En route, I realized, we should get a hotel with early check in, and shower, nap, relax a bit before we fly through the night a second time. I found a budget Ibis for 60$ which allowed early check in. Best 60$ We have spent! The hotel was on the Piccadilly line which connects direct to LHR (London-Heathrow). We easily clear customs (after I had to wait for an actual person as my smart-card is broken on my passport and the automatic control woudlnt' work for me). Then we were off on our long walk carrying our heavy Tom Bihn Backpack bags. Make it to the hotel, check in, shower and we decide to push through. Back to the Piccadilly line and its an hour and a half with 2 transfers to the maritime museum. Make it there, and it is not what matt was expecting, and he was slightly disappointed, however, we did it! Our zed fare loads get updated, and capetown is 2 seats open and 4 people listed. As it's a zed fare, we would be the last ones to board. Johannesburg went from 70 open to 10 open. 6 people on the list. Capetown leaves at 5p and JBurg at 10p, so we decide JBurg still looks the best, and we head back to the hotel on the hour and a half journey. We arrive at four thirty and take a 2 hour nap. Wake up around 7p and the loads have been updated again— negative 1 with 6 people listed. Okay, it's a 787 that carries 250 people, we definitely have a chance. Nothing else we can do but try,. Before we leave the hotel, we let the staff know… we might be back (And we technically have the room until tomorrow anyway) but we left the keys and said hopefully we wont be back but atleast we have a room already if we dont make it. So we head back to the airport check in, grab an English dinner at the same restaurant we ate at on the way home in September (this time we had bangers and mash and a steak pot pie— both very very good). And then we head to the gate. We check in with the agent, and they let us know they dont have seats for us yet but there are a few people that hadn't checked in. So we hangout inside the gate area waiting. And waiting. And waiting. With 2 other couples of non-revs. Well, all 250 passengers showed up. There was not a single seat available. The gate agent kindly checks the flights for the next day and lets us know South Africa is a very popular route this time of year from London. Capetown had 11 open but 19 standbys already and Johannesburg had 10 seats and 2 people listed, but the numbers change very last minute. So we do the walk of shame and try and find the exit. We had to re-clear customs into London which took some doing as it's not a common thing to happen.And then head back to our hotel carrying our heavy bags. We decide to stop at the pub next to the underground station by our hotel. They close at 1130 and it's now11, we ask if we could have a quick pint and they agreed. We have our pint and then do the half mile walk to the hotel. With the time change, we were pretty wide awake at this time,so we stop at the pub next to our hotel and see if they are open late, they were pretty dead inside but were open for another hour. We get new keys made and then drop our bags, grab a notepad and head back to the pub to research what to do next. After having the Virgin flight fill up so last minute, we decide to look at other options. Etihad and Emirates both fly out of London, and both have flights to South Africa. I post on Staff traveler and also on some facebook groups. There is a noon flight to Dubai that 'looks really good' and then flights from Dubai to capetown and 2 flights to Johannesburg "look okay". So, we decide to try emirates. We head back and set an alarm for 10a feeling a little optimistic.
AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS IN REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS
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