The Flight

The flight was to Sydney was incredibly long and filled with ups and downs.

We waited in the American Airlines lounge before taking off from Logan.

On the first leg, we flew late Tuesday afternoon from Boston to Los Angeles (about 6 hours). Even though we were in first class my knees and feet were all cramped up, and neither one of us could sleep. We had a few meals and drank champagne, to pass the time, but it was pretty exhausting.

En route to Los Angeles we passed over Las Vegas, but LA was more visible. It is enormous, with bright lights and tons of traffic. We watched the cars crawl along as we flew over.

This is a blurry pic of LA I took from the plane.

The AA lounge at LA was pretty cool, we waited there for two hours for the Qantas flight to Sydney. This is when the journey really began. We were in business class on Qantas and it was AMAZING. Way better than first class domestic on American. You're in these little pod capsules which are very futuristic. You can go back like a recliner and then to sleep all the way flat.

As soon as we took off Terry and I reclined, took Tylenol PM, and went right to sleep. The flight from LA to Sydney is supposed to take 14 hours. I woke up after what I thought was a couple hours, and was so so annoyed with myself that I didn’t sleep longer. I thought, now I have to find something to do for ten more hours. I was so confused and groggy, I asked the flight attendant for cake and cookies and hot chocolate (which woke Terry up, laughing). It's all I could think of! While we were waiting for our food, Terry and I tried to figure out the time and failed. It was more complicated than I can explain, our watches and phones were set to Boston and LA times, respectively, and we had no idea how long we had been in the air. We gave up and he went to the bathroom while I turned on my TV to flip through the movies.

I saw the flight path area on the TV and clicked on it. When the map popped, the little plane graphic was RIGHT NEXT TO AUSTRALIA. I was like WHAT?!?! how did this happen?? We had slept for 11 HOURS. 11 HOURS. I couldn't believe it. I usually sleep for about 6 hours a night, on average. 11 HOURS. So we only had about 3 hours left of the flight!!!!!!!! So easy. I told Terry when he got back and we were so happy and giddy!!! We watched that new George Clooney movie, Michael Clayton, ate some breakfast, and we were there!!!!!!! It was the easiest, most comfortable flight ever. Or so we thought.

Sydney was experiencing the worst rain/thunderstorms it's had in 25 years. The pilot announced it was too dangerous to land in Sydney and we didn't have enough fuel to circle and wait it out, so they diverted us to Brisbane!! The pilot was cursing over the PA system, which of course Terry and I thought it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard. We felt like we'd only been on the plane a few hours, so it wasn't that big a deal, and we had no idea where Brisbane was (it's somewhere north of Sydney). So, we flew to Brisbane, where we landed just in time before they closed down the apron due to the weather. We waited out the rain on the tarmac there, parked with the engines on, for an hour or so. After they fueled us up and replaced the pilots, we flew on to Sydney.

Here we are waiting on the tarmac in Brisbane.

We finally arrived in Sydney, and a great deal of rain was waiting for us.

We had a terrifying landing, through lightning, and when we finally hit the ground it was absolutely down pouring. That crazy tropical rain. Of course, at this point they wouldn't let us off the plane. Trapped like rats, again. They said it was too dangerous for the people on the ground who had to deplane us. Apparently ground crews have been hit by lighting before, but planes get struck by lightning fairly frequently, so we were ok. Finally, we deplaned. With the diversion and all the waiting on the plane, we calculated that we had been on that plane for 19 hours.

The tarmac in Sydney (that's actually water beyond the grass).



When we got the hotel sometime Thursday afternoon we were so exhausted, but starved (even though was had about 10 meals on the planes). We walked around a bit after we checked into the hotel, had some food and wine, but it was raining so hard we just went back to the room and crashed.