It’s now almost 7:00 Sunday morning and I just woke up after some of the best rest I’ve had in a long time. The trip here was pretty grueling, starting at 1:30 Friday afternoon and ending at like 5:30 Saturday night New Zealand time. The worst part of the whole trip was probably the first flight, the 6 hours from Boston to LA where I was stuck in the window next to a… larger man… By the end of it my legs were freaking out and I was dreading the 14.5 hour flight that I was going to have to start in just about two hours after landing.
The LA connection turned out to be an exciting affair because I ended up going to the wrong terminal. I was mislead by a mixture of signage and planning, so I was pretty freaking out that after waiting in line for an hour, with less then 45 minutes left before the flight was supposed to leave, the lady told me I was at the wrong terminal. I ran over to the one she told me and there was no people and only one ticket lady still there. When I first asked her about the flight she told me it was closed, which gave me a really good scare before she realized that I already had my ticket and I was only looking for a boarding pass.
In the end it worked out really well in my favor, because she actually bumped me up to business class, which I guess was the equivalent to a $3000 upgrade. I think the reason for the upgrade, as it was explained to me was because they overbooked the flight and there were a lot of large groups going together to the World Youth Day, an ill-named week long event in Sydney that features the pope and will probably draw more then 2 Million. according to the guy who say next to me, who was an audio technician for a news organization
Business class was amazing. It was on the second floor of a 747, and the seats had more leg room then I could ever have asked for. They even reclined to flat, so I was able to actually get some decent rest which I am never able to do on planes. The food was also excellent, I had a smoked salmon panini for dinner, with cheesecake with fig sauce and chocolates for dessert. For breakfast before we landed they served scrambles eggs, bacon, sausages, fresh fruit and granola with coffee and tea. It was so comfortable I was not even tired of sitting after the 14.5 hour flight!
I’m going to get some breakfast now because I missed dinner last night and I’m starving, I’ll try and get on later today(maybe tomorrow for everyone in the US) and put up a few pictures and finish the story of my travels.