Perth 2015 Day 1 – Arrival into cold Perth

Scooting to Perth for a getaway one day ahead of the super long jubilee weekend. We went earlier to the airport in order to get some photo moments with the food exhibits that Singaporeans love. In the public areas was a huge durian one that our family busied ourselves with.

Checked in at Scoot counter was fast as we have booked the Scootbiz. After we were done with makan session of baby K, which was porridge kept in a thermos, we went through immigrations. There were also smaller exhibits after that such as the chicken rice and the roti prata. Baby K snoozed in the Ergobaby till we boarded the plane.

Technical fault hit the plane and while the engineers worked on it, the electricity was out, leaving the plane slightly stuffy. Afternoon fly time was usually busy and we queued for take off before the showers could come down.

Scootbiz offered a generous amount of leg and butt space, perfect for kids towing parents such as us. The windows shade were even technologically advanced, dimming with just a touch of a button. Fed baby K with whatever was left in the thermos and some mineral water as he seemed thirsty. I had to entertain the baby while my wife went on to express milk, taking advantage of the power point socket provided on the biz seats.

Our meals were served in plastic containers, warm but the quantity was seriously little, for the pasta at least. Meals came with small Toblerone, which I thought was quite excessive. Took turns to eat as expected.

Baby K fell asleep after some time in my wife’s arms and so I took some time to snooze. It was short lived though.

Nearing the end of the flight, I had to bring baby K to walk around as he was getting cranky due to boredom. As the flight descended into Perth, sunset in the horizon darkened to night.

Being in Biz enabled us to disembarked quickly, hitting a short queue at the immigrations. The main line was actually after the luggage claim where there was already 4 levels of people snaking through to get out of the arrival hall. The snaking line built up was due to checks to prevent bringing in of illegal stuff like food or animals and the coincidental arrival of 3 aircrafts. It was a good 20mins of queuing and randomly, we were selected to get sniffed by sniffer dogs (the lucky ones could head straight for the exit).

As we exited the small airport, I called Aries rental for the delivery of my car that was reserved online. We were informed to wait for the car’s arrival where she would call again. Then we met on the road after coming out of the arrival hall and to the left after crossing the road at the traffic light. We took the waiting time to buy some pastries for dinner, ham and cheese croissant and bacon egg muffin.

After picking up the car from the road from the lady, with some small displeasure from the airport staff, I was given the instructions on how to return the car and the fees that was charged to the car. The Nissan Micra was a rather small car but we managed to put in the not so big luggage of ours. It came with a forward facing baby seat which looked more comfy than the ones we had in Europe. I punched in the destination on the rented GPS and head to Fraser Suites Perth, 20mins away.

Driving was rather easy at night, without many cars around. The place looked pretty dead to me, all the shops seemed closed. As we arrived at the driveway, the hotel staff came out to help us with the luggage. Checked in pretty quickly and we were brought to our warm and modernly designed one bedroom apartment on the 13th floor, which was huge and had a not too bad view. Bathroom came with a tub and luxurious Loccitane bathing amenities.

Quickly we ate the delicious pastries and after repacking, we went to the IGA supermarket at Royal street to buy foodstuff for brekkie and for baby. Went back to the hotel and thereafter, I went to search for affordable car park since the hotel charged $30 per day, where the starting time was 1pm and it was really worth for me to park there since from 6pm, parking was free.

The road just opposite the hotel seemed ok till I read the no parking from 730-9am. I double confirmed with the hotel staff and he recommended that I go to the street on the left side of the hotel. There was quite an area of carpark but mostly full. I managed to get one, paid $7.20 using credit card on the machine to park till 10am ($3.60/hr).

Walked back to the hotel and it was back to baby related activities. First it was to clean him up since he was out the whole day, then it was cleaning up the bottles and sterilising them. Then feeding baby K with bananas we bought from IGA and then feeding him milk and entertaining him till my wife comes out from the shower to put him to sleep.

We were taking it easy for this trip so the first day was really for settling in. Lights off at 12midnight.