I left for JFK at about 2.30pm on Tuesday the 21st of December. It was a long trip and once I got to Terminal 7 the taxi driver had trouble processing my card. We swiped the thing close to ten times until it authorized I just wanted to start my trip!
Within 15 or so minutes of alighting from the cab I was checked in and through security!
I quickly found my way to the TV room of the BA lounge (this is a shared lounge for Qantas) and I saw the other two people in the room had it on one of my favourite shows – Trading Spouse. Even better was it was on my favourite episode EVER… the Maurgerite Perrin episode. I quickly told them “Seriously you guys… you have to watch the whole show – this is classic American TV..!!” It ends up they were both from Brisbane, living in Brooklyn and like me, heading home for Christmas.
So we set up home in the lounge and watched the God Warrior do her thing!
One nice aspect of using a BA lounge – English papers! Look at the fine selection I had –
The plane ended up being delayed for a couple of hours. First due to a mechanical issue and then, due to the engineers industrial action they would not issue the clearance from Sydney as they were on a slow work order. I was in my favourite seat down the back and once you are in the ‘it is time to travel’ mindset, you just want to get out of there!
I had this guy beside me who was about 18 and a bit of a wannabe hipster. He was SO annoying – anytime there was an announcement he would tap me on the arm and say “What did they say?” I also had to give him an explanation of what a slow work order is as he couldn’t understand that and it almost felt like I was doing an inflight reference shift. As soon as I could, I put on my QuietComfort headphones (yes those ones I bought all those blog posts ago!) and tuned out totally.
On the food front on the JFK – LAX leg of the flight, I was super excited when the drinks cart did the rounds… SOLO!! Bring on the SOLO!!!! My mouth was watering just thinking about it. I wanted to SLAM IT DOWN FAST… only possible because it is light on the fizz…! 😉
The rest of the meal was BLAH. A beef dish with rice and peas and a not-too-bad cous-cous salad. Here is what it looked like –
In my opinion – food in the Qantas economy international cabin has deteriorated in comparison to previous flights. There was no warm handcloths and… no ice-cream after dinner! Boooo! I also feel that the quality of the food is definitely not as good. I love plane food and while it isn’t as bad as other airlines and we need to be grateful for ANY inflight dining – I always thought Qantas was good at what they did on long haul sectors. This is why I have always flown them. We’ll see what happens on the return trip!
While I was eating dinner I managed to see two episodes of one of my favourite shows – Rockwiz! (Nudge, nudge Deb!) I was super lucky as on one episode was one of my favourite rockers, Jeff Martin from the Tea Party and the other was Kate Ceberano and a fantastic Melbourne guy, Eran James! Check out the clip below – he was only 17 when he was on Rockwiz!!
Bill and I both promised to watch UP at the same time – I had it on inflight movie and he got it for a Secret Santa gift so I started the movie and… ended up falling asleep. Spookily, he stopped watching it at just about the same spot! Before I knew it we were just outside LA and were coming in for our landing.
We ended up hanging out in LA for nearly an hour and a half – they really did a great job at catching up on the time delay from JFK. I went back to the Qantas Club and started chatting to the two Brissy folks again. It ends up they are in a band. I was telling the girl that I was super excited about watching Rockwiz on the plane and she said “Ohh… I did Rockwiz!” I was half awake/half asleep so I didn’t really think anything of it then she was telling me her band are called The Grates. I had never heard of them (don’t know how I missed them!!) but checking them out now they rock and they are super nice. I can’t wait to check them out back in NY!
Before I knew it, we were back on the plane and Annoying Hipster had been replaced by Rude Vegan. We will call him RV. Meal time started again and this is what I got –
Memo to Qantas – the rolls are always dry. Need Bakers Delight rolls STAT!
Anyway RV had ‘tude from the minute he sat down but at least he didn’t ask questions. He had ordered vegan and unfortunately, he got vegetarian. Well – he was SO RUDE to the staff I was embarrassed. He would not eat a thing on the plate (even of the things he COULD eat) and getting angry at the staff is ridiculous because it isn’t as if they can just lower themselves 30,000 feet into the Pacific, get a row boat to get to LA and get him his vegan food. They ended up preparing him a special meal themselves from business class and bringing it down to him – to which he was still grumbling and wouldn’t even lift it off the tray himself – he made them take each plate and put it on his table!!! Argghhhhh it was so mortifying and I was trying to make it very clear that I did not know this rude cretin!!
For the first three hours of the flight, the turbulence was pretty bad. At one point we were being jolted around and I had this awful thought “Oh dear – the plane will go down, RV won’t even help me and mum doesn’t even know I am HERE!!!!!” With that I drifted off… in total on this leg of the flight I got 7 hours! So a beautiful nine hour sleep in total!! It wasn’t straight through but I was so excited! I watched a Louis Theroux documentary called ‘A City Addicted to Crystal Meth’, watched the Chris Isaak soundstage concert and had a jolly good time.
When it was breakfast time, we got this –
And then.. here we go again. RV had his little ‘issues’. So this time, they freshly toasted him four slices of bread, he got a plate of fruit and he was still grunting and moaning and picking at the toast like it had a disease. UGH!!
As we were descending they told us that they anyone with connecting flights had been changed as we were running late. So instead of the 11am I was on the 11.30 flight to Melbourne. I got to customs last and yet my bags were one of the first out… so NO QUEUES AT CUSTOMS! I explained what I had in my case (aka dad presents of sugar filled goodness from the USA) and I was straight through! I ran through the airport, rechecked in and waited for another security check, then the dumb Qantas bus (HATE HATE HATE THIS!!!!) and made it to the gate – for my ORIGINAL FLIGHT! Then I looked at my boarding pass… they had actually booked me on the 12.30 flight instead!!! Even though there was the 11.30 and 12.00 flight before it. When I asked the girl at the desk she said “NO FULL” Of which I could’ve cried… I’d been flying… delayed and flying again and just wanted to get home!!! So I went to the Qantas club and emailed Ev, emailed Bill and ate Aussie bread (WOOOHOO) and lots of ham and tried to make myself look a little presentable.
One thing that also made all of this hard was that as we were flying into Sydney the captain mentioned we’d be flying over Botany Bay. So since then I had had this the tune to Botany Bay stuck in my head. Think about it…!
Singing too-rall, li-oo-rall, li-ad-di-ty,
Singing too-rall, li-oo-rall, li-ay,
Singing too-rall, li-oo-rall, li-ad-di-ty
Oh we are bound for Botany Bay
When I boarded the flight to Melbourne it was a little surreal and of course, super quick compared to the previous flights. We flew out with a spectacular view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and down the South Coast. Gorgeous! As I had to stow my bag, no pics were taken of the weird pizza roll that we got that tasted like it had been in a pie warmer for 5 days… but it was ok.
We flew into Melbourne and over my suburb!! I saw Northland… I saw Bell Street… I saw the tennis courts… I was home!!!
I got off the plane, expecting the see Ev at the baggage carousel. Instead he was walking right towards me while I was SMSing Bill with the “Oh dear… I have landed!” message. I saw him and screamed and cried! After 32.5 hours
I really was in Melbourne and I was going to be home really really soon!!