Frightful Flight

We left Walpole Massachusetts at 12:00 P.M when Shah picked us up. After a 30 minute trip to Logan Airport we arrived at the United Airlines terminal. We were looking forward to a 6 hour flight to San Francisco and then a 14 and quarter hour flight to Sydney Australia to visit our daughter Laura who is studying at ICMS in Manly Australia.

Before the flight we stopped into the Boston Beer Works company and had some beer and sweet potato fries. On the plane they give you nothing except for a soft drink or water. The plane left at 2:45 just on time. The flight was smooth and the 6 hours passed by. We watched the movie WallE and they did offer to sell is a salad for $9.00

We arrived in San Francisco at 8:05A.M. California time and we had to wait until 10:38 for the Sydney flight. We stopped and had some soup, Tony had chicken pot pie soup and I had split pea with a piece of sour dough bread. It was good. While we were waiting United was announcing that the people who were on standby may not get on the place because they had to have empty seats because of the weight. It's a very long flight 14 hours 23 Minutes and 7429 miles. We left Boston on Saturday at 2:45P.M. and arrived in Australia on Monday at 8:10 AM. We also crossed the international date line where we lost a whole day. Don't worry, when we come back to the states we'll make that day back.

The plane was a Boeing 747-400 and it was pretty old. It had stairs going up to the lounge where they have 26 seats for business class customers. We sat way in the back of the plane where there were only two seats in our side of the isle. We settled in and after a noisy takeoff we were on the way to Australia.

We noticed that all the flight attendants were older so Tony asked them if they had laid off all the young people. The guy told him it goes by senority and he's been flying to Australia since 1986. They gave us a dinner at 12:30A.M. which was "barbequed beef" it was like Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and corn. We then tried to sleep but were woken up with a rocking sensation. We had quite a lot of turbulence. Tony was saying things like I hope the rivets hold togetheron the plane and the turbulence is putting a lot of stress on the fuselage. That didn't make me feel confident. He also said that the plane should go higher but we probably didn't have enough fuel. Oh well, alls well that ends well and we arrived in Sydney on time, 8:10 A.M.

We went through customs and they checked our bags for food stuff. We had brought some goodies for Laura. It's good that the Beagle didn't sniff the Twinkies. We found the young man who was supposed to drive us to Manly. He said to wait outside until he went to get the van. We saw him drive by but then the policeman would not let him stop. We waited another half hour and then say him being questioned by the police. I guess he was a new driver. Finally we saw another van go by and he said he would take us to Manly.

We were on the van with a family who just came back from Bali. They were telling us about all the birds in Manly and we talked about the draught in Australia. We arrived at the Manly Beach Bed and Breakfast and guess who was in the window waiting for us? It was Laura!!! She showed us to our room and we met Eugene the owner of the B and B. Eugene gave us some suggestions for where to go to lunch. We walked down to the beach, walked over to the Corso and then went to Blue Water for lunch. We sat outside and Tony had fish and chips, Laura had pasta and I had a sandwich. It was good.

After lunch we did a little shopping. We went into a liquor store where we met a guy from Worcester. He's been living here for about five years and he says it is like living in the 70's. We went back to the room and had a little nap (we were pretty tired but to get over jet lag you are supposed to stay up). At about 7:00P.M we went out to eat at a Spanish/Moroccan restraurant called Alelhambra. It was very good. Laura had two cheese dishes, Tony had a salad and I had lamb with Plums.

After dinner we walked Laura back up to her school where we saw her school. It is an old Monastery and it does look like Hogswarts. It is also very dark up there and quiet. It's hard to believe there are hundreds of students inside there.