Day 1 (&2) I’m not sure what we were thinking when we booked our flight to Australia, but whatever it was we clearly had no idea what to expect.
Our objective was to get to Melbourne as fast as possible, without spending any time in cities we stopped in along the way. The plan was to have a 5-hour stopover in Los Angelos, which would allow us to get some non-airplane food and do some duty-free shopping, and for Avery to get her wiggles out and maybe take a stroller nap, between flights before embarking on a 12 hour flight to Auckland, which would be followed by a 3 hour layover before our final flight to Melbourne.
We awoke on Friday morning to the biggest snow storm we’d seen this year. It wasn’t a huge storm by Canadian standards, and we were delighted to arrive to Pearson and see our flight listed as on-time. We stopped into the Maple Leaf lounge quickly to grab a drink and snack before our flight and rushed off to our gate. When we were still waiting at the gate 5 minutes after our flight was supposed to leave we knew our trip may have taken a turn for the worst. It seemed that every 30 minutes or so our flight continued to be delayed. Fortunately, we were able to hang out in the lounge with Avery, who was in pretty good spirits.
Our first flight *finally* took off almost 6 hours late. The only saving grace is that the passenger seated next to us decided not to board the plane. Although it caused us another 20 minutes of delay while they removed his bags from the plane, Mr. Harrison was kind enough to have pre-paid for a meal on the Air Canada flight, which we gladly ate on his behalf. And having the extra seat allowed Avery to play around, rather than one of us having to hold her on our lap the entire flight.
We spent most of the flight to LA wondering if we would be put on the Quantas flight to Melbourne--which was scheduled to leave LA about 2 hours after we were due to arrive--or if we’d be spending the night in an airport hotel and take the flight to Auckland the following day. After spending over 5 hours in the lounge at Pearson with a 6 month old baby, an airport hotel was looking pretty good.
When we arrived at LA there was an Air New Zealand plane sitting at the next gate over. Could it be? Were we really going to make our flight after such a huge delay in Toronto? The pilot came on the speaker asking everybody remain seated as those passengers going on to Auckland got off the plane. And so we ran....
Our quick plane change was not well thought out. We normally feed Avery on takeoff and landing to ensure her ears are OK. So she ate once on decent into LA and had a bottle on assent out of LA, which turned out to only be 45 minutes apart. Shortly after takeoff on our flight to Auckland we got Avery ready for “bed” and laid her down in the cot. And shortly after that, the last bottle she consumed made a re-appearance: all over the cot, her clean pyjamas (and the only pair we packed for the flight), and both mommy and daddy. We now have a better understanding of why they call it “projectile” vomit.
Fortunately, Avery quickly settled (in her winter suit...the only other outfit we had warm enough to sleep in) into her first-class airplane cot. Unfortunately, neither of us could get comfortable enough to sleep, as the seats with the cots had very little leg room.
By the time we arrived in Auckland we were so dazed we had no concept of time or space. We were there just long enough to grab some items for uncle Dick at Duty Free and have some Burger King breakfast (or was that lunch? Or maybe dinner??). You know you’re suffering from jet lag when one of you orders hot cakes and the other a whopper.
We don’t really remember anything from the final flight.
Over 30 hours after leaving our home in Toronto we arrived at Uncle Dick & Alex’s home in Melbourne. We were delighted to arrive to better than hotel accommodations. We did some much needed laundry (we ended up using every outfit we packed for Avery on the flights), napped, and ate.
Avery was delighted to be able to use her Jolly Jumper in another hemisphere.
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