This has been one very long day, but we made it to Melbourne. A little blurry eyed of course, but glad to have our feet back on the ground after too many hours in the air.
It took us 4 flights. We flew from Omaha to Denver, and then to Los Angeles. Other than having to contend with mostly full flights they were both good flights. We arrived in Los Angeles with plenty of time to make our connection. Because we like Southwest Airlines, the only problem was having to pickup our luggage at the Southwest terminal and roll it over to the Air New Zealand terminal. That is actually not too bad since the Southwest and Air New Zealand terminals are next to each other. I’m sure we were a sight though rolling our luggage down the sidewalk.
Had enough time to check in, have a leisurely late lunch and the sit around the departure lounge waiting to get on board the aircraft.
We boarded our Boeing 777-300 aircraft and found our “space” seats. As I mentioned in the last blog entry, we booked the Premium Economy class for the Air New Zealand flights. We are really glad we did. The seats are very comfortable and have lots of room to stretch out. You can change position and have easy access to the aisle without bothering the other people in the row. We had middle seats for the long flight from Los Angeles to Auckland. These seats are angled away from each other. They include a “bean bag” foot rest and enough space to really stretch out. There is a nice sized tray that is fully adjustable. I think Air New Zealand is the only airline that has these types of seats.
They served a dinner shortly after takeoff (10:30 PM). The meal included an appetizer and three course meal with salad, entrée, and desert. The entrée was a choice of lamb, cod, or chicken.
After the meal, it is cabin lights out. Of course it is harder to sleep sitting up (even reclined) and not as restful as lying flat (that is available in first class, the really expensive seats!). But with the “space” seats it is much better than the regular coach seats.
We arrived in Auckland, where we had a two hour layover before our flight to Melbourne. The New Zealand international terminal is a very pleasant place to wait.
Lots of comfortable places to sit and stretch.
Here is the airplane we flew from Auckland to Melbourne. It was fun to see the Hobbit painting on the outside.
The flight from Auckland to Melbourne was with the same style seats except we were on the side instead of the middle row. The seats are basically the same except instead of angling away from each other, they both angle toward the side of the airplane. There is enough room between the rows of seats that the person on the aisle doesn’t have to get up if the person next to the window needs to get out of their seat.
We haven’t seen much of the city as yet. That will be tomorrow. We did learn that the city is the second largest in Australia (Sydney being the largest), with a population of around 4 million. We have spent time in both Sydney and Brisbane on our previous visits to Australia. There is a difference in the three cities from an architectural perspective. We are looking forward to exploring the city more tomorrow and Tuesday.
Overall it was a good travel. I find it amazing that in 37 hours it is possible to travel 9800 miles, half way around the world. Yes, it is tiring, but wasn’t that many years ago that travel like this would take many days, weeks or even months and at much greater personal peril. Until next time……………cheers.
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