Here we are, back in Orlando, just long enough to unpack, draw breath, re-pack and leave again. This is our fleetingest visit yet: we arrived late last night and tomorrow evening we hop a flight to Zürich for the Wiederaufnahme of Parsifal. Getting here was also one of our longest journeys yet: for boring administrative reasons, we flew first from Dunedin to Hong Kong via Auckland, and then from Hong Kong to Orlando via San Francisco, with reasonably long layovers all the way. Almost two days in transit.
And those two days just happened to be my birthday. Yes, both of them. Sort of. September 22nd arrived in New Zealand just after we'd taken off from Auckland, continued in Hong Kong, and lo and behold, when we arrived in the US, it was still going. Thank you, international date line — I'm a big fan of extended birthdays. I'm not sure I'd exactly recommend an in-transit birthday, but it was nice to be offered champagne by Air New Zealand and, a day or so later, to have my present (jewelry, yay!) brought to me along with dessert by United — in cahoots with my travelling companion, of course, who really did a lovely job of turning 48 exhausting hours of travel into something resembling a birthday party. I probably owe the Travel Gods a word of thanks, too, for keeping everything disaster-free: no delays, no lost luggage, nothing.
I'm not really massively keen to be back in the air so soon. But I've just had a look at Zürich Opera's schedule for the two weeks we're there and I have to say, it does help: Traviata with Eva Mei, a Simon Keenlyside recital, Shostakovich's The Nose and a Fanciulla starring Emily Magee. Plus Parsifal of course. I think I can probably live with all of that.
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