Sydney to Abbotsford

Day 38 – August 26, 2014 – Sydney to Nadi to Los Angeles to Vancouver to Abbotsford - distance travelled:  many kilometres.  Our flight from Sydney was scheduled to leave at 1pm which gave us only a limited amount of time to explore downtown Sydney.  Hence we set the good old alarm for 7am, got up a little after that, had a shower, followed by the complimentary breakfast in the kitchen/ common area of the hostel.  We got our bags ready and then – as check-out was not until 11am – left them in our room and walked through the rain to the nearest bus stop for the free bus.  The bus took its time arriving but it came and slowly made its way through busy morning traffic to Circular Quay. From there we walked to the Sydney Opera House for a picture with Claire in front of it, something she didn’t do in 2011 and wanted this time.  So we took a few pictures and then marched back to Circular Quay to take the bus back to the hostel.  When we asked the hostel to phone a maxi taxi (= taxi that will hold six people and luggage) it turned out that those were better booked ahead at that time of day and/or from that location as most companies they phoned had at least a two hour wait.  As our flight would be leaving in 2.5 hours or so that clearly wouldn’t work.  We ended up taking two taxis which cost a little more than one maxi taxi but still a lot cheaper than eg taking the train.  The thing was, we had been planning to leave our big bags at the airport but that would cost us $90 so we decided against it. Public transportation with those bags was not really an option.  We made our flight with not a whole lot of time to spare after fitting in some souvenir shopping at the airport.  Uneventful flight to Fiji, where we were again welcomed with live music.  Such a nice gesture! Only a few hours of waiting in the cosy small airport there; we looked around and grabbed something to eat.  Next the 10+ hour flight to Los Angeles, which was uneventful expect for  Jordan getting sick towards the end of the flight in spite of the travel tablet (which may have stopped working by that time and the new one clearly didn’t work quickly enough).   As we gained a day it was still the same day in Los Angeles when we arrived there.  As security is super tight at LAX, we had to pick up and re-check our luggage and stood in lineup after lineup to go through customs, more customs, security etc. Our waiting area at least offered free wifi; other than that wasn’t much in the way of shops at this end of the airport.  The Air Canada flight to Vancouver turned out to be a bit of a disappointment as it was operated by Air Rouge, the budget arm of Air Canada.  No entertainment and no free food or drinks, not even a small bag of pretzels.  It got us to Vancouver, and several hours later we were home in Abbotsford, with many more great memories of Australia (and the pictures to support them).

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Welcome to Fiji!

Grabbing a bite at the Fiji airport