Day -3 Sat-Sun 06April2024
At long last our 2024 Sydney, Australia trip is underway. And to quote the title of a CS Lewis novel, we've been surprised by joy! In fact gobsmacked! A few days ago we learned that long time motorcycle friends, the Beards, are already in Sydney preparing to join the Majestic Princess on Wednesday like we are. Twelve years ago we sailed on a cruise with them and 3 other couples that we knew from our motorcycle group but we didn't know those 4 couples would be on the cruise until shortly before the start of the cruise. We had a terrific 3 week cruise with them and we are looking forward to another with the Beards.
Our son, Ken, took us to the airport a bit earlier than normal for our first leg flight departing at 7:40pm to San Francisco (SFO). While we were checking in I heard a familiar voice behind me exclaim, "That's the Bowman's". I turned around and long time friends, the Hays, were in line to check in for the same flight and trip. We go back 45 years to when we enjoyed a family camp each summer at Davis Lake where we met. Our families grew up at that camp which we attended for over 10 years and we've maintained the friendship over the years with periodic contact, weddings and other events. It was so good to see them again. We reminisced and caught up to date as we made the long walk to our gate at A13 which is at the very end of the A concourse. The Hays and I enjoyed a dinner together while Angela watched the luggage. (She wasn't hungry.)
Our flight was late departing at 8pm and the little Embraier 175 was totally full. The flight attendants were all jealous of all these passengers with fluorescent pink luggage tags especially after they learned our destination. The Captain got us into SFO about 20 minutes early which was nice as we had a tight 50 minute connection. I suspect he knew he had a plane load of passengers needing to make the connection to the Sydney flight. The previous tour group that left a few days earlier weren't so fortunate and missed their flight and had to be rebooked and lost a day.
Upon arrival we quickly deplaned and began what turned out to be about a mile walk to our international terminal gate G13. Fortunately we didn't have to go through another security checkpoint. Boarding was already underway once we reached the gate, so all worked out. Soon we boarded (just a facial scan, a scan of our ticket, and a quick look at our passports) and we joined the line to board our 777-300ER airplane. It was about 85% full (we could have flown standby!) We were seated in row 41 next to a very conversational lady from Sydney who has dual citizenship.
Our flight departure was delayed an hour and ten minutes waiting for a few passengers and their luggage. We took off at midnight, and soon the lights of San Francisco were behind us and we had 15 hours of darkness ahead of us. Plus we lose Sunday was we are crossing the dateline mid trip and plan to arrive in Sydney, Australia around 7am on Monday. We were served a chicken or pasta dinner and I was soon asleep which lasted around 4 hours before a bio break was needed. Then it was three more hours of sleep to be awakened with a 'different' breakfast chicken sandwich. All the while I kept a classical music track playing in my headphones. Later on about 2 hours before landing we were served an egg breakfast.
We landed at 7:06 and after deplaning we began the long walk to the facial recognition scanner which worked perfectly. Armed with our receipt, we passed through another facial scanner just before retrieving our luggage which was among the first off the conveyer. With our luggage we turned in our arrival cards and facial recognition receipts and found Alan from Travel with Alan for a short wait for our tour bus and luggage truck.
And so ended our travel two days with one vanished day. I'll pick up the account of our city tour in my next entry.
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