Australia

I am off to Australia.  I am visiting my friend Suzan who I met on my 2016 Uniworld cruise from Turkey to Amsterdam.  Suzan was one of 14 Australians in our group and as I mentioned somewhere in my blog, one night on the ship, on the dance floor after a significant amount of adult beverages, I became an honorary Australian. 

When Suzan originally invited me to visit my first thought was "how very nice" - but so many people say that but don't mean it.  What I have learned since I first met Suzan is she is this genuine, kind welcoming person and she really meant it, so I said "sure!" and so started my adventure to book my transportation to Australia.

As we worked on dates and what we would like to do, Suzan suggested a cruise so in the middle of my visit I am going on my very first ocean cruise with Suzan as my mate and we are cruising north from Sydney, will visit various spots on our way to Brisbane including the Great Barrier Reef, then circle back to Sydney.

I'll be in Sydney for Easter and they have a festival that reminds me of a cross of the Iowa State fair (Deep Fried Oreos, Deep Fried Cheese Cake, Deep Fried Lasagna) and the Denver Stock Show (all different kinds of animals to see and pet) along with what sounds like an amazing array of food stands.

Besides a variety of things Suzan has scheduled, we will see La Boheme at Sydney Opera on the Harbor, which is an open air venue across from the Sydney Opera house.  La Boheme is one of my favorite operas so I'm very excited.  Suzan has booked a room near the Opera and in the morning we are doing the Captain Cook Cruise of Sydney Harbor.  This is just a highlight of things we have planned, but the first step was getting to Sydney from Denver.

I thought I would log on to British Airways, figure out a route down through Hong Kong to Sydney and use some of my points to get there.  Ha!  Even though I was looking a year ahead, I could not get a seat in business class anywhere near the dates I wanted to go, so off I went to look for flights.

Did you know China is trying to expand into the US market?  They have a flight from San Francisco to Australia for only $2,500 round trip.  Sound good?  Well, after you read the reviews of Chinese airlines you get a sense of why it is only $2,500 - and why I did not seriously consider any airline from China.  But I did search a wide variety of airlines including Qantas, Cathay Pacific, American, Delta, United and British Airways.  Prices ranged from about $6,000 to $20,000 from Denver, but most flights went through a city on the west coast and even when I selected Business Class in my search, the leg from Denver to the West Coast was always economy, and I just didn't want to fly economy on some of the airlines I was looking at.  I finally found a flight out of LA on United for $5,100.  I picked up a flight on Southwest from Denver to LA on Southwest on points, then picked up a first class flight on United from LA to Denver for about $300.  Having done long trips (15 hours to Sydney, 13 hours back) I knew I did not want to get off of a comfy flight and go back to the sardine can that airlines have become.

I've learned the hard way that not leaving enough time between flights to accommodate weather, mechanical issues, originating flights being delayed, etc., can result in a missed flight.  So I get into LA somewhere around 1 pm and leave again at 10 at night.  Plenty of time to accommodate a late flight, finding luggages, getting from SW to United and checking into an international flight.  LAX still has a construction warnings, so could be an adventure.  I have a pass to the United lounge so comfy chairs, wifi, food, adult beverages - hopefully everything I need to wait comfortably until my flight to Sydney.

So my flight is set, some of our activities are set.  Dogs are in the kennel, the house is ready to close up for a month and tomorrow morning at 8, Uber picks me up and takes me to DIA to start this month long adventure.  Hope you will follow along.