A sense of adventure.

Greetings from Australia.

"Australia?"  You ask.  "But, I thought you were flying direct to New Zealand!"

Well, so did I.

American Airlines and my New Zealand travel agency, however, had a different idea.  Two hours before we would need to leave for the airport to catch our original June 22 flights, I called the New Zealand travel agency’s US phone number to check in on our rebooking.

Good thing I called.

They had NOT rebooked us for the next day, as originally planned.  We were booked for the same day to transfer through Sydney. 

After I finished very politely ripping them a new one, we had approximately 1.5 hours to complete everything we needed to do before leaving for the airport.

Thus begun the craziest travel day I have had.  From a wet seat cushion that delayed our Austin flight by half an hour, to an interterminal bus at LAX that only ran every 30 minutes, to an airport employee setting off a nasty security alarm and not turning it off, to not being able to eat any airplane meals on the 13 hour flight because of my gluten allergy, to all flights being cancelled to Auckland, to lost luggage, and a cab driver that couldn’t find our hotel…  I was glad that I still have a sense of humor.

The good news.. I got to go shopping and we are having a small vacation in a triple suite in a luxury hotel the Bondi Beach area of Sydney.  This is all courtesy of Quantas Airlines who is putting us up until the ash cloud is alleviated.  

And I’ve never been to Australia before!

Credit where credit is due:  all flight attendants were wonderful.  And my children were complete troupers on the 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney.  

With the general comedy of errors, I might just have had more meltdowns than they did.