Friday, 26 October 2012
Late nights often result in late mornings, but there was plenty on the agenda on what was Admin and Organizing Day, so despite the presence of rather effective blackout curtains we were up reasonably early after what had been a late night at the end of a longish and eventful day. Still, it was after eight when we stepped into the elevator to head off to reacquaint Hughesy with the strange but very civilized custom of the breakfast Viking.
We were off, in other words, for a substantial smorgasbord breakfast.
The day's agenda included converting the Rail Pass voucher purchased in Australia into an actual usable document, buying the tickets for the first couple of days' rail travel and anything else Madam thought might be booked out, chasing up some computer specific reading glasses with a focal length of 85 centimetres for Hughesy, transferring the clothing and other items Madam was going to need for the rail pass leg from her (blue) suitcase to my black one (The Black Monster), and stashing everything else into the other one, which was going to be spending the next couple of weeks with The Mother.
That took things like neck cushions, airline blankets, changes of clothes for the return leg from Cairns to Bowen and other odds and ends out of the we're going to have to lug all this around the countryside for about three weeks equation.
Downstairs at the Viking I was tucking into a freshly made (as opposed to here's one we made a little earlier) omelette when I had a momentary vision of the inimitable Frockster and his likely reaction to the scene before me. There were, for a start, the regulation number of efficient and courteous hospitality workers, showing guests to seats, clearing tables, delivering tea and coffee and a couple of people who were there to supervise, ensuring that everything was being done just right. The guests were quietly going about their breakfasts, and the whole scene had a barely audible hum of activity. I figured you'd be able to hear The Frockster before he'd actually come through the door. He'd probably be demanding a table next to Hughesy and the Kobe Carnation and riffing off a variation of the theme that prevented us seeing Mount Fuji last time around.
Then, I figured, he'd sight the breakfast options. Now, I'm not suggesting the man has steak and eggs for breakfast, or beef sausages, or some specific form of cereal, but the first thing he'd have noticed was an absolute lack of anything resembling Corn Flakes or Coco Pops.
The eye would have run along what would serve as a perfectly adequate continental breakfast buffet and noted the presence of the standard varieties of fruit juice and the varied selection of pastries, but would have pulled up short where you might expect to find the cereal. Instead he'd have sighted a variety of very Japanese breakfast options, none of which Hughesy is familiar with because of what lies on the other side of the open space.
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