Day 94. Monday 9 June/Tuesday 10 June.

Did we really write easy yesterday? Some sleep overnight, with an alarm, sometimes two, on all four devices. And of course we were awake before the first one went off.

Out of the apartment in good order, and our delightful Pakistani Uber driver Abdul was on time. He, his father and a brother are in Spain; his mother, two sisters, wife (married for two years) and child are in Pakistan. He visits yearly, over December/January. He is a Computer Science graduate and will do a Masters degree once his Spanish is good enough. He said that of the four siblings, two are doctors and two are engineers. One brother has already obtained recognition of his medical qualifications and plans to move to either England or Ireland. He spoke about the very tolerant Spanish society, that accepts you for who you are and are very friendly; in a seeming contradiction later he commented that the Spanish think there are too many foreigners and they should leave – but they are lazy: it is the foreigners who do the hard work and the long hours.

We were at the airport, through check in and immigration and ready to board with plenty of time to spare. A coffee and a muffin each at an airport outlet – the cost after the very reasonable (ie cheap) prices we’d become used to was a shock.

The plane had started to taxi to queue for take off when the Captain announced that because of an issue in the cabin we would have to move out of the queue to a safe spot until it was resolved. No other information, but the passengers were calm, as indeed they were throughout the two hour delay – well, except for one who was offloaded along with her baggage – seems she was the issue or part thereof. She did have a few agitated words with cabin and ground staff before marching down the aisle to get her belongings.

One other passenger was not happy, although not about that situation. The man sitting behind D had tried to go forward to use the Business Class toilets and had been turned back (as had T been). He vented, fairly calmly but forcefully with pointed fingers and terse tones, at one of the female cabin staff on two occasions, who handled it very soothingly. Poor boy, as T would say.

We were therefore two hours late departing – and two hours was the gap between our connecting flights. Instead of heading on to Sydney we now had a longer layover in Hong Kong, leaving hopefully at 2135, for an 0840 arrival. The main difference is that we’ll spend the day in the Royal Airport Hotel, where we stayed for a couple of days on the outward journey, at Cathay’s expense. This more or less balances the cost of the hotel in Sydney that we won’t use and may not get a refund for (can probably claim on insurance), but still get back to Canberra pretty much as planned. T has had a terrific massage in the hotel – a new body and then a few hours sleep.