And it begins!

Hi everyone, we decided to copy our friend Papick and start a blog to share with you all the details of our trips, starting with South Africa!!!

The trip began with us landing from Mount Vernon, Ohio at 1am on the 17 th to make a 7:30 am telepresence meeting ( live meeting like a skype ) to then running back home around 3pm to eat and leave for the airport at 7pm.  We get on the new Dreamliner in our executive class seats (wow) and get an opportunity to speak with the captain who as soon as we tell him we work for Rolls Royce with gas turbines he says and i quote < Yeah.... Wh have been experiencing a few issues of which the most important one being the icing in the core, causing for in flight engine failures, which fire right back up, but we need to avoid thunderstorms....>  and that is when i started feeling nervous :) Great!  Now these were GE engines so we weren't aware of thus issue... Which keeps proving the superiority of our products! All these things they don't you unless they think you can take it.....

So the flight was extremely bumpy although the captain tried to adjust our altitude Chris and I slept 9 hrs straight and were woken up to basically land in Lagos, Nigeria.

We met two wonderful Californians Fritz and Richard, who flew with us from Houston and they are living THA LIFE!!!!  They travel to some of the coolest places on earth about 4 months out of the year and were now starting a 6 week adventure in South Africa, we promised to stay in touch and come and visit them in San Francisco this spring.... A good segway to see Patrice and Samantha in Napa!!!

 We get off the plane, and are immediately directed to immigration. As we get to the immigration officer, Fritz and Richard in tow, they hand over our passports to this big, very dark, very mean looking dude. One can only think of the movie blood diamonds with the guy with the machete or the AK47 loosely hanging from his shoulder as he asks us to follow him....

So like ignorant tourists, we do.... He proceeds to take us to a tiny room with 3 flowery couches and locks our passports in an office in the back, telling us to relax and enjoy ourselves before he leaves... he returns 2 hrs later to take us to do our check in and we wait another hour in a smoldering hot packed airport with lots of sweaty, smelly travellers.  The officer keeps leaving us in the middle of a crowd, which kept us thinking, will he come back this time??? We then do our checkin with lots of dirty looks as the immigration officer makes us skip the entire line, gets us our boarding passes which he quickly tucks in his shirt... He most likely is expecting some sort of tip at the end...

We return to the tiny room for another hour and he then starts calling us one by one except that when he calls Christopher he looks at me and says: when i call him, you should follow, you are his wife, a wife should follow her husband.  I call his name, you should follow.  I reply with : yes, you are so right, i do belong to him and i will follow, just know that back home he belongs to me and he follows me, so i will give him this one day! He then gives us a speech of how god brought us together to be married and he is very proud, shakes our hands, hands over our passport and boarding passes and Chris drops a huge 6$ in this hand! Job done, we are now free.

So we landed in Joburg an hour late at 6 am on the 18 th squeezed in an A340-600 middle row between two Africans who found Chris very annoying as for those who know him well, he likes to <pee> alot..... So he made his neighbour get up 4 times for  6 hr flight, literally waking him  up :)

We pick up our tiny Chevrolet Spark which as soon as we speed to 100km/hr the wheel starts shaking enought hat we return to the airport, switch for a newer Ford Fiago ( so much bigger.....) and we make our way to the Winston Hotel in Rosebank, a nice, rich neighboorhood of Joburg.

We made a reservation at 500, one of the best restaurants in the world which would only cost us 300$ for the most elaborate 6 course meal and wine pairing...  We get to the very exclusive Saxon Hotel, where Nelson Mandela stayed for months once he was freed from Jail and wrote some of his most influencial material, the likes of Oprah and Bill Clinton stay here.... So its grand!  We arrive and they cannot find our reservation, which after much dissapointment, Champagne, canapes and a private visit of the hotel to make time pass, ( 3 hrs to be precise ) we decide to eat at their other restaurant, the Qunu Grill and as we  are about to order, the manager, Marco Mertens comes and offers us a recently opened table at the 500 restaurant! What a meal, a series of deconstructed elements, textures, flavor paring accompanied by the only master sommelier in South Africa, we feel like royalty.... If you are ever in South Africa, you must reserve a few weeks in advance, do it!!! I forgot to add - the entire evening was complimentory!!! Saxon team, thank you for making our first night in Joburg an unforgetable one!

We leave the hotel around 1 am and not 10 minutes later, the police stops us and wants to verify that everything is ok.... Sensing an imminent bribe question, we both exit the vehicule and i ask one  of the popos... Are you stoping us because we are tourists??? They of course say no, no, no... And after questionning us for another 5 minutes and carefully searching our vehicule, they send us on our way... No alcohol, no drugs, no sex, we are good to go!!

The hangover i woke up to was EPIC... And with eveything that comes with a good hangover, like throwing up and loosing the will to live and of course promising to never drink ever again....i was able to move around 4pm.... Chris, woke up fresh like a rose which makes me secretely worship and hate him.   Cancelled tonight's gastronomical adventure to recharge our batteries and eat most likely Mcdonalds :)