looong flight

As you may or may not know, Larry has been planning to attend a conference in Australia for some time now. I hadn't planned to tag along, for various reasons, but in the last month I changed my mind and also decided not to bring Nina (too long a flight, too expensive). Which worked out great because Arwyn has been staying with us and agreed to take care of Nina (with help from friends and Mima). I booked a comparatively inexpensive flight with Qantas out of Los Angeles, which is a little inconvenient, but the tickets to LA were upwards of 500$...

When I got to LA, just for kicks, I asked how much it would be to upgrade (I meant business class, but I think the agent thought I meant first) and when he told me, I almost fainted--8 thousand american dollars. Seriously. Coach it was, then. And it was fine, I ended up having three seats to myself and slept some of the time. I also started (but couldn't continue past the first half hour) the movie Australia. I did watch, in its entirety, Changeling with Angelina Jolie. She gave a good performance, I thought, and though the movie was super sad, I enjoyed it. All in all, I had a great experience with Qantas (especially the Cadbury's hot chocolate).

When I got to Sydney at 8:20 am, I just had time to clear immigration and customs, use the bathroom, and hit an ATM. Then it was off to catch my 9:30 Greyhound to Canberra, and it was good that I bought the ticket ahead, because the seats are assigned. I tried to stay awake, camera at the ready, but I kept waking up, which means I had fallen asleep, sometimes for big chunks of the 3 hour ride. The bus station was about a 15 minute, easy walk from the hotel, where I took a shower, busted open some nuts from the mini-bar, and set out again in search of coffee. The hotel is at one end of a pedestrian shopping area, so that wasn't hard. I hit Target and some grocery stores (I love to go to grocery stores in other countries). Then I went back to the hotel and waited for Larry to be done with work.