The Trip

After a long night of packing, we woke up around 8:30 and began what was to be the first day of our trip. A trip to Trader Joes to get a sandwich and a visit to the drugstore gave us a good excuse to take a final walk around Arlington Center. Our neighbor Paul was able to give us a ride to the airport and that gave us a great start to our journey. It seemed to take us no time at all to get to the curb at our terminal. I think it took us longer to check in than to drive to the airport, with a big chunk of our check in time spent by our agent staring at his computer screen. Maria bought a new pair of sunglasses in the airport, as she discoverd our first known "something we forgot." She left her sunglasses in Warwick. After a few hours of shopping, eating, getting through security, and waiting at the gate we got on our first plane.

United Boston to San Francisco. Departure at 2:45 PM. It was close to on time. They had to check to make sure we had enough water before we took off. All was well and we were on our way with the warm-up flight to our long flight. We are only crossing North America on our first leg. The route map in United guide gave me a good perspective on the relative length of each of our plane trips. It is a long way from San Fran to Sydney! We arrived at San Fran at 6:20 PM California time. (9:20 PM Thursday night) for us. Our layover is 4+ hours and we leave for Sydney at 10:24 local time.

Our United 747 left the ground at around 11 PM San Fran time (2 AM Friday). The flight is supposed to be 13 + hours. Our seats were in the back of the plane, about 5 rows apart but we both at least had an aisle seat. They served us a fairly bad dinner right away and then it was lights out in the cabin. I slept in 1 hour stretches for around 7 or 8 hours. Fortunately my back was fine. Every time I woke up I wandered around a bit, talked to Maria for a minute or two if she is not sleeping, and then sat down to have another nap. By the time I was through with all my sleeping the trip was becoming a big blur. They were showing movies the whole night and I watched Sicko towards the end of the flight. That was good as that ate up a good chunk of the remaining time. They served breakfast, gave us some coffee, and we landed in Sydney. ~ 7 AM in the morning here (4 PM Friday in Mass).

We had less than 2 hours between connections. Going through customs and walking a long way to the Quantas check in desk took up enough time that they decided to push us to the next flight to Perth. It left at 10:10 Sydney time instead of 8:45. We will get into Perth 2 hours later than scheduled. I tried to call Jonathan Majer, my collaborator at Curtin University in Perth, to tell him our flight had changed. He was going to pick us up at the airport. I tried to call his number about 4 times before I asked Maria to help. Apparently my brain is a lot more fuzzy than it seems and I couldn't handle dialing the phone right. Flying to the other side of the world can do that to you, I guess. Anyway I was only able to get Jonathan's voice mail. After I left him a message, it occured to me 7 AM Saturday in Perth and that could have been why he did not asnwer.

I had my first cup of regular coffe in two days at the Sydney airport. Ask for a coffee in Australia and they say, "white coffee or black coffee?" and "is this for here or take away?". Black, take away, please.

On to Perth....getting on the plane at ~ 6:50 PM Friday (Mass time). Its been a long day and a half. Almost there, just one more short flight of four hours and forty five minutes. We had an exit row aisle and it was luxuriously roomy! An older gentleman from Perth was sitting next to us and I talked with him for much of the flight. Charles was a wealth of information about places to see, historical tidbits about various places we discussed, and was just generally a very nice fellow. He ordered some red wine with his dinner and after Maria asked him what kind it was, he even offered her some so she could try it. Our last flight was on Quantas and it was nicer than our earlier United flights. The food, for example, was just great. We arrived in Perth right on time, 1:10 PM local time. Jonathan was at the gate waiting for us. Once we gathered our bags Maria and I were finally able to walk away from an airport terminal.

Jonathan has a 1963 Sunbeam car that is in immaculate condition. It was Jonathan's father's car and his dad brought it over from England. It is also rather small. Maria and I both wondered if our bags would fit. Amazingly, they did. He brought us to our hotel and we arranged to to see him on Monday morning, and then he left.

The time here is 12 hours ahead of eastern time. We left Arlington at 11:30 AM on Thursday and arrived at our hotel here in Perth a little over 38 hours later.

 

 

 

01 NOV 07  -  THURSDAY

     UNITED AIRLINES      FLT:181    ECONOMY  

LV BOSTON                            245P
           AR SAN FRANCISCO           619P           NON-STOP

     UNITED AIRLINES      FLT:863

LV SAN FRANCISCO          1024P

03 NOV 07  -  SATURDAY

AR SYDNEY                            650A

 

     QANTAS AIRWAYS       FLT:575

LV SYDNEY                            845A

AR PERTH                                1130A

ARRIVE: TERMINAL 2 QANTAS