From the Emerald City to Oz

The normal route from Seattle to Australia is via Los Angeles, with the second leg of that journey alone taking around 15 hours. That’s a long time to sit crammed in a tiny airplane seat. A better option – not cheaper but more comfortable – is to go via Hawaii, with an overnight in Honolulu to stretch your legs before cruelly confining them once again the next day. Better still is to fly Business Class from Honolulu to Sydney, which Deborah somehow convinced me to splurge for by using warnings about deep vein thrombosis. Fortunately we were able to fly to Hawaii on frequent flyer mileage and I got a fairly good deal on the Business Class tickets to Sydney, so we didn’t break the bank. We ended up getting bumped up to comfort seats for the 6-hour flight from Seattle to Hawaii, which was nice. It’s was still about 10-1/2 hours for the next day’s flight from Honolulu to Sydney, but sitting up with the fancy people made it surprisingly comfortable.

We had another overnight in Sydney before flying another 2-3/4 hours the next morning to Townsville, our final destination. We were both impressed with our breakfast choices at the Sydney domestic terminal: Gourmet quiches and baked vegetable wraps and really good coffee. Epicurean fare compared to the greasy deep fried plastic food at the chain restaurants in most US airports. Our host Ian picked us up at the Townsville airport and drove us to our house sit. More on that in the next post.

At the Honolulu Airport. Happy to be finally on our way.

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