Travels to Oz

Our trip planned on my kitchen calendar :) 

We started our day early (for us) at 6:15 A.M. EST on Wednesday, December 14th. (Happy 1/2 birthday to me.) We both spent the morning feverishly working to prepare to be gone for over a month. I thought ahead and had a hair appointment for a wash and style, too. If you’re going to be exceptionally tired, you might as well be having a good hair day. We ran a few errands, had a leaving-the-United-States lunch at Chuy’s (a Mexican restaurant because what other way would one bid farewell to the United States?!) before getting on the road to the airport in Indy.

Trying our hand at packing light(er)

We were able to pack all of our things in just our two roller bags and two backpacks. I’m using my new North Face backpack which is just lovely (thanks again, Mom & Guy!). Our flight from Indy to Denver was a little slow due to a headwind of over 130 MPH so what is normally closer to a 2 hour flight was a 3 hour flight. No big deal. We landed close to when we were scheduled to and we had a generous layover of about two hours.

And we're off!

We grabbed some soup at the airport before waiting for our flight to Vancouver. It ended up being delayed by over an hour. We were fortunate that our flights all had United personal device entertainment and WiFi so we could check the status of our connecting flights. Jackson nearly had a heart attack when he saw that United thought we’d miss our flight to Sydney and had scheduled us for a flight the next morning from Vancouver to Houston to San Francisco to Sydney landing on Saturday night Australia time. We did NOT want a European repeat of accidental city visits. We got off our plane as quickly as we could only to get stuck in a nasty customs line. Then we had a document check line to go through for VISAs. Thank goodness we’d learned the hard way with our European passport fail and had all of our requirements for entry into Australia met. WHEW! It was at document check that we learned that our roller bags, which had to be gate checked in Denver due to their size and the small aircraft we were assigned to, were just going around the baggage carousel outside of customs. This meant we could not get to them and no one could give them to us. FAIL! Thankfully, an amazing Air Canada employee helped us out (we think, I’m writing this from the air on the way to Sydney) and checked our bags through to Australia for us. Hopefully that all works out. Landing without luggage was the exact reason we did not want to check bags to begin with so hopefully it all works out. As I always say, travel isn’t for the faint of heart and it really pushes a perfectionist, planner’s buttons. ;)

The flight from Vancouver to Sydney is just over 15 hours. Yes, 15. 15 entire hours. Yes. 15. We tried the old trick of sitting in a row of 4 with two seats between us so we could stretch out. It turns out the flight ending up selling out so that was a bad move. Live and learn. It has not been so bad, though. 

The flight plan...a mere crossing of the Pacific

We’ve caught a little sleep (very little for me as the ride has been rather bumpy) and watched a ton of movies.

All the Way- the story of LBJ’s presidency. I’m obsessed with the JFK/ MLK time period so this movie was of particular interest to me.

Sleeping with Other People- a somewhat raunchy comedy that we both enjoyed

Bad Moms- another raunchy comedy that was probably funnier for actual mothers

The Perfect Guy- a typical stalker film. Decently entertaining, though.

The Secret Life of Pets- I LOVED this movie. It was seriously SO cute. I made Jackson watch the beginning because on little dog talks about being drugged and then put on a plane and waking up in Florida. That was very timely given MacKenzie’s recent travels with Grammy. This one is definitely worth seeing!

The Shallows- JAWS for the new era. It was so lame that I quit watching midway through which is the best part of having free movies available.

War Dogs- A really interesting film based on a true story of government contractors and their corruption. We both enjoyed it.

Central Intelligence- I adore Kevin Hart! Everything he is in is hilarious and embarrassing to watch on planes due to my hyena laugh.

Rush- Jackson watched this, it was about Formula 1 racing in the 1970s. He said it was good. It looked lame from here.

Everybody Wants Some- Jackson watched this and said it was not as good as Dazed and Confused

Dazed and Confused- Jackson watched this for about the 10,000 time. He loves it. I’ve still not seen it. This pleases me.

The t.v. show Ballers was on Jackson’s binge list, too.

I caught quite a few of The Big Bang Theory episodes. I’d never really watched it before and I found them extremely funny.

Yes, we watched all of these starting from Indy. Insane. I finally made myself unglue from the television and write a little bit just so that I wouldn’t lose all intelligence I’ve worked so hard to gather.

We land for a couple of hour in Sydney. We wanted to give ourselves time to make it through customs and the such before hopping our final quick flight to Melbourne. It will be nice to not be on planes for a couple of days, but really they make these long-haul aircrafts so comfortable that it just has not been as bad as I anticipated. I think we both thought we somehow just would not make it on these long flights, but, alas, you put your mind to something, commit and just do it! (It helps that once we took off we had no choice but to hang around for the full 15 hours! HA!)

$100 for our troubles

Air Canada also supplied our toiletry needs for weeks!

Ok, so I optimistically started blogging during the flight thinking that the power of positive thinking would get our bags to arrive with us. No such luck. They're due to arrive tomorrow mid-morning in Sydney and then get forwarded on to Melbourne for us. To say that we were super annoyed would be an understatement, but things happen. Air Canada was super kind about it and proactively provided us with a solution of the hotel delivery. When pushed they also provided money to purchase new items while we waited and gave us some nice toiletry kits. They're not all bad.

Landing in Melbourne

We made the quick 1+ hour flight from Sydney to Melbourne which felt so, so easy compared to everything else we'd been through over the recent hours. We sat next to kind Australian woman who gave us tips on places to see and where to eat. It turns out that Melbourne's airport isn't so Uber friendly so we ended up taking a bus/shuttle thing for $19AUD each to downtown and then rode a free trolley to our hotel. It worked out pretty well since we didn't have bags to drag around. ;)

The view from the 26th floor of the Grand Hyatt Melbourne

 We have been blown away by the Grand Hyatt Melbourne's customer service thus far and were delighted to be greeted by a ton of water and a fruit tray when we arrived. I don't know if anything has ever tasted that good!

I've never seen anything more beautiful

Guest relations know how to make a girl feel welcomed!

Jackson showered and hit spa-mode pretty quick!

 We're EXHAUSTED. We knew it was an aggressive travel schedule, but it worked...mostly. Now we're all cleaned up, lounging in robes and waiting on Pizza Hut to be delivered. Yep! It turns out the the only place that delivers to the hotel is a chain from the U.S. Go figure! ;) We'll be sure to try some authentic Australian food once we've actually got clean clothes to wear again. We're planning to eat some pizza and then crash for the evening. It is almost summer in Australia so the sun won't go down until almost 9 p.m. but I'm not sure we'll that this evening! ;)