Airport Adventures
Originally published at Adventures in Paradise. You can comment here or there.
We arrived safely in Cairns! It was a long trek, but went pretty well.
Leaving Calgary was the only time I got any photos, because I’m lazy. I tried a few coming into LAX at night, because it was amazing (more below) but I am not master of night photography in a moving plane.
[slickr-flickr tag="Calgary Flight" sort="date" direction="asce"]
We got a little lost in LAX after being told to go to the wrong place. I almost lost the photo tube I was bringing. We tried to go through security without boarding passes. We ended up making it, though! Sadly LAX had no wifi near my gate, which annoyed the hell out of me. I like updating people while I’m traveling! Also, landing at LAX at night was amazing. Coming in over the city, watching it turn from a blur of lights to defined lights was like watching the tiniest world. I saw little blips of light that were helicopters and could imagine them as spaceships jetting out from this civilization that I was seeing from so far away. There was a point where I could just see police lights, when everything was still sooo small, that I just couldn’t get enough. And of course getting slowly closer, watching things grow, seeing the traffic. I’ve always loved this process, but at night in a huge city was the best ever. I was glued to the window the entire time.
LA to Sydney was surprisingly shortened by flying at night, because sleeping was so much easier. I remember previous trips being awake most of the time, watching a ton of movies and reading a lot. I watched about two movies total (all of “Season of the Witch,” half of “The Next Three Days” due to falling asleep, and half of “No Strings Attached” due to not being horribly interested) and a few episodes of Big Bang Theory. I did some reading. Chatted with my seatmate. Mostly slept.
Seatmate! I wish I’d taken a picture for my blog. Meet Chris, a very cute paleontologist and professor from the States. Heading to Aus for the first time, meeting his girlfriend there, who is also a paleontologist and professor. They’re going to be working at some museums here, and then doing some tours in the Sydney and Melbourne areas. He’s proposing to her while they’re here! How cool!! Anyway, chatting was great and he was sweet and they sound cool, so I asked him to keep in touch and gave him my card. :)
I forgot how amazing it smells once you walk out the doors of the Sydney airport. The vegetation was across roads but the air itself smelled like I had my face shoved in bouquets of fresh flowers. All I could do walking from one place to another was huff the air and make noises of love.
Sydney to Cairns involved learning that two of our four bags were still in LA. Thankfully it was just our hiking boots, sandals, and runners, and our bathroom stuff excluding medications we took on the plane. They’ll be arriving tomorrow, but the news involved standing in line for ages to fill out forms. It also, however, involved $100 in my pocket, so that’s cool. We learned that the sim cards we got with our VIP Backpackers packages don’t work (expiry Dec 2009 perhaps is the problem?) but got a phone on the cheap anyway. And then waited from about 8am until 1pm. We had lunch at the same place in Sydney airport that we did last time, pretty sure I had the same meal itself. I got some pens! We got some magazines and almost paid $50 for a shitty little aluminum wallet at a stupidly expensive airport store. Ugh. The flight was decent, curry was an odd choice of meal to serve and apparently everyone ahead of us thought so too, as the beef choice was gone quickly. And for once, we were not last off the plane!
It was muggy as soon as we stepped off the plane, and hot. Roni, Greg and Lily met us right outside. It was so great to see them!!!! Grabbed our remaining bags and off we went! Arrived at their beautiful house to greet Sue, Ash, and Kat! Sue brought ginger beer and made scones, and I promptly stuffed my face with both after a shower. All of the above had me thanking the gods - seriously, I think a shower after 20+ hours travel time, followed by ginger beer and scones, was heaven. Roni took a blurry iphone pic:
Greg made some tasty sort of hawaiian chicken… rolls of some sort. Empinada? Something? from a chicken place we lurve here, and they were tasty! Then I passed out…. until now. I woke up about 1:30 in the morning. I listened to the bugs and birds outside - gods, it sounds so lovely here. Never silence. I’m pretty sure the cockatoos were chatting it up with me earlier. I think it’s about 4:10 now. I’m gonna try to go back to seep for a while. Tomorrow will hopefully involve a beach, and possibly buying some pants.
Cheers from Cairns!!
xo
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