bdjohns1

EDIT - updated to in-line some of the better pictures.

First, a bit of disclaimer info before I dive into the trip report. This trip was our first in international business class (and my 2nd international trip period - the last was on TW800 JFK-CDG a couple of months before the number of arrivals/departures became sadly unbalanced). I do travel a fair amount for my job (20-25% avg over the last three years), although it's all domestic, and it's primarily on UX. Pretty much every time I fly mainline UA, I can use 500-milers on 1 or more segments, just because I fly so little on "real planes", as I like to refer to them. I've been 2P since 2002 (I started working in mid-2001), earning my status every year on segments - I almost made 1P on segs in 2003. So, we both fly a lot, but it’s not often we get any real good perks out of it, aside from the miles.

Also, a note – the links in this story primarily point to photos I took during the trip (the pictures don't start until day 3, though). If you want to just go straight to the photo gallery, it’s over at my website. I've got about 100 shots uploaded in all out of the ~400 I took.

Before the trip

The back story - in December 2003, I popped the big question. Fortunately, she said yes. Shortly after that, we talked over honeymoon destinations. Australia had been on our list of potential future vacation destinations, so after a very short discussion, it was decided. Sometime in January, I started looking for tickets. We're both heavily loyal to UA, since we work for a rather big Chicago-based food company. As a result, I had about 110K miles (pretty much all earned ORD-MEM and ORD-SYR!), and she had 250K. So, I started to look for award availability. This was back in the dark ages before I discovered FT, so I didn't know about UA's 330-day window, choosing good seats from SeatGuru, the various tools for checking availability, etc. By mid-January, getting tickets for a trip right after our wedding (mid-October) out of Saver C inventory was impossible, so after an hour of picking dates with a wonderful agent at the International Awards desk, I finally found a pair of Saver C seats (90K miles each). Neither of us had ever flown upstairs in the 747, so I was able to secure us seats 13AB both ways (LAX-SYD and SYD-SFO), and run-of-the-mill 1st class for the domestic segments, departing 11/26, returning 12/11. $81 in fees and taxes per ticket...no complaints versus buying the whole ticket.

Every now and then, I'd check the itinerary online to ensure nothing had changed. Naturally, booking that far out, the flights went through several iterations of schedule changes. Every time, I get the message "Please call United at 1-800-... to confirm this change", which is a minor gripe of mine. Why waste my time (and UA's) to confirm that the ORD-LAX flight now arrives 5 minutes later, cutting the layover down to a mere 3:05? Just give me an "OK, that's fine" button. I think this happened 3 or 4 times between January and November.

Day 1 - And so it begins...

UA 941 ORD-LAX 767-300 seats 4EF
UA 839 LAX-SYD 747-400 seats 13AB

We got to O'Hare about 2.5 hours early on the day after Thanksgiving to find a relatively empty Terminal 1. Checked in quickly, had no one in line ahead of at security, and neither of us managed to be groped by a bored TSA employee. So far, a great start to the honeymoon. The flight left out of Gate C-20, so we headed over to the C concourse RCC to pass the time. Since I'm always flying domestic, this was my first time visiting the club. Overall, I was happy with the club experience. We grabbed a few seats by the windows and nursed some hot tea while watching cargo containers being unloaded from a 767 parked next door. If I flew every week on business, the membership fee would be well worth it, even if the ORD RCC is allegedly towards the lower-end of the airline lounge scale. I should mention that we both picked up a cold a couple days before Thanksgiving, so we had bottles of DayQuil/NyQuil (the giant f----ing Q, baby!), a box of tissues, and were trying valiantly to beat the cold into submission. We passed the time quickly, and headed over to the gate. The ORD-LAX flight was mostly full. Channel 9 wasn't working (according to the FA I asked, it was a system issue, not a pilot choice issue), so I didn't get to indulge my usual habit on the rare occasions I do fly mainline UA. Unfortunately, the power points on both my seat and my wife's seat were a bit twitchy, so I had to enjoy The Bourne Identity on my laptop on battery power. I don't remember what the meal was, but it was good, and we got the ice cream sundaes for dessert.

Arrived at LAX pretty much on time. All of my business travel has been on the east coast, so this was my first time through LAX. Not much to see at 8:00 at night. We decided to get in some exercise and walked the concourses of terminals 6-8, stopping to pick up a copy of Lonely Planet Australia at a bookstore in T6, since in my infinite wisdom, I forgot to stick my original copy in my backpack when I packed. Naturally, my wife laughed at me about it periodically during the trip. (by the way, I now have a lightly-used copy of the current edition of Lonely Planet Australia - all reasonable offers accepted) After our exercise, we retired to the RCC, claimed our drink chits, and got comfortable again. More hot tea, and I decided a couple rum and cokes might help to kill off whatever was growing in my throat (hey, alcohol's a disinfectant, right?). Plugged in the laptop to recharge and we passed another couple of hours at the LAX RCC. It got full towards the end of our stay as activity in the terminal picked up for all of the red-eye departures.

We boarded our home for the next 15 hours (or so we thought) and got settled in upstairs. I've flown in International business seats on DEN-ORD flights in 777s a few times, so that was already a known for me. We got comfy, and I plugged into Channel 9 to hear a little ground banter (understandably light at 10:30p PST). At this point, the cockpit door was still open, so I ambled up to the lavs and gave the front office a quick eyeballing to see how the 'real thing' looked, since I like to fly the 744 on Flight Simulator 2004. I heard the crew going through some pre-flight checks, and I heard the voice of the TCAS system being tested while attending to business in the forward lav. Returning to my seat, the pilot collected our over-water frequencies. Then, the routine changed. After pushback, the pilot asked for a patch to UA Maintenance, and started talking about a fault in the TCAS system. I sank a bit lower in the seat after hearing that. Shortly after that, Channel 9 was cut off, and the pilot informed us we'd be returning to the gate to pick up a mechanic. After a while, the issue was isolated to a bad antenna, and we pushed back again to take to the skies about 1.5 hours late. I did appreciate the flight deck crew actually telling us what the problems were as opposed to just calling it some vague “mechanical problem”.

Menus had been distributed back when we were on the ground, and since the departure was a bit late, the FAs got us through meal service about as fast as one would expect after takeoff so we could all get to sleep. Not fast enough for my wife, who took her NyQuil, donned the eyemask and earplugs, and crashed. I managed to stay up for my 2nd dinner of the night, having a decent filet mignon and a slice of cheesecake. Then I joined in the NyQuil-induced sleep, only waking for some equatorial turbulence and another dose of NyQuil after 4 hours. After a fairly solid 8 hours of sleep, I woke up to find we had another 5+ hours of flight to go. Fortunately, this Empower point worked and the wife and I watched the third Harry Potter movie on DVD (it was being shown on the video system, but the audio cut out every 5 seconds). After that, it was time for breakfast (fruit plate and a couple rather good croissants) and we started getting collected for our arrival into Sydney. We descended through clear skies over Botany Bay and into Kingsford Smith Airport, getting to the gate about 90 minutes late. My overall impression with the in-flight service was that it was certainly competent and better than my usual domestic coach on UA or UX, but certainly nothing to write home about after reading descriptions of in-flight service on SQ and the like.

Day 2 - G'day...

Immigration and Customs were negotiated very easily. A 10 minute wait in line for an Immigration agent, 5 minutes to get our bags (and the *A Priority tags worked!), 2 minutes to clear Customs/Quarantine - they said to declare all food, so I declared the bag of gummy bears I had! Then, a quick stop at the ATM to load up on Aussie currency (coincidentally, the day we arrived was also the worst exchange rate I've seen in a while - A$1 = US$0.81, even at the ATM exchange rate). Walked over to Hertz, where the key to our ride awaited. We walked outside to the requested Jaguar X-Type (2.5L engine) that lacked the new-car smell, but was still pretty lightly-driven (3300km showing). As they say, ‘very civilized’. This was our first trip in a right-hand drive car, so I was initially a little tentative, but I got the hang of the car quickly as we made our way up the M1 into Sydney. Our first day's destination was the village of Leura up in the Blue Mountains, but I wanted to acclimate to driving a little more so we detoured off the M1 and through random luck ended up driving by Bondi Beach. It was about 35ºC that morning and the beach was packed. We couldn't find a parking space, so we did a driveby and headed back towards the city. I pulled over to get the in-dash GPS programmed, and we set off. I quickly discovered that there aren't many interconnecting freeways, even in the Sydney area, as compared to the US, where most drives to major destinations can be made completely on controlled-access roads. Had to take a surface street across the CBD to the Anzac Bridge. Then, back to surface streets, and then finally it became the M4. We made our way up to Leura without incident. At that point, we were a little early to check into our house, so we took a little time to check out the village. Leura’s a fairly small town, but it’s got a nice ‘downtown’ area with shops, restaurants, etc. We got a late lunch at one of the cafes, then went to the house we’d rented, which was very cozy, although I wish I’d known it didn’t have air conditioning, as the temperature was in the low/mid-30s C. Fortunately, the owner dropped off a couple of fans for us, so all was well. By this time, jet-lag had caught up, and we both ended up taking naps. We woke up enough to get a light dinner, and then back to sleep.

Day 3 – The Blue Mountains

We woke up to clear skies and comfortable temperatures, and didn’t feel too jet-lagged. One would hope not after sleeping for 15 of the last 17 hours! After getting a quick breakfast, we headed over to the infamous Three Sisters. Naturally, the usual hordes of tour buses were there, so I snapped the obligatory pictures and we set off to do a couple of brief hikes. First, we took a short jaunt to the first of the Three Sisters, and then returned and headed over to Katoomba Falls. Next was a trip down the Scenic Railroad into the rainforest in the valley. There’s a nice boardwalk through the forest that’s good for a couple of km of walking. We returned to the village and proceeded up the highway to Blackheath, where there’s another scenic overlook. Then, we returned to Leura for dinner at an Italian restaurant whose name I’ve forgotten…but I still remember the meatballs, which were quite good.

Some pictures of the Blue Mountains:


The Three Sisters


Scenic overlook

bdjohns1

Day 4 – Jenolan Caves

The weather forecast for 30 Nov called for record highs in Sydney (42 C), with temperatures up in the mountains even expected to be in the upper-30s. Sounds like a great day to go into a cave! The drive to Jenolan is about 2 hours and change, and it’s certainly a handful. The main road into the Caves resort area is under construction, and it followed a very tortuous path. We did 2 different cave tours, and came away pretty impressed with the operation (picture). My wife and I both like cave walks (we’ve done a fair number here in the US, and we’re planning to do a ‘wild cave’ tour (no pre-made trails, squeezing through tight spots, etc) at some point soon). If you’ve got a day to head up there, it’s definitely worth doing. That night after getting back to Leura, we headed back to the Three Sisters so I could get a few night-time shots.


Jenolan Caves

Day 5 – To Canberra…

Once again, the geniuses who did all the roads for NSW reared their ugly heads. There’s no way to get from the M4 to anything heading south without a trip onto surface streets. Regardless, we made it to Canberra in about 4.5 hours along the ‘scenic’ Hume Hwy. Well, it’s more scenic than say, driving I-57 from Chicago to Memphis… We made our way into the city and decided to make our first stop at Parliament House. It’s very interesting because of its relative newness (opened 1989?) versus all of the government buildings in, say, Washington DC. The House was in session that afternoon for Prime Minister’s questions (although without the PM, since he was at an ASEAN conference). It’s not too different from the Saturday Night Live skit that pokes light at the British Parliament, so it made for a good half-hour of entertainment and political orientation to Australia. Since a good deal of the building is underground, you can go up to the roof below the flagpole to get some nice views of the rest of Canberra.


Parliament House


Lying on the grassy roof of Parliament House

After leaving Parliament, we wanted to head to the Mint, but we arrived 5 minutes before the 4pm closing. So, we retired to the hotel for the evening. I tried to figure out how cricket worked (with a Test match on), but was unsuccessful.

Day 6 – Canberra, then on to Thredbo…

We started our day grabbing a croissant at a nearby bakery, then heading over to the National Museum of Australia. As far as museums go, it was pretty good. Personally, I thought a few of the exhibits were a little too ‘conceptually high-minded’, but that’s just my opinion. YMMV. Overall, it was worth spending a morning checking everything out. We did walk around the grounds a little, since the weather was agreeable, with nice views across the lake. Next up, we crossed town to the Royal Australian Mint. My grandparents and my father-in-law are all coin buffs, so they’d have enjoyed this. We enjoyed the displays as well, saw the minting presses running in both the proof area and the circulating coins area, and availed ourselves of the gift shop to pick up souvenirs for the coin collectors back home.

My wife requested (and got) a stop at the Hyatt just down the street from Parliament House so she could check out the tea buffet they serve every afternoon. It was a bit more than we wanted to drop on tea and small sandwiches, though, so we opted not to partake. I’d seen a picture of Parliament house and Anzac Pde that I liked in the Lonely Planet book, so we drove over to the War Memorial to take the same shot. I’d wanted to spend some time here, but I didn’t want to rush it, and we still had our drive south to Thredbo to contend with.


ANZAC Parade

Out in the parking lot, I programmed Thredbo into the trusty Jag’s navigation system. The expected routing was spit back out, with an expected travel time of 5:10. Five hours and ten minutes to go 210 km? I know MapQuest usually overestimates drive times by about 10% (of course, that’s usually about what I exceed the speed limit by in the US too), but that’s kind of ridiculous. After reviewing the manual, I think the Jag’s navigation system (and whereis.com.au) just assume certain speed limits (60 km/h and 30 km/h for typical ‘streets’) that don’t correspond to reality (mostly 100 km/h up to about 20km out of Thredbo). We made the trip in 3.25 hours with a grocery stop in Jindabyne. Our accommodation for the night was the Thredbo Alpine Lodge, which was nice, even if the off-season rates seemed to be about 15-20% higher than I though they should be for the room we had. Couldn’t argue with the location, though – right across the street from the chairlift.

Day 7 – The Top of Australia

The day didn’t get off to the greatest of starts – low, dense fog. There’s not much point in climbing a mountain if you can’t see anything. We chatted with a couple of the locals as we got breakfast that morning, who indicated that the morning fog usually lifts pretty quickly. This was a very easy hike – you take the chairlift from 1300m up to around 1900m, leaving the vertical gain to the summit of Kosciusko a nice easy 325m. To protect the alpine tundra, the hiking trail is actually an elevated steel-grate walkway. My wife and I have hiked a lot, but this was unique versus US hiking trails above timberline. It was a good day up on the summit, with temperatures around 5C and only moderate winds. As predicted, the skies were only partly cloudy and the views from up top were excellent. (picture 1) (picture 2 - there's us!). Just for kicks and grins, I pulled out my cellphone and called home to say hello ‘from the top’, returning a favor my dad did when he called from the top of his first 14-er (14,000 ft+ summit) in the States. Amazingly, call quality was great – he said I sounded no worse than if I was on the cellphone back home. Naturally, the hike downhill was easy, although the steel decking was definitely harder on the knees than a conventional trail.


Ben and Marcie on top of Australia

Day 8 – Road Trip the First

Once again, I showed callous disregard for the travel times indicated by whereis.com.au and the Jag’s navigation system. Both predicted the drive from Thredbo to Apollo Bay (on the Great Ocean Rd) would be in excess of 14 hours. Once again, sadly mistaken. 9.5 hours. Many people would cringe at this sort of drive, but not me. Driving vacations in my family netted me 40 of the 50 US states, and my wife used to live in Memphis, a 9 hour drive from Chicago. It’s a long day and I’m certainly tired at the end, but it’s quite do-able. The drive down out of the mountains was quite scenic, and we were able to see a few emus and kangaroos as we made our way north towards Wodonga along the Murray River Hwy. There we rejoined the still-exciting Hume Hwy down to Melbourne, where the geniuses of Australian traffic planning struck again.

Engineer 1:
“Hey, let’s have the Hume end outside Melbourne without any direct freeway connections!”

Engineer 2: “Brilliant!”

That rant aside, we found our way to the Great Ocean Rd. All I can say about that drive is WOW. I’ve always liked the ocean, and being a Midwesterner, I don’t get to see it as often as I like. So, we both enjoyed the views winding along the coast as we drove to Apollo Bay. Our pad for the night was right across the street from the ocean, with a small patio looking down onto the beach. We opted to grab some takeaway and ate on the beach as the sun set. (really, you should look at that picture!!) A great end to a long day…


Sunset over Apollo Bay, VIC

Day 9 – The Great Ocean Road

We got an early start down the road. Our first stop was at a short rainforest walk between Apollo Bay and Cape Otway that had some very interesting foliage…trees where there was room for a person to walk under the roots, more of the giant ferns we’d seen in the Blue Mountains, etc. Then we visited the Cape Otway lighthouse, which does have some nice views from the top looking back towards Melbourne and west to the Southern Ocean. On the return drive, we stopped and saw a group of koalas sleeping away the day in the treetops. This satisfied my wife’s “trifecta” for wildlife in Australia (kangaroo, emu, koala).


Sleeping koala

After a quick lunch stop at a roadside café for a lunch pie, we made the obligatory stops along the coastline to see the Twelve Apostles and the many other rock formations along the coast near Port Campbell (picture 1) (picture 2) (picture 3). I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to trying to make my pictures look nice, so it was a bit of a feat to work around the hordes of people on bus tours shooting video footage so I could just get the shots without half of someone’s head in the frame. Looking at how some of the ocean shots turned out has convinced me of the benefit of always keeping a circular polarizer filter handy.


The Great Ocean Road (after a little cleaning in Photoshop, I've been selling this one, even!)


More of the Ocean Road

On the drive back to Apollo Bay, we stopped off at a couple of beaches to get a little more walking in, then grabbed takeaway and ate by the beach as the sun set again. There’s something to be said for a beach with no one else there…

To be continued...Melbourne, Philip Island, another road trip, and Sydney...

bdjohns1

Day 10 - Melbourne

After a late start, we drove back up to Melbourne. We spent the afternoon checking out the downtown area. Melbourne was certainly getting into the Christmas spirit, but it was a little disconcerting to be seeing a Christmas tree with temperatures in the low 30-s C (not F). My sister-in-law collects Nativity sets, so this was one of my wife’s missions for the afternoon. Nativity sets are certainly harder to find in Australia than the US, but she was successful. We headed up to the top of the Rialto Tower to get a view of the city, then after taking part of Lonely Planet’s recommended walking tour of downtown Melbourne, we headed over to the Old Melbourne Gaol just outside of the CBD. It’s a very interesting museum - the exhibits are all within individual jail cells, and a lot of them tell the stories of prisoners. Sadly, it sounds like some of them got a rather raw deal under the judicial system of the time (but hey, that happened in a lot of places).

Accommodations in Melbourne were at the Marque Hotel down in St. Kilda. I’d describe the hotel as a photographic negative of a W Hotel. They’re both trendy-looking hotels, but the Marque is decorated in light colors as opposed to dark. It also had the advantage of being substantially less expensive than a W (~US$125/night). True, you don’t get *wood points for it, but I’d still strongly recommend it for people visiting Melbourne if you can't/don't want to stay in the CBD.

A quick e-mail/web check revealed some bad news. Our return flight was sharing the same flight number all the way through to Chicago, with a plane change in SFO. With an equipment change in the SFO-ORD flight (again!), we’d lost our seats together upstairs on the SYD-SFO segment. Stupid UA. I called into reservations, and a helpful Aussie agent managed to get us back into the upper deck in 13A/H, which at least gave us hope that someone would sympathetically switch seats for us. The whole reason we did C tickets was to sit upstairs in the 744 - there was actually better availability for Saver F tickets when we reserved the flights.

Dinner that night was at Monroe’s, a nice little restaurant right up Fitzroy St. from the hotel. Enjoyed a rather good paella (learning in the process about the heads-on method of serving prawns in Australia - I had to hide it from my wife!) and a couple of cold ones before retiring to the hotel for the night.

Day 11 - Melbourne and Philip Island

Before it got too hot and muggy in the city, we paid a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens. It’s really a very nice park to walk through…just seeing all of the oddly different foliage just reinforced that we were half a world away from Chicago. We spent a couple of hours walking around the gardens, then set off on our drive to Philip Island. Sure, the fairy penguins are touristy, but it’s something unique to Australia. We spent some time in the afternoon at the koala preserve on the island, and had a chance to get up close and personal with a few of them as they napped away the afternoon. We did get a little surprise, though - one of the koalas came down out of her tree mid-day and went off in search of a new one. According to the rangers, this is a bit uncommon, so we did get to see one ambling down the trail to her next meal. We were cautioned to stay well back as she got off the tree. Koalas aren’t too bright - they will sometimes mistake a person’s legs for a tree trunk…given the claws they’ve got, it would not be a good feeling!


Koala disembarking from its tree...

After dinner, we made our way to the south end of the island for the nightly Penguin Parade. For the uninitiated, Philip Island is home to fairy penguins, which look a lot like regular penguins, but are only around 12” tall fully grown. Every night around dusk, they swim up to the beach in packs. Once there’s a critical mass of them, they march up the beach, dodging enemy seagulls like GIs in “Saving Private Ryan”. As they’re massing on the beach, sometimes a seagull will menace a small mass of penguins and they’ll scamper back to the water. Eventually, the little fellows all made their way back to their burrow homes, where the young were waiting for their dinner. Unfortunately, they don’t allow flash photography, and there’s no way you can get a tripod set up in those crowds, so no pictures here.


Here's what the fairy penguins look like, from a wildlife park we visited later...

Day 12 - Road Trip the Second…Ow!

Today was designated as our last big driving day to make our way back to Sydney. The nav system in the car decided to start us off on the CityLink tollway, so my wife had to make the call to buy us a daypass to avoid getting slapped with a fine. After that, we rejoined the Hume for the ~900km trip back to Sydney. The first half of the drive was a repeat for us, having previously driven the stretch from Wodonga to Melbourne a few days back. As previously established, I’m not a huge fan of some of the design decisions Australian traffic engineers have made…having the Hume zigzag through Albury, mostly in 50 km/h zones was a bit annoying. As we approached Golburn, the weather started to turn inclement. Unfortunately, things quickly went from bad to worse - visibility dropped to around 30 meters and we got into a golf-ball sized hail storm. Not what you want to run into in the Jag. Made it to the shoulder to wait it out, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find an overpass to hide under before it got too bad. Knocked the plastic covers off the side mirrors and dented the hood, roof, and trunk lid all to heck. Fortunately, we weren’t the worst off from this…at the next service area we stopped and saw a few cars that were dented worse, and some broken windows, to boot.

I just recently received the damages paperwork from Hertz, and I can now tell you that the total cost to repair a severely hail-damaged Jag is A$15,000 - about $5500 in parts and $9500 in labour. $2500 transponder key? 1993gt40[/b].

Nevertheless, we successfully made it into Sydney around dinnertime, and made our way downtown to the Sheraton Four Points. By now, I was pretty beat from driving, so we settled for room service dinner and called it a night.

Day 13 - Sydney from on high

Our first full day in Sydney began with a late-morning climb up to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Many people have discussed the cost of doing the bridge climb (>A$100 each), but my wife and I thought it was well worth it. We had a perfect day to do the climb - clear skies, comfortable temperatures, and a light breeze. The views up on top are tremendous - looking down at boat traffic in the harbour, the views of the city center to the south and the Opera House just below us …all amazing. Again, unfortunately, you’re not allowed to bring your own camera up to the top with you - I could have had a field day up there with the views of the skyline and harbour. I would have loved to do a panorama up there like I’ve done in Colorado and Chicago. (browse my gallery if you want to see those!)

Our next mission while in Sydney was to let my wife loose for some shopping. So, we spent the afternoon walking around The Rocks. Her primary focus was on finding a nice opal (her promised wedding gift from me). I think Iost track of all of the stores we went into and all of the opals we looked at. We returned to the Four Points to freshen up a little before meeting some friends of my wife's family who live in the Sydney area for dinner and drinks. Dinner was at a great restaurant in The Rocks (where I again had to hide the heads of the BBQ prawns from my wife), followed by a few rounds of (admittedly overpriced) drinks at the bar up top in the Shangri-La hotel. Fortunately, we got a table by the windows, so the excellent views of Sydney Harbour offset the A$16 drinks.

Day 14 - Sydney and surroundings, and an almost trip to the Opera House

We started off the day heading west of Sydney to one of the wildlife parks in the outer suburbs out towards Paramatta. Got an opportunity to get up close and personal with some koalas, emus, and kangaroos (this guy's mocking me because he got the whole cup of feed!).


Ha ha ha...stupid American tourist!

From there, we drove back east to Manly to check out the waterfront. Unfortunately, it had turned gray and drizzly, so we didn't get to see a whole lot. We did a little shopping and found a bookstore to stock up on reading material for the next day's trip back. Then, back to Darling Harbour, where we got set to head to the Opera House to see Handel's Messiah. We figured we'd leave about an hour before showtime, catch a cab over, and grab a quick snack before the show started.

Think again.

Got downstairs and the cab line was obscene, with no available cabs coming into the pick-up lane. After 15 minutes, we abandoned the stationary cab line and dashed across the street to the car park (by now, the rain had picked up to a bona-fide shower). Unfortunately, every bloke in Sydney had the exact same idea - total gridlock throughout the Sydney CBD. The "as-the-crow-flies" distance of ~1km to the Opera House took 75 minutes. Then, adding insult to injury, every car park I could find within 8 blocks was full, and we were still in a monsoon-like downpour.

After circling around the area for way too long, we eventually gave up, figuring we'd already blown past the intermission. Ironically, traffic on the return trip was much more sane, and it only took 30 minutes to go 1km. :| So, we found dinner near the hotel and decided to call it a night. Guess we'll have to take in the Opera House on our next trip to Australia

Day 15 - The longest day

We spent our last morning in Sydney checking out a street market in The Rocks (my wife) and shooting a few more pictures around Sydney Harbour (me). Naturally, my wife found another opal that she liked. So, her birthday gift was now covered with just one more swipe and signature.


Sydney Harbour Bridge from The Rocks


The Opera House

Like some other airports I frequent, Sydney Airport has a small problem - when you want to return the rental car, there's no easily visible gas station nearby. We ended up wasting about 15 minutes making our way around Mascot and the airport area until we finally managed to find a station to top off the Jag.

As we pulled into the rental car returns lot, I noted that we'd covered nearly 3700 km in our 15 days. Hertz was able to get us on our way relatively quickly, even considering the damage from the hail storm - my wallet just ended up feeling about A$1500 lighter. :|

We checked in and made our way through departure control without a hitch. Like many over at the TS&S forum have noted, security procedures at SYD are much more sane than nearly any airport in the US.

Since I don't fly a lot internationally, I don't have a good basis for comparison, but I've got to say I rather liked the international departures area of the Sydney airport. Bright, open, decent shopping opportunities, etc. I took the opportunity to liberate the last of my A$ on some wines, since we hadn't been able to make room in the schedule for any winery tours. (again, next trip to Australia!)

Next stop was the RCC to settle in for a little bit and fire off some postcards to our families back home. Seems like our routine is always to do postcards while we're at the airport waiting to go home – our last 4 vacations, we’ve done this. We also took the opportunity to see if it were possible to get switched back to seats together upstairs, since UA had screwed the pooch on our seat assignments with the equipment change on the SFO-ORD leg of our flight. Fortunately, the woman in 13B was kind enough to switch with me, so we were able to fly together. Then, she ended up switching with the gentleman in 13G, so we had the flight attendants handling the upstairs cabin confused when meal requests were taken, since the manifest didn't get updated.

UA870 SYD-SFO
747-400, seats 13AB

Unlike on the flight down, we wouldn't have minded a cancellation of this flight for mechanical reasons - we would have gladly taken and extra night in Sydney. However, this flight took to the skies ontime, and we settled in for the trip back to the US. Shortly after takeoff, dinner was served. I had the barramundi, which was quite good. After watching a movie on the laptop, we tucked in for a decent 6 hours of sleep, which had us waking up at roughly 3am Chicago time. I was hoping to squeeze in a couple extra hours, but I couldn't fall back asleep, so I plowed through a Clancy novel for the remainder of the flight.

And, thanks to the beauty of the international date line, you arrive in San Francisco before you left Sydney.

We were able to quickly clear Customs and Immigration and then proceeded to avail ourselves of the Arrivals Lounge. Needless to say, being able to freshen up after a long flight is absolutely wonderful! The wait was a little long (seems a couple of other international flights arrived around the same time), but well worth it.

UA870 SFO-ORD
767-300, seats 6AB

This was the accursed segment was the source of our seating woes for the Sydney flight. There’s not much to say about this flight…it was the typical UA domestic First service. Empower wasn’t working.

There’s always a certain amount of letdown whenever you come home from a great vacation…and then you couple it with jetlag. It was a bit of a jolt to go from 80s in Sydney to 30s in Chicago when we got home.

But, we had an amazing time Down Under, and we’re looking forward to the next great airfare deal that gives us an excuse to come back. Either that, or I’ll have to work on scoring an ex-pat assignment, since my company has a few facilities in NSW and VIC.

G’day!

gleff

Looking forward to part 3, and congratulations!!

bdjohns1

Bumping this back up for both the recently-completed part 3 and the in-lined pictures. Enjoy!