Good things in the last week (in no particular order):
Eloïse likes to hold our hand and lift her feet off the ground when crossing the road. She has a great sense of fun and is always making us smile with her antics.
The new series of Keyzer & De Boer Advocaten has started. The quality of the first episode was high, and It’s even more fun to watch now, given that we live in the neighbourhood in which it’s filmed.
We finally got around to assembling our Lundia shelving for the cellar, so it’s looking a lot tidier down there now. I assembled the shelves, but Sarah did all of the tidying.
We’ve finally ordered a sideboard for the sitting room. It won’t arrive until next year now, but it will definitely improve the feeling of the room when it does come.
We’ve booked our Christmas flights, including a five day stay in Iceland on the way back. Believe it or not, it was cheaper to stop off in Iceland for a few days on the way back than to fly to America and back in any other way. Direct flights to Boston were absurdly priced, but even the airlines with indirect flights couldn’t compete with the Icelandair fare. Well, it suits me. We love Iceland, so we’re happy to make what is essentially a free stop in the land of ice and fire. We’re already looking forward to lounging around in Bláa Lónið (The Blue Lagoon) and hoping that the northern lights will be swirling overhead.
We picked up Sarah’s 5 year residence permit today. She will now have no more immigration hassles until 2011, by which time she can apply for a permanent residence card or even go for naturalisation.
There is nothing unbelievable about flying via Iceland being cheaper; if Douglas Adams was a frequent flyer in the days that he was writing the Hitchhikers Guide, he would no doubt have called it “Airline Mathmatics”, rather than “Bistro Mathmatics”
On of our London friends who is going snowboarding with us in Whistler is flying KLM via Amsterdam to save £200 over flying direct from London on those days. In fact, if you were in the Netherlands and took a BA flight via London on the same days, that would be more than £100 cheaper than flying from London, even though you get an extra flight to London and would be on the exact same flights between London and Vancouver!
Similarly, we’ll be going back to London via Amsterdam to start our round the world ticket to end up in Adelaide. Round the world you say? yes, because doing it that way is obviously cheaper than one-way from Vancouver via a few stops in South America and only going as far as Adelaide. Flying double the distance – if not more – works out to cost half the price.
You figure it out…