded with two big gift bags of goodies from Trader Joes plus some Cadbury Egg stuff thinking we might, just might be rewarded with upgrades to first class, particularly since there were some 22 seats available in First and Business Class. These elite areas come complete with fully reclining seats. In our minds, we just knew when we presented those fabulous goodies to the flight crew, an upgrade might happen. But no. All eleven flight attendants came by to praise us and thank us for the delicious and plentiful treats but it was cheap seats for us. We even presented the gate agent a ribbon-adorned pack of Cadbury Eggs. Boy, were we surprised though when he thought we were trying to bribe him! The look on his face put us in a suspicious category of dangerous people.
Oh well, sometimes you get first class but most of the time you don't unless you pay the incremental $4200 per seat to insure it. What??? Not me!! Ever! Never! I'll save that money for something else truly fabulous!
So what does one do on a 15-hour flight? Watch movies and eat - they feed you every 4 hours, and I have found that I eat whether I'm hungry or not whether it's decent food or not - it's something to occupy your mind. Stan and I also watched three movies each. Stan watched "macho man" movies while I watched three recent Oscar winning films none of which, by the way, were particularly redeeming. I saved Boyhood for our return trip. I should have joined Stan in his selection. In between, we actually slept a little bit on the plane, couple of hours in 20-minute increments. Tessa spent the first 4 hours doing homework then she slept, first slumped in her seat looking quite miserable, then lying down, twisted up like a sweet roll with her head in my lap. By the time we finally landed, my stomach felt ill from all the bland, dry, overly-cooked, overly frozen "meals," my left leg was numb from serving as Tessa's pillow and my head was in the time-warp fog. Ah, just another price that must be paid for international travel.
Our hotel is in the new downtown Johannesburg, Sandton area. We are told it was once a fancy stable where city-folk from old Johannesburg would visit on Sundays to dine and ride horses. The horses are gone now but the hotel is boutique-style and quite nice.
Next day, March 31, 2015
Today was easy, perhaps the easiest we will have on the entire journey. After sleeping and waking and sleeping and waking all night we ended up sleeping rather late. We had breakfast then hopped on the Big Red Bus to tour the city. We had hoped to either visit Lion Park or the Apartheid Museum, but our sleep cut our day a little short. The City Sightseeing bus is always a good option for getting a glimpse of a city when there is little time. We saw the top 12 sights and learned interesting points about the city. First, the city is only 129 years old located in a spot not typical for any major city - there is no port, no river, and it is situated 5751 feet above sea level, about the same as Denver. Prior to 1886 there was no town, only dust and farms . . . then gold was discovered. Nowadays, Johannesburg is the main financial center for all of South Africa. The city went through a time in which crime rose downtown and businesses escaped to the suburbs, primarily Sandton. The old city became abandoned and blighted. Now there is an amazing amount of building and revitalization in progress. The old city is becoming new again. The city is very mindful of Apartheid as well. It does not ignore history and where they have been, but the people recognize and honor the progress in attitude and in the cultural and progressive change Apartheid brought about.
We ended our tour of the city with a visit to the largest shopping mall I have ever seen. It is actually two malls, the Sandton City Mall and the Mandela Square Mall connected by a store-lined sky bridge. This high end mall is situated among exclusive hotels and was fun to visit and was still bustling this Monday evening with shoppers and diners. We were looking for a Lonely Planet handbook on conversational South Africa languages but could not find one. I have a copy but left it at home--not good! I love to pick up bits of languages when we travel. Looks like I'm on my own this time.
Tomorrow we fly to Hoedspruit, pronounced something like "hoodspruie," leaving city-life until we return Johannesburg, Josie, Joburg - whatever you want to call it, on April 8 for our journey home. Even then, we will only see the airport.
By the way, Tessa is such a good traveling companion.
Regarding today's photos, we end tonight's posting with a buff fashion show.
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