Just NB

It's been a while since I've had to pay the Bitch Tax . The rules and regulations for when the Bitch Tax is enforced are a little vague...but I decided my behavior in the Munich airport lounge qualified for the penalty. Our layover/last vacation day in Germany/Austria was pretty cool. We purposely ate supper before leaving Montreal so that we could sleep as much as possible on the plane and not be too sleep deprived/jet-lagged when we landed. When we arrived, we were both pretty alert, but the whole sleep deprivation thing is kind of funny because on the way back, we both could tell that even though our bodies looked awake, our brains were kind of sleeping because our conversations either made no sense or took a really, really long time to get out of our mouths. Luckily we were already back in the city and almost near the airport (and not driving on the autobahn!!). So let me tell you about one of the most important things with regards to regular long-distance travel. RO...

Shocking surprise, I messed up on the day that I thought we were travelling. Very last minute (which isn't like me when it comes to travel plans), I was on-line tonight booking a car for our 12 hour layover in Munich (Louis wants to go to a bunch of places) and booking a hotel for a night in Johannesburg (I need some minor medical tests done that I couldn't get in my two weeks in Canada), and by pure chance, I checked our entire itinerary (seriously, if you travel or are planning a vacation, Tripit.com is freaking awesome), and saw that we leave TOMORROW. We've been planning our entire week thinking we leave Tuesday. Luckily, we've had two cars and have essentially all of our "Canada" errands done, but I was really looking forward to having one more day. Oh well. We'll have a pretty nice day anyway.....and we don't leave until 20h15 so we'll at least get to spend most of it here. Still not super thrilled about leaving.

Our flight in the can't-come-soon-enough five days (or four days?) was a big stress for Louis and I. I wanted one FUCKING thing to be settled. Will I have a job next month? Who knows. Will the public freak out and will there be protests next week? Who knows. Will we get a permit? Who knows. WILL I GET ON A PLANE ON SEPTEMBER FOURTH? Please for the love of chocolate - I need to have this confirmed. For my sanity and the sanity of everyone around me, please, please, please, I need to have this confirmed. I know that there is a super high probability that something will go wrong in one part of our journey, but I don't care. I'm just clinging on to the fact that I had a flight booked. And then, Luftstansa went on strike . So I started the search, monitoring availability, for other flights. Trying to decide...when should I book another flight....should I wait...how long should I wait? Should I royally piss Louis off and book us business class (he's all, "Let's...

With absolutely everything else up in the air, it would make sense that Lufstansa would go on strike, five days before we are schedule to fly back to Canada. Here's ONE of the many, many articles. What this means for us: We hope that the strike ends before...Sunday. If not, on Sunday night, we purchase ourselves a one-way flight from Joberg to Frankfurt. I've checked and there are at least ten different options. Since the project isn't exactly flush with funds at the moment, this may come out of our own pockets, which means this princess may be flying economy. At the moment, I don't care.

For future reference (mine a well), I've divided the trip (and my future posts) into 4 different trips. I haven't posted any of my vacation posts in order, so until I'm finished this will always be the first post you see on my blog. Trip #1 On this part of the trip, we flew from Tamatave to Tana, had an appointment with a local jeweler and designed our own jewelry, and then flew to Morondava. Then, we visited Baobab Alley , spent the night at Camp Amoureux  (eek). The next morning we drove to Bemaraha Park, where we spent the night at Vazimba Hotel. The next morning we took a quick tour along the Manambolo River and then finished the very long drive back to Morondava. Trip #2 This was the adventourous part of our trip. We took a very early morning flight from Morondava to Tana, then drive from Tana to Anstirabe and spent the night at the Royal Hotel. The next morning we took a tour of Antsirabe town and drove to Ranomafana Park . We spent the night at Setam Lod...

I'm finally getting around to sort of organizing my last vacation pictures (just in time for this vacation - of which there won't be nearly as many pictures!) and I came across some from our last day. Oh my. I guess it all started with this . And then...the very, very, very long day at the airport. Our flight was re-scheduled for 4pm the next day. We heard that the gunfire was over and everything was back to normal. Buhhhhhhhhhhhhhhttttt, since it's Madagascar, no one thought, " Hey! We cancelled a flight yesterday, so, we have all the people from the previous day PLUS the people from today. I wonder if we should book an extra plane? " Yeah. That's Air Madagascar. Another thing - Madagascar rarely respects the "Please stand in line and wait your turn". Here, we (tourists, nationals, everyone) do respect the "Please butt in line if there is more than two inches between you and the person in front of you". It wasn't pretty. It...

So we left Morondava (very sadly) on a much earlier flight thanks to stupid Air Madagascar changing their flight schedules at the last minute. Very, very annoying. Oh, well. Our driver and tour guide picked us up, we went to the Tana office (Louis' visa had expired) and then to JUMBO Score. Now we really started on Part 2 of our vacation. Ok, I need to take a break and talk about JUMBO Score. It's the closest thing to a Walmart that we can find on this island. It's a real treat to go there. I love it there. Their meat is like, actually kept refrigerated and they have like different kinds of cereals, and clothing, and...well, it's just a treat to go there when I'm here. (Yes, I know I sound pathetic and I think the girls had a hard time understanding just WHY I was so excited). After our exciting grocery trip, we were off. I'll never get over the meat markets they have here. And now like a gazillion people don't die from eating meat here. I th...