Another flight or three?

Thursday morning we were up early for the eighth flight of my trip back to Belo Horizonte. We had some instructions from the travel agent lady to ask for her friend at the airport and he would let us have all our bags on the flight without having to pay excess baggage - and it worked! Apparently in Brazil it's all about who you know and if you are a friend of a friend of a travel agent it can be quite useful when you are about 3 bags over your luggage limit.

Arriving in Belo we were straight back to the same hotel we'd been in twice already so we were recognised when we arrived in reception. We had a walk down to the supermarket for a few last minute things to squeeze into the suitcase.

Friday was lovely and sunny so we took the opportunity to have a last day of sunbathing - always a mistake.... Mum said make sure you don't get sunburned before the flight back, and we did. Mine although painful was at least on the tops of my feet, whereas Catherine burnt the back of her legs which made sitting down fairly uncomfortable. The only relief we had for the pain that evening was to try and cool down with cans from the fridge!

Suddenly it was Saturday and time to get back to the airport - although as the flight was at 11.55pm - we managed to persuade the hotel to let us stay in our room until 5pm instead of checking out at 2pm so that we could just get to the airport and have a leisurely dinner while killing time before check in.

The flights home were relatively trouble free - and much easier travelling with someone who spoke both English and Portuguese! But after another two flights and a few hours at Lisbon in between it was nice to land in Heathrow on Sunday afternoon. All I had to do then was get back to the car and drive home - which turned out to be as easy as I thought...