That's all, folks!

We are now back home in Australia.  The holiday's over.  Below are some statistics:

Total length of holiday: nine weeks

Total number of blog posts: 64

Number of countries visited: nine

Number of cities/major towns visited: 15

Approximate distance travelled: 52,500 kilometres

Accommodation: 10 hotels, family accommodation, plus cruise ship

Number of times taken off/landed (in aircraft): 12

Coldest temperature: below zero in Finland

Warmest temperature: above 30 degrees Celsius in the Caribbean

Furthest north visited: southern Finland 

Furthest south visited: Brunei

Furthest east in Caribbean: Barbados

Closest point to South America: about 35 miles while on Aruba

Seas/Oceans visited: Irish Sea (Aberystwyth), Baltic Sea (Finland), Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and South China Sea (Brunei).

Islands visited: Great Britain, Suomenlinna, Aruba, Curaçao, Grenada, Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, St Kitts, St Maarten, and Borneo.

Airlines used: Royal Brunei, Finnair, and Virgin Atlantic

Other transport throughout holiday:  

UK: Taxi from Heathrow to hotel, London buses, London Underground, one silver seven-seater people mover, one Volvo XC60, and the zip line at Bethesda.  

Finland: Buses to and from airport, train to Turku from Helsinki and return, Ilkka's car in Turku, tram in Helsinki, and ferry to island of Suomenlinna.  

US: Taxis to and from airport and to and from cruise ship and between hotels, bus to and air boat at the Everglades, and push bikes hired.  

Caribbean: Cruise ship, bus, van, land drover, a 4 x 4, a small people mover at Harrison's Cave in Barbados, and the St Kitts Scenic Railway

Brunei: Taxi from airport, hotel shuttle to town, night market and airport, speed boat on Brunei River.

Our holiday highlights

Big family holiday: all of us at Canberra Airport 19 January 2015, wearing jumpers that mark Tom's 80th birthday.

First we stopped in London.

Soph' and Harvey in London

All of us visited Stonehenge on a freezing day at the end of January.

Harvey and his new best friend, Emilia in Aberystwyth 

All of us got around Wales in our silver seven-seater people mover.

Harvey and Sam cheering for Wales in the Wales v England game.  C'mon Cymru!

We all went to Harlech Castle.

We marked Tom's 80th birthday by lunching at the Marine...

At the Marine, you get loads of good food.

Jess, me, Sam and (young) Tom went on the fastest zip line in the world and the longest in Europe at Bathesda, North Wales.

Jess and Sam in their flying suits for the awesome zip line experience.

Family photo at Mag and Tom's house, before the kids all flew home to Australia.

When the kids returned home to Australia, we went to Turku, Finland, and met Ilkka.

We sped across Finland on a train from Helsinki to Turku.

Chunks of ice on the island of Suomenlinna, near Helsinki

Helsinki

Back in Wales, relaxing with family and friends..

We visited Runnymede in this the 800th year since the signing of the Magna Carta..

We flew to Miami, Florida to board our cruise ship and sail the Caribbean.

Our cruise ship, the Celebrity Eclipse.

Ocean Drive, Miami.

After Miami, we flew to Brunei briefly before returning to Australia (22 March 2015) and reality.

Kampong Ayer

We had a lazy morning, encouraged by the General Manager of our hotel because Friday was prayer day, and not a good morning to go out if you're a tourist.  In the afternoon, the hotel shuttle delivered us to the Brunei River for a tour in a speed boat.

The boat driver showed us the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque, the Sultan's original palace before oil was discovered (looked like rubbish), and a couple of government buildings.  He sped out of the city limits and along to areas of the river where high mangroves lined both banks.

The Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque, whose main dome is made of pure gold.  Our driver said it's 24 carat gold.

Our driver pointed out small crocodiles along the way.  He said the larger crocodiles measure around five metres in length.

Other boats made the water choppy.

Jean and our driver

We stopped regularly to look for monkeys, but for a long time couldn't find any.

Our boat driver looked and looked for monkeys among the mangroves.  Any monkeys out there?

Jean couldn't see any monkeys either.

Look!!  Look!!  We see a monkey!

Half way along the first branch to the left sits a monkey.

Jean and I on the Brunei River

Apart from crocodiles and monkeys, we also saw storks.  It was the second time in four days we'd seen storks.  They also live in the Everglades in Florida.

This is Kampong Ayer, where many city people live.  Here, we saw varying quality of housing as well as schools, the police station, the fire brigade, and a mosque all accessed by boat or by walking bridges that often link the above with each other.

Housing on Kampong Ayer

The fire brigade

This mosque with walkways that provide access to it.

After our boat ride, we strolled around a nearby shopping mall and ate dinner.  When we exited the mall, it was close to dusk.  Small flocks of birds rushed past overhead, stopping in nearby trees.  Many more small flocks kept coming and coming, all arriving in the nearby trees.  This bird looked and behaved exactly like the starlings we watched in Aberystwyth, just no starling clouds now.  One of them dropped a poo on a Brunei lady.  A Google search confirmed there are starlings in Brunei.  

Our shuttle collected us at 6.45 pm.

Miami -- Heathrow -- Dubai -- Brunei

From the time we boarded our taxi outside the Hotel Victor in Miami to the time another taxi delivered us to our hotel in Brunei's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, nearly 33 and a half hours had passed.  Our flight to Heathrow took only eight hours as we took a slightly different route to the one taken when we flew to Miami from Heathrow more than two weeks ago.  We waited at Heathrow for five hours, where the sun shone just as brightly as during our recent holiday in Britain, changed from Terminal 3 to 4, collected our baggage from the Virgin Atlantic flight, and boarded a Royal Brunei plane.

The latter took us over Belgium, Germany, Austria, Romania, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, and over the Persian Gulf to Dubai.  After refuelling, our plane took us on to Brunei over the Indian Ocean, India, the Gulf of Thailand, Indo-China and the South China Sea.  We are now almost home.

Brunei is a nice little place.  The friendly taxi driver.  The very helpful hotel staff.  The friendly young Thai Muslim female students who wanted to practise their English with us.  The shopping mall merchants who gave me too much change and told me to keep it.  All these things leave us with an excellent impression of this country, the 54th country I've ever visited.

My relative, Ilkka, whom we visited in Finland last month, has followed our progress on flightradar24.com, and supplied these two images of part of our flight path into Brunei.

The night market

Last day in Miami

We had nothing planned for today, and just took it easy, whiling away the hours, meandering around the area of Ocean Drive.  After breakfast of an omelette and fruit salad, we checked out of our hotel.  We then strolled to the corner of 17th Street and Washington Avenue, where we found a bank.  We asked whether they had any Brunei currency.  We knew it was a long shot, and, as expected, they had none.  We'll try again at Heathrow.  We're more likely to get some there.

On the way back from Washington Avenue, we stopped to enjoy excellent lattes from the Aroma coffee shop.  In the early afternoon, we hired bikes from the hotel, and peddled up and down the Lummus Park Beach Walk, which straddles the length of South Beach.  We got a bit hot, stood under a public shower briefly, got wet, and carried on.

For lunch, I had a really excellent French baguette with ham, tomato, and avocado.  Jean didn't want any lunch, but had some of mine because there was so much of it.  Soon, we found another coffee shop where Jean had a Key lime pie.  The Key lime pie is an American dessert comprising Key lime juice, egg yolks, and condensed milk in a pie crust, according to Google.  It was beautiful.  It's probably named after the Florida Keys, a group of islands South of Florida.

I stopped for a latte in Starbucks, which wasn't quite as good as at Aroma, but not bad.  Following this, we sat for about half an hour on the Beach Walk, watched the people walk, ride, skate and jog by, as well as the planes that constantly fly back and forth over the ocean, up and down the length of South Beach, towing huge banners, usually advertising tonight's show in some night club.  We then mosied on down to the Hilton, on Ocean Drive, and sat on their front porch in the shade, again for ages.

We are now back in the lobby of our hotel, where our luggage has been in storage all day.  Soon, we will go out for dinner, come back, sit for longer, and then take a taxi to the airport.  At 23.30, we fly to Heathrow, the first leg of a long journey, three quarters of the way around the world, to Brunei, where we will spend two nights.  

Thereafter, we return home to Australia.  Till then, the blog is not finished yet!

The Hotel Victor on Ocean Drive, where we spent the last two nights.

The Lummus Park Beach Walk where we rode bikes.  The Walk runs parallel to and between Ocean Drive and South Beach.

A couple poses next to the sign that shows today's date and the temperature.

Hunting alligators in the Everglades

This afternoon, we took a tour to the Everglades, a half hour's drive from Miami.

The Everglades has plenty of wildlife, mainly alligators, fish and birds.  It's also home to about 100 Florida Panthers.  Somehow, historically, the panthers became trapped in this part of the United States.  Our airboat driver said there are never more than about 100 because when there are more, they become aggressive and kill each other until there are about 100 of them again.  The Everglades is never any more than about three feet deep, but you can't see the bottom, and you can't see if dangerous critters are lurking at the bottom of the pea soup water.

An alligator

We took an airboat ride which reached decent speeds, was very noisy, and we were obliged to wear ear plugs.  We were told to wear our baseball caps backwards so they wouldn't blow off.  I guess no one would want to 'fish' our hats out of the water!  

The Everglades is officially a marsh, not a swamp.

There are about 1.5 million acres making up the Everglades altogether, covering a fair bit of Florida.

There are all sorts of birds in the Everglades.

Another bird

Another alligator

We saw an alligator show.  This man talks to 'Bobby'.  'Fat Albert' is to the right.

I wrestled a man-eating alligator.

Alligator Alley

An alligator kindly posed for this photo.