Robert's Travels

We were on a schedule from the time we woke up this morning - we had to be packed up and checked out of the AirBnB by 11:00. We didn’t get up early but also didn’t really sleep in; after having breakfast and making lunch for the day we tidied the unit up, took out the trash and recycling, and completed our final packing. The one downside of staying at an AirBnB is that you don’t just get to leave your mess, so we had to budget some extra time into the schedule to handle the housekeeping items. We were completely packed and ready to go at 10:15, so we ended up leaving a bit early. We returned the key and then walked to Central station.

We had our suitcases with us, and we didn’t want to lug them with us during the final touring we had scheduled. Once we arrived at Central station we found a baggage storage kiosk and checked in our suitcases for the morning. After dropping off our bags we caught the subway back to Circular Quay, and walked to the New South Wales Art Gallery through the Royal Botanical Gardens. We took mostly the same path as last night, which gave us a view of the exhibits in the daytime. It was much more impressive at night.

We got to the art gallery around 11:45, and checked our backpacks at the front of the museum. The permanent exhibits at the art gallery were free to the public, which was a nice surprise. The vast majority of the things we saw in Sydney were free to the public, which seems like a really good way to encourage people to visit museums. We started by looking through the 19th century Australian art wing, and then also saw the 19th century European art wing. While most of the art were paintings, there were also some statues (both marble and bronze). We moved on and saw the Modern Australian art wing on the second lower level, and then finished by seeing some of the Australian Aboriginal art (including some impressive bark paintings) back on the main floor. We left the museum shortly after 13:30, then had lunch in the park across the road from the museum.

After lunch we walked back to Circular Quay, recharged our Opal cards for our trip back to the airport, then hopped on the first train going to Central. We made a quick detour at a Woolworth’s grocery store across the road from Central to pick up some candy for the plane (a couple of Mars bars and a bag of skittles). We returned to the train station, retrieved our suitcases, and got onto the T8 line. The subway took us to the airport, and we arrived shortly after 15:00.

We were booked onto Qantas 73, departing Sydney at 17:40 and flying to San Francisco. We then had a couple of hours in San Francisco ahead of our connection, Air Canada 750, departing for Toronto. Our arrival at the Sydney International Airport shortly after 15:00 gave us lots of time to spare. We checked in our suitcases without issue, cleared Australian customs and security easily, and then found ourselves in the terminal with a fair bit of time before boarding. We wandered through the terminal a bit before finding some chairs to relax in. We browsed the Internet until about 16:15, when we picked up a snack at the McDonald’s and then headed to our gate. Boarding was scheduled to start at 16:55, however they didn’t begin to allow people into the seating area for the gate until then. The boarding process for this flight was a bit unique - instead of sitting right at the gate there was a second layer of security that people had to go through before they could enter the seating area. The security team was verifying passports and visas (presumably a US regulation), and they didn’t start this process until almost 17:00. We were at the front of the line and got to the gate area quickly, where we waited for the gate staff to begin boarding. The boarding process started (as usual) with business and premium economy passengers around 17:10, and shortly afterwards the process continued with economy passengers. We were seated in Row 68, near the back of the plane, so we were part of the first group of economy passengers to board. Luckily there was no contention for bin space so we were able to keep our bags overhead. The flight was a bit delayed taking off as we were waiting on a few passengers to arrive, so we didn’t take off until around 18:15.

In order to help get back onto Eastern time I decided to stay awake for the entirety of the flight to San Francisco, saving sleep for the San Francisco to Toronto flight. This would ensure that I would be tired enough to fall asleep upon arriving back in Kitchener, and allowing me to get up at a somewhat normal time the next day. I watched several Marvel movies on the flight, including Captain Marvel and The Avengers, then spent some time working on this blog. I also watched The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mr. and Mrs. Smith - as the flight went on I started getting tired and was unable to concentrate on reading so movies helped pass the time.

We landed slightly behind schedule in San Francisco, disembarked, and got into the US customs line. Even though we were transiting through SF we still had to clear US customs; luckily as Canadian passport holders we were able to go into the line for US citizens, visa holders and Canadians. We found ourselves getting into line shortly after 14:20, unfortunately it seemed that another large plane had arrived shortly before ours as the line was very long, and it was not moving quickly. We didn’t really have any choice but to wait - it ultimately took over an hour before we managed to see a US customs officer who cleared us quickly. We picked up our bags from the carousel with about 50 minutes until our flight to Toronto was scheduled to depart, and then learned we had to go all the way to the Air Canada check-in counter on the departures level to re-check our bags. This was a bit frustrating as boarding was scheduled to start shortly, so we hustled to the Air Canada counter to drop our bags off. On the way to the check-in counter Todd noticed that my suitcase had a large rip in it, and the Tim Tams that we were bringing back as treats for friends were starting to fall out. It must have been damaged somewhere along the way from Sydney as it was in good condition when we originally checked it. After arriving at the Air Canada counter I was able to borrow some packing tape from the agent and hastily wrap the bag along both major axes to prevent anything from spilling out on the next flight. We checked the bags and were warned that our bags may not make it onto our flight as takeoff was scheduled in less than an hour. We weren’t thrilled to hear that, but we were willing to accept it as long as we were able to make it home.

As we left the check-in counter we were advised to rush as it was now 15:40 and boarding had already begun. We ran to the security checkpoint and had to ask a few people in the line whether they would let us skip ahead to ensure we made our flight. Thankfully people were very accommodating and we were able to get to the gate around 15:55. We were surprised to see that boarding for our flight had not yet begun, and as we sat down to catch our breath we heard our names being called from the gate. We checked in with the gate agent, where we learned that the plane was so empty that they needed to seat people in particular locations on the plane during takeoff to ensure a balanced plane. We were given new boarding passes with our revised seating info; we were still seated together, just farther back on the plane. With the plane being mostly empty we didn’t really care about the specific seats we were assigned. We boarded shortly after 16:00 and took off on schedule at 16:20.

I fell asleep shortly after takeoff and spent the first couple of hours of the flight asleep, however I woke up about halfway through the flight and was unable to fall back asleep. There was actually a fair bit of turbulence on this flight - enough that the pilots chose to descend to a lower altitude to try and smooth out the ride. This was moderately successful, but the seatbelt sign stayed on for almost a half hour while they sorted things out. It was strange being seated on a plane that was so empty - there couldn’t have been more than 30 people on the Airbus A321 we were on, which is designed to seat close to 200 people. I spent the remainder of the flight watching Wonder Woman while Todd watched some TV on his phone.

Our landing at Pearson was smooth and on schedule, we were able to clear customs and retrieve our bags in record time. We were excited to discover that our bags had made it onto the flight, and we didn’t have to deal with missing bags. We got to the pre-arranged taxi stand in Terminal 1 shortly after 00:45, and waited for our cab to arrive. We were about 30 minutes ahead of schedule, but our cab picked us up just before 1:00 and with no traffic we made it home slightly before 2:00. We both felt grimy after the almost 20 hours of flying we had just completed so we both took quick showers and then quickly passed out in bed.