Finally made it!

G’day and Hello from down under! :) 

It has been a long couple of days.  I woke up around 4am today and for a moment I could not figure out what day it was or where I was. 

The flight from Atlanta to San Francisco on Thursday afternoon was smooth and uneventful.

I was to have a 3 hour layover in San Fran before departing for Sydney at 10:30pm Thursday.  Around 9:45pm we boarded the plane; the nice flight attendant brought me a glass of OJ, a snack of warm mixed nuts and took my order for the main course; I watched an entire episode of The Middle and then around 11:00pm the pilot announced that we were going to be delayed at least 30 more minutes due to some sort of maintenance issue.  So I laid my seat completely flat, curled up in my blanket and took a little nap.  When I woke up everyone around me was up out of their seats and collecting their belongings.  I looked at the guy sitting next to me and said “It seems like I’ve missed an important announcement”.  He told me that the maintenance issue couldn’t be repaired and we had to switch planes.  Finally around 1:15am our new plane pushed back from the gate and we were on our way to Sydney. 

My body felt like it was 4:15am and I was pretty tired so I again laid my seat completely flat and instantly fell asleep.  I missed dinner and dessert.  I wasn’t too sad about missing dinner but dessert was your choice of vanilla or chocolate ice cream with a buffet of toppings to choose from.  That would have been nice.  

And let me tell you, Business/First class is a MUST for international flights.  I have sat in First class before but only on short flights from say Atlanta to Toronto so I’ve never experienced the seats that lay completely flat.  I don’t know that a 15 hour flight can ever be enjoyable but being able to lie down, curl up with a full size pillow and actually sleep made it at least bearable. 

The flight finally landed at 10am on Saturday then I caught a cab to the hotel.  I was in transit for about 30 hours from the time I left my house until I got to the hotel.  I thought I would be exhausted and just want to take a nap by this time but I was wide awake.  So I just dropped my bags and went and explored the city.  More on that later.

For now here are a couple of pics from Business class – my seat and me enjoying being able to lie flat.