24 august: time to bid farewell to cape town, to my comfortable hotel/apartment at the harbour bridge hotel, to mountain views and ocean views and penguins…
having been up dead early every morning for the past ten days, i allowed myself the luxury of a lay-in and a leisurely coffee and breakfast before catching the MyCiTi bus out to the airport. i had time for a glass of castle beer before catching the short(ish) flight to johannesburg. a brief lay-over and a night time take off to frankfurt. i binge-watched the remaining episodes of season six of the good wife (gripping to the end!), and still had time to catch a few episodes of ashes to ashes, a seriously entertaining south african telenovela series set in a family-owned funeral home. hope it comes to canadian netflix.
after the overnight flight with virtually no sleep, i landed in FRA with four hours to kill before the final leg of the journey. my regular FRA routine (yes, i’ve been through there enough times to have a regular routine) is a paulaner hefe-weissbier and kartoffelsalat at the goethe bar. but there is construction in that area of the b-gates, and the goethe bar was boarded up. thankfully, the new deli bros cafe was open at 6:30 am. i sank onto a comfy leather bench, which conveniently had built-in electrical outlets, plugged in my devices, and ordered a cup of coffee. i managed to dash off a couple of blog posts (you may recall), and catch up on some ifla work by email with mlas chair barbara while we were briefly in the same country. and i was able to fulfill the most important elements of my routine by ordering a hefe-weissen und kartoffelsalat (and no, i was not the only person there drinking beer at 8am).
the flight to montreal was uneventful. with nothing left to watch on my ipad, i scrolled through the various air canada on-board entertainment offerings, surfing through some comedy series episodes (modern family, big bang theory), and trying to ignore the whining children around me and the knee in my kidney of the person in the seat behind me. arrival at YUL: it was a treat to be greeted at the terminal by teresa, who was there to chauffeur me back to ottawa. i showered, texted the neighbour to let her know i was back, and slept for the next 14 hours.