travelling allrite

Yesterday marked my first flights of 2010, yet another day trip to Canberra to attend a course for work. The airline flight schedules to Canberra are greatly reduced over the quiet Christmas/New Year period while parliament is on its break. I ended up on Virgin Blue as their schedule was the most convenient. I am quite tired of flying to Canberra as they tend to be rough and unpleasant flights, but neither did I feel like overnighting there away from B and Alex, so I didn't have much choice. All in all the flights were quite pleasant. On take-off from Sydney we passed along much of the beach area I walked along the other day. I think I've overcome much of my morbid fear of turbulence. The air around Canberra Airport was quite bumpy but I just ignored it. I would still rather not be flying in the little Embraer E-170 jets in bad turbulence, but this time it was lovely to fly above the white carpet of clouds over Sydney, then to descend into the airport from the north.

We'll start 2010 with a short trip much closer to home. Today I walked about 14 kilometres along the Cook Park Trail in Sydney from San Souci to Wolli Creek station. I've wanted to do this walk for a very long time. I have walked many segments before, but never the entire length all at once. I think Alex was still feeling the effects of the cold that we've all had in this house and was a little whiny today, so I thought a walk might distract him. I bundled him into our new backpack carrier and caught the bus to Miranda. He seemed to be enjoying himself, so after some sushi we caught another bus to Sans Souci, carrying a half finished cup of Spanish style hot mint chocolate from Chocolateria San Churros. The walk starts near the Captain Cook Bridge at the mouth of the Georges River. A shared bike and pedestrian path runs between the coast and some very expensive and very glitzy houses. One looked like an offshoot of the tacky Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast. A