01-10/14-2023: Off to Australia

Happy New Year! We’re celebrating the new year by traveling “Down Under” for a visit to the Aussie cousins. We are traveling from Elmira to Detroit to Los Angeles, with an overnight stay, and then on to Sydney. My brother Grant drove us to the Elmira airport. We were lucky with the weather, as traveling in January may mean snow, but it was essentially cloudy but clear. We’ve been having a mild winter so far, so we were relieved to be getting out of both Elmira and Detroit. We had no problems at all with our flights, which is nice. And being able to sleep in a bed before our very long flight to Sydney was a blessing. However, figuring out how to get to our hotel in LA was a bit of a challenge. Taxis and Ubers are not permitted near the arrivals area so we learned you have to board a shuttle bus and travel about 15 minutes to get to the area for taxis and Ubers. Even thought our hotel was less than 2 miles from the airport, it didn’t provide a shuttle, which irked me, but we did manage to get a taxi to the hotel. The shuttle bus to the taxi area was longer than our ride to the hotel.

Flying into LAX

Wednesday we had a late checkout of the hotel, but it was still way to early to get to the airport, so we hung out in the lobby of the hotel for a few hours. We eventually got an Uber back to the airport (much less expensive than a taxi!) and managed to navigate through bag drop off and security without much fuss, although trying to check in using the required kiosk was a no go and we got sent to assisted check in. We often don’t do well with kiosks, so I wasn’t surprised we got sent to the flunked automatic check in line. Our flight was only 15 minutes delayed and at about 9:15pm we were off to Australia on a 15 hour flight, ugh. The flight wasn’t too bad, although sleeping was difficult. We make sure to get up and walk up and down the isle every couple of hours. The airplane was totally full with 306 passengers on board. Quite mind boggling, really, to think of all of us, and all our baggage, in a relatively small space high in the air.

We arrived in Sydney at about 7:15am on Friday, skipping over Thursday. It’s hard to get our heads wrapped about the date/time flying across the International Dateline. We’re 16 hours ahead of Eastern time. Cousin Louis had sent a message to us about pick up arrangements, but we didn’t receive it in the air and only saw it when we landed. Instead of Louis, cousin Gloria and her husband Alex were waiting for us. It was lovely to see them. They drove us to Richmond where we were meeting up with Louis, cousin Margaret and her daughter Clare. Where we’re staying with Lou is in Rylstone which is about 3-1/2 hours away so Richmond is about a third of the way. Margaret and Clare were getting haircuts there so it was a good rendezvous spot. Alex and Gloria were so nice to have volunteered to pick us up. They are wonderful people, always giving and helping. We had a good time catching up with them driving to Richmond and waiting for Lou.

We met up with Lou and waited a bit more for Margaret and Clare. Here’s a group photo that Alex took while we were waiting.

By the time we were on our way, it was after noon. We stopped in Windsor so Margaret could do some shopping. Lou, Christine and I wandered around the pedestrian mall. Windsor is quaint and has a lovely historic district. One of the things I love is all the beautiful wrought iron railings on the historic buildings.

Here’s a great picture of Lou and Christine.

We then set off to Lithgow for a late lunch and then headed to our final destination, Lou’s home in Rylstone.

Rylstone is a small, rural town. It is very quaint. Lou’s place is absolutely wonderful. It is in a pastoral setting. He calls it his Shangri-La, and it is that. He is very happy in his new home. I’ll show more of Lou’s home in a later post.

We had a long day and managed to stay awake until bedtime, which I think helped us with our jet lag. The next morning, we took a walk with Lou. He walks into town most mornings at 7:00am and goes to a cafe for a cup of coffee.

Banjo, Lou and Christine taking a morning walk

Saturday was to be a day of rest, but Lou got a call from his nephew Darren (Gloria and Alex’s 2nd son) and he asked if he could come for dinner. Lou had already planned one of his special baked dinners for Saturday night with Margaret, Clare and Daniel, so it wasn’t much extra effort to add a couple of more people. And so late in the afternoon Darren, wife Selina and their 2nd daughter Rachel arrive. That livened things up considerably. It was a wonderful evening full of stories and a lot of laughing.

Margaret, Clare, Lou, Rachel, Darren, Selina, Christine, Linda and Daniel

So we’re now settled into our home away from home with Lou and looking forward to our time here.

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