My flight to South Africa
Seattle weather the morning I was leaving
Welcome to my new travel blog where I'm going to tell it like it is when it comes to travel. I will keep it real with tips for how I manage my life on the road since my lifestyle is spread across two continents. Right now I'm spending a couple of weeks in Johannesburg where I'm overseeing the maintenance on my house. No, it's not a vacation since I've been spending a lot of time at hardware stores buying materials for the contractors. I arrived a week ago on Emirates Airline via Dubai from Seattle where I now live fulltime. Generally I am a great believer in getting to the airport early especially in the US where TSA security lines are long. My flight last Tuesday was at 5pm so I left home in Bellevue just after 1pm since it was raining and traffic was so bad my morning appointment had canceled because he got stuck in a traffic jam for hours. Anyway, I shared an Uber which cost $30 to SeaTac airport and on the way we picked up an Ethiopian airport worker which was great because he told the driver which terminal Emirates left from. I was dropped off after 2pm and when I was checking in, I found out I was only allowed one checked bag based on my ticket. I had paid only $971 round-trip for my ticket on Expedia so that was the catch. I only had one bag to check in but coming back I will need a second bag and they will charge me $200 for each extra bag. I am an Expedia Gold member and they have stood me in good stead over the years but things like this happen.
When I am in Europe where there are fabulous airports, I love getting to the airport early so I can shop and get a nice meal at their fancy restaurants but American airports are utilitarian and my local airport, SeaTac is no different, especially now there is construction taking place. Hopefully the upgrades will be amazing because Americans travel so much for work you would think they would figure out how to build great airports. Anyway by the time I was done with security checks I only had an hour to grab a burger and the restaurant was mediocre. When you have a 14 hour flight, it's important to travel with a full stomach because airplane food isn't as substantial as it used to be even in business class and I was flying economy. When I lived in New York I swore by the breakfast bagel at McDonald's before the 11am nonstop SAA flight from JFK to Johannesburg. McDonald’s might be unhealthy but it is like pouring concrete into your stomach and it holds you down during an 18 hour flight! JFK has got some good shopping and is the closest thing to a European airport in the US. I was hoping to fly the A380 to Dubai but it was the Boeing 777 which is still a decent size plane. My only issue is that the restrooms quickly got messy but the crew did their best to keep cleaning. I stayed up the whole time and watched a record number of movies to catch up on new releases. Three weeks ago I went to the IPIC cinema in Redmond, Washington to watch the ‘Hustlers’ movie and paid $28 so you can bet I'm going to watch all my movies on planes if I can help it. I chugged a lot of coffee on that flight to keep up my binge watching of biopics then I had a 5 hour layover in the fabulous Dubai airport which keeps growing bigger. When I sat down for a meal I found myself struggling to stay awake. There's something comfortable about that airport because one time I passed out for hours there on a layover from a hectic weekend in London and luckily it was a very long layover otherwise I'd missed my connecting flight. I was concerned about that this time so I asked the server if I could lie down and to wake me up after 15 minutes. I was that tired. The flight to Joburg was pleasant enough as I watched more movies and I slept a bit before we landed at 5am.
I went to the home of the multi-talented designer, DJ and publicist Maria McCloy to buy her sneakers. I am waiting impatiently for a pair of mules from her new line!
I am finding South Africa much more expensive than before but otherwise it's great to be home. The sunshine in Africa is everything. I list my house in Morningside, Johannesburg on AirBnB, https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/238179 and it is a real home away from home. I had some minor renovations to do in order to make the master bedroom available so it is rented as a three bedroom cluster. The great thing about keeping it on AirBnB is that I get to use it when I'm back in South Africa. The house is so popular that I am already getting inquiries for Christmas bookings from some of the regular guests so I am going to keep it as an AirBnB for now. There is so much new construction that rents have fallen and it's hard to find a tenant with so much new housing stock on the market. I drove by the gorgeous Waterfall Estate and it's full of houses now yet I remember when they first started with a sparse number of houses. It's great to catch up with everyone and I have people coming over for the weekend so it's just like old times.
