Adelaide to Dubai

13 hour flight has occurred without incident. Also without much sleep but feeling surprisingly okay for the time being we are finally on the first leg of our grand European adventure. Just waiting to meet with Gary and Di from Sydney as their flight was due in 15 minutes after us, and then Jan and I launch our surprise for them. stay tuned... And then Di and Gary rocked up to Gate 4 where we were waiting. Hugs all round and agreement to go for a much needed coffee at a cafe nearby. As I was the only one with dirhams I used up the Dubai money for our coffee and Gary added a few US dollars to make up the difference. All was going exceedingly well and the time fast approached for boarding for the Prague flight. So, as Mike was trying to thank Jan and me for looking after him so well so far, thinking we were now about to do our 'custody' handover of Mike to Di and Gary, and D & G are wanting to give us goodbye hugs, Jan and I instead get out our boarding passes, telling them there has been a slight change of plans, show G & D the boarding passes and slowly the 'surprise' sinks in that Jan and I are not going to Paris as we had been telling them for a year, but in fact are coming to Prague with them to do the same coach tour prior to our river cruise! Well, at that moment you would have thought the 3 musketeers had won the lottery. They kept asking if it was real. Di was crying. Mike is hugging us and Gary kept calling us slightly rude names for having kept up the pretence of a supposed trip to Paris while all the time knowing we were doing the same tour as them. he now also understands why I kept telling him not to change his seating on the plane even though he was sorely tempted to do so. I think he still is having trouble believing it as I arranged for D & G to sit in front of us on the current flight and he keeps turning around to make sure we really are here with them... what fun! He did actually say that it is just as well he didn't have a heart attack, and I'm inclined to agree with him, as that wouldn't have been much fun!!! Di is cross with us that she is now too excited to sleep as her plan was to sleep for the 6 hour flight from Dubai to Prague. I'm still silently congratulating the princesses for doing such a fantastic job of keeping the secret. If only I had filmed their reactions when the light dawned on them as they looked at our boarding passes... mind you, not sure we could have kept the pretence up much longer as I've always said that if you are going to tell lies, you had better have a darn good memory, and it was becoming a major production to keep coming up with lies about our supposed Paris trip... But right now we are all settled on our flight to Prague and very much looking forward to our upcoming tour. My only regret to date was that in having to keep pretending that Jan and I had hours before we were to head off to Paris, I ended up not having time to buy my duty free alcohol in Dubai. Not to worry though as I'm sure they sell whiskey in Prague.... and so our holiday has begun....