The 33 Hour Day

Actually the title is a misnomer.

I did some math, and it was 33 hours from doorstep to doorstep – meaning from the time we were picked up in Woodinville to the time we were dropped off at our lodging in Port Douglas.

The actual “day” was much longer.

The Los Angeles to Sydney leg was on an Airbus A380. That’s a BIG aircraft. With flight times of 14+ hours, I’d elected to fly business class, and I’m so glad I did. Here’s Kathy in our seats before we took off:

You can see the leg room. What you can’t see is that the seats actually lay flat – I thought they were just recliners, but no – a completely flat bed. Personal entertainment systems, built in 120v power – the only thing missing was WiFi (but there are clues that it’s coming.

You can read Qantas’ write up on their A380 here – they’re clearly proud of the aircraft, and rightfully so.

Unfortunately, said aircraft got us into Sydney a little behind schedule, so that and a longer than expected wait at baggage claim (an A380 holds a LOT of baggage), we missed our connecting flight. Qantas rescheduled for us, but it means a 2.5 hour wait at the airport. Fortunately Qantas has a business class lounge – with free WiFi.

We’d also discovered that leaving our ATM cards at home was a bad idea. The plan had been to use them at ATM machines (of course). And on top of that neither of us knew (or recalled) the PIN numbers for the two credit cards we had with us. Fortunately my Visa allowed me to reset my PIN online (see free WiFi above). Crisis averted.

Here’s the view out of our room at The Thala Beach Lodge:

That’s a panorama of three photos.

Unfortunately the internet connection in our room is extremely slow, so for the moment that’ll be it. As I upload more they’ll appear on LeosPictures.com.

Our next excitement: weather. There’s apparently a reason they call it a rain forest.