The long flight from LAX to Sydney went surprisingly well. The plane was on it’s second transpacific flight ever. Brand spanking new. The business class had the lay flat pods. There was a ton of stuff to get sorted before getting settled. Blankets, pillows, headsets etc. The one super nice improvement to the set up was a padded bed cover. This really improved the comfort of the seat.
We took off at about 11:30 pm.
Both Susanne and I were pretty tired so opted to skip dinner. I watched a strange movie, took an Ambien, flattened out the seat and fell asleep. I slept for just over six hours. I was pleased with this. I was less pleased when I realized we weren’t even half way there yet. And I was hungry. Should have had dinner.
I watched a movie called “Without a Trace” about a guy and his daughter who lived in a park in Portland. It was an interesting, somewhat heavy and a bit weird.
Both Susanne and I got cheese plates. We couldn’t make it to breakfast.
I did notice the crew has some space above the main cabin to hang out. They have to take two full crews for such long flights. I was wondering what it was like up there. I don’t think they have a window.
We had to watch a video about how they would feed you to a Salty if you tried to bring agricultural products into Australia without declaring them. I debated whether the Nespresso pods qualified. I asked Susanne. Despite my normal judgment, I chose to declare them. Which only put us in a longer line and they didn’t care about the pods.
We finally made it to Sydney at 7 am.
The airport is chaotic. Every huge plane from the planet lands there all at the same time and the airport was new back in 1974.
I asked the first immigration guy if I had declare coffee pods. He didn’t know, but said it was going to be tough to make our flight to Brisbane in a very friendly and cheerful Aussie accent. Great.
For those of you who did keep your pie holes closed about the ridiculousness of packing a Nespresso machine, you can now smirk and say I told you so. Since I declared the coffee pods, we had to get in line with everyone that was bringing in dead fish, poisonous snakes, and durians. The line was, shall we say, large.
We finally made our way through the first of several queues. It was looking grim for our next flight. Jason and Cynthia were about 10 minutes ahead of us, but we didn’t have time to stop and say hi. We then got in the queue to drop our bags, which actually wasn’t the queue to drop your bags. It was the queue to get into the queue to drop your bags. The queue to drop your bags was very slow. They had some automated baggage machine that wouldn’t advance a bag if another bag was in the way. This meant that no bags advanced. Ugh.
We finished up in that queue and then queued up to get into security. We got through security and then queued up to get on the bus that took us to the domestic terminal. However, at this point it was looking like we were going to make our flight. Whew.
The other night I got a flame post on my Facebook page questioning my qualifications as the Chief of Analytics. Although I had kept my general incompetence well hidden it was surprising that somebody in Australia had taken the time to troll me. I saw I had an email from our crisis PR person. Somebody had even written a whole blog about me! I guess it is some disgruntled ex-employee from the RSPCA. Could be a spicy talk on Thursday.
We got on the flight and safely made it to Brisbane and the hotel. We both were grateful for a shower and clean clothes. The hotel is located on the South Bank in Brisbane which is a trendy area with a nice riverwalk and lots of restaurants. We walked down to one close by. There were billions of kids everywhere. Evidently it was the Queen’s Birthday and today was a holiday. Lunch was pretty tasty despite the hoards of screaming kids.
We walked down the river walk and say another really nice outdoor restaurant. We decided to stop in for a glass of wine and enjoy the nice mid-70’s weather. We had a Rose called “Dry as a Bone” and thought of Sandra. The jet lag was kicking in, so we headed back to the hotel for a nap.
Tomorrow we are going to take the river cruise down to the Koala sanctuary. I hope it will be fun and I can take some good pics.
You must log in to post a comment.