The Cohen Family Adventure Summer 2011: The Joys of Airplane Travel

Well it's been over a week since we made our last blog entry and it seems like a lifetime ago that we left Europe. We are in Cape Town, South Africa as of yesterday after having spent 6 glorious days with our friends Andree, Pete, Sarah & Lauren - first on safari at Leopard Rock Lodge at the Madikwe Game Reserve and then at Andree & Pete's vacation home at the Zebula Resort, north of Johannesburg.

We packed up house in Mirmande on Saturday, July 30th and made our way north to the city of Lyon. Along the way we stopped in the village of Tournons Sur Rhone and found an authentically unique French market - the best one yet! We spent the night at the historic Hotel Celestine in Lyon after an afternoon spent walking through Old Lyon and a long trek uphill to visit the Notre-Dame de Fourviere Cathedral and Lyon's ancient Roman amphitheatres.

On Sunday we did some more sightseeing in Lyon and then stopped for a visit at the medieval walled village of Perouges. Another amazing discovery in the French countryside!

We drove to Lyon's airport on Sunday afternoon for our short flight to Heathrow airport in London. As luck would have it, the plane to Heathrow was quite late and, consequently, we missed our connecting, overnight flight to Johannesburg. British Airways set us up at the lovely Renaissance Hotel (at Heathrow) and we spent the whole next day (Monday) traveling to Frankfurt, Germany and then on to Johannesburg. By the time we finally reached South Africa it was 7:30am on Tuesday, August 2nd. The 6 of us had spent 48+ hours in the same set of clothes! Our luggage was forwarded on to Johannesburg (we thought) by British Air - more on that story later...