Look Right, Not Left

Well good’ay from not-so-sunny Melbourne! Today is Thursday, November 20, 2008, despite what the dateline on Blogger may tell you. It really is a strange thing to realize that you are 16 hours ahead of everyone else you know. It’s like it is today for me but you are reading this yesterday and by the time I get to write to you again, it’ll be tomorrow for me but still yesterday for you. Yikes.

Anyways…we are now Down Under. I don’t recommend the 24 hours of being in transit to get anywhere, but I guess you have to do it in order to get here, so you’re kinda stuck if you don’t.

Our journey began on a Virgin America flight from Dulles to Los Angeles. Virgin America is a cool airline. You can order your food and drink from your seat and it magically appears within minutes. Brilliant! And these new in-seat entertainment centers, where you can choose from a ton of different movies, tv shows, play games, read the news, all with a touchscreen, are AWESOME. More on that in a few…

We landed at LAX, collected our bags and made our way to the Bradley International Terminal to check-in for our flight with Qantas. Now this was going to be exciting, because we delayed our trip by one day so that we could fly on the new A380. Most people wouldn’t know the difference when scheduling a vacation but when you’re married to a guy who loves trains and planes, you pay attention. More on the A380 in a few…

By the way, next time you connect out of LAX, have some layover time, and want awesome kosher food, call Jeff’s. They apparently deliver to the airport. Or you can call a friend who lives down the block from Jeff’s and he’ll deliver to the airport; specifically we ordered two sausages, a schnitzel sandwich, and two orders of fries to be exact. Yum!

Back to the A380: We boarded the plane at around 10:40pm LA-time with about 400 other people. Yep, 400. Simply put, this plane is MASSIVE. Just click on the link and take a tour of the Qantas A380- it’s huge and pretty cool. We didn’t get to sit in First or Business, but we got exit row seats which were nice, after I stopped being grumpy about them. Turns out these two seats are a bit narrower then regular Economy class (regular Economy class seats on the A380 are about 1” wider than the Boeing 747) and there’s no room to leave your carry-on next to you. The plus side is that you have all the legroom you can possibly need. And the awesome touchscreen entertainment center pops up from between the two seats, so it’s like your own personal TV right there. You can choose from literally hundreds of movies (I watched Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Baby Mama), TV shows, a ton of games (interactive too!), read the news, listen to audio books, and get your email (for a cost). Plus, you can create your own playlist of music from different genres and CD choices that will play for you over and over again until you change it or do something else. Flying will never be the same, and these are quickly becoming the standard. Needless to say, they make a 16-hour flight go by just a tad faster.

After we landed, a terrifically-splendid flight attendant gave us a tour of the upstairs, which includes business class and premium economy. One word: SWEET.

The line to get thru customs and passport control once inside the terminal was quite long. If you didn’t know this before, Australia takes their customs pretty seriously. Not only do they ask you to complete a form declaring anything non-native you are carrying and bringing in (all countries do), but while standing on line, they bring around trained dogs to sniff it out of you in case you aren’t 100% truthful. And in case the dog didn’t find it, after you pass passport control and collect your luggage, you and all of your bags are randomly screened thru an x-ray again. The Australians are pretty hard core- no meats, fish, poultry, aqua stuff, cheese, etc., can come thru without being declared and perhaps taken away from you, obviously in order to protect the fragile eco-system on this huge country, continent, and island. And just in case the Australian version of Big Brother is watching, I won’t go into details about why my heart was pounding when the dog came around. Suffice it to say, they mean it, and the signs all over the airport telling you “Declare It or Dump It” every 10 feet made you think twice about sneaking anything even remotely similar to anything on that list.

Once we finally made it thru customs and got our bags, we picked up our rental car. I’m thankful to the Australian government for being sensitive to the fact that the majority of the world drives on the right side of the street. Until you do it yourself, you have absolutely no idea how disconcerting it is to be driving down the street and see cars coming at you from the wrong side. Or in this case, from the right side, though it certainly didn't feel right at all. It's not that hard to get used to highway and city driving, but once you're out on the Great Ocean Road, where you're winding all around the mountain and the coast and there's just one lane each way around the twists and turns, it gets kinda freaky. That's all I'm saying, it's just freaky. And crossing the street? Man, I thought I had that down. Apparently not. Two words: Look. Right. After you make the mistake one time and you come out of it unscathed, you never make the mistake again.

Once you get over that (not saying I have yet), you start enjoying the views and boy, they are spectacular. There's something to say about knowing that once you pass Anglesea and you're standing on a cliff looking straight out to the ocean, there's absolutely nothing between you and Antarctica. And then you realize that you're basically at the end of the earth. That's friggin cool.

All in all, it's been a good first day. We called it an early night on Wednesday, given how exhausted we were-- all I wanted was a bed, as I had not been in one in 35+ hours. Due up this morning and the rest of the day: more of hte GOR, the Twelve Apostles, and driving back to Melbourne. Hopefully the weather will clear at some point.