We’re going to Australia! We’ve been planning this trip for several months. One of the things we do since our more recent trips to Australia is to have monthly video chats with Louis and Margaret, Christine’s oldest and youngest cousins in Australia. We have established very close relationships with both. During our past trips, we’ve stayed with Louis and so he is our home base while in Australia. Our last visit was exactly two years ago in 2023, and since we’re all getting older, we’ve decided to visit again sooner rather than later. So we’re off to Australia.
Flying out of Binghamton in winter is always dicey. Although the weather forecast has been for just cloudy skies the day before and the day of departure, it snowed. We got about 4 inches yesterday and today. I guess Mother Nature wanted to remind us that we really are in winter, the cold snowy kind here in upstate New York, and not the sunny, hot kind of winter we’re heading to Down Under.
My brother Grant picked us up at 9:45am Saturday morning. We follow the suggestion of arriving at the airport 2 hours early. Our airport is under a massive renovation and it was kind of a mess. Two hours early meant there was no one at the ticket counter and no TSA staff of duty. So we waited in a cold hallway that’s under construction. Eventually, staff arrived and we were told our plane would be at least an hour late. Uh-oh! We have a two hour layover in Detroit before our flight to LA. An hour delay was doable. Of course, it wasn’t an hour, it was nearly an hour-and-a-half before pulling back from the gate. Gulp!
The flight to Detroit was uneventful. It was overcast all the way so I couldn’t take many airplane shots. But I got a couple.
We arrived in Detroit and moved swiftly through the C terminal to the tunnel to the A terminal. We love this tunnel, although we didn’t really have time to enjoy the changing light show today.
Of course, our departure gate was nearly to the end of one wing of the A terminal. We stopped and bought sandwiches on the way and arrived at our gate just as the plane was boarding, so that all worked out okay. Phew!
The flight to LA was nearly 5 hours. I don’t want to think about this being just one-third of our fight time from LA to Sydney. That’s what we have to look forward to tomorrow.
Once again, there was thick cloud cover until we got close to California. I love looking out the airplane window, but there wasn’t anything to see this flight until we were almost on the ground.
Whenever I see such a massive display of lights from the air, I always wonder what Thomas Edison would think if he saw the same view. It’s a pretty amazing site.
Amazingly, our luggage made it to LA and we retrieved our bags and headed to the bus stop that takes us to the area for taxis and ride shares. It’s in an area named LAX-it. A bus is supposed to come every 5 minutes. Not! We waited a long time, about 30 minutes, and watched many empty buses pass us by. When a LAX-it bus finally came, getting us and our luggage on it was not easy as it was pretty crowded. Christine got wedged into a seat with one of our small bags pushed up against her legs and pinching her into the seat. The ride was about 20 minutes all around the terminal. We got on the bus at terminal 3, and the LAX-it lot is before terminal 1, so we had to go the entire way around 8 terminals. Fortunately, since we were packed in like sardines, we didn’t have to stop at any of the other terminals to pick up other passengers.
I was going to order an Uber to take us to our hotel, but the Uber line was long. There wasn’t anyone in the taxi line, so we hoped right into a taxi. Our Hampton Inn is just a couple of minutes away from the airport and we arrived at about 7:30pm California time, and it was cheaper by taxi than it would have been by Uber. We were both exhausted and happy to be at the hotel, with all our luggage.
We ate our sandwiches,chips and cookies for dinner and settled in for the night.
Even though this photo was at the start of our trip, we both look tired to begin with. I should have taken another photo when we got to the hotel for comparison.
We both got some sleep, but awakened early. We’re still on Eastern time. That gave us an opportunity to see a nice sunrise this morning.
Now we have a long day, Sunday, as our plane isn’t until 10:30pm. We have to check out of our room by 1:00pm, but we’ll hang around the hotel lobby for a few hours. I don’t want to get to the airport too early because hanging out there, if we can’t check in several hours early, won’t be very comfortable. Christine has an errand on her agenda which involves a long walk to a store for a certain product she wants. Before walking that distance, she’ll call to see if the product is available. That will take up some of our time.
At any rate, we’re excited to be on our way to meet up with Louis and Margaret. We have another mini adventure awaiting us there as we are going to try and get ourselves from the airport to the Central Station by train, and then getting a train to Lithgow, where we’ll meet up with Louis and Margaret. That will be interesting!
Safe travels! I’ll be following along.
It’s Monday night reading this and you should be there! I do soo enjoy reading your blog. It’s like my own daily dose of your adventures to take me away from working with numbers all day. So happy for both of you!