Good Bye to the Land Down Under and Hello to the States

Because we had a late flight home which left Sydney at 9:20 PM, we knew that we were going to have to check out of the hotel and have them hold our luggage during the day while we said our last goodbyes to Sydney. Before we checked out, we found a little cafe for breakfast in The Rocks and had a nice meal. We stopped at a bar that was touted as the one in the Sydney that had ESPN and that I had best chance at 1:00 PM Sunday (Saturday night at 7:00 PM MST) to watch the UofA play the game for all the marbles against the University of Utah Running Utes. A bar employee assured me that she would save me a tv to watch ESPN at the appointed hour. This was the first and only time I would interrupt our trip to try to watch a UofA game. We headed back to the hotel to pack and check our luggage. Then it was to The Rocks as they had a street fair (our third, I think) and it was pretty large and pretty good. Felice had a great time shopping and I was the technical adviser.

 

We purchased a bunch of stuff and then headed back to the candy shop to see some more candy making. Fascinating. Really. As we approached 1:00 PM, Felice encouraged me to head back to the bar to watch my Wildcats. Unfortunately, ESPN in Australia chose to not show the standard US feed, but rather an NBA game that included the Grizzlies. Oh well. So we had a few hours to kill and so we wandered around for awhile and wound up in the Circular Quay area of stores, where we found a place to sit so that we could people watch and have a cold drink. We later made one last visit to the Opera House for the internet and my chance to try to watch the game on ESPN3 on my phone on their WIFI. No luck, but I did follow the game on the internet to conclusion; a good one I must say.

At 3:30 PM, we decided that although it was early and we didn't have to be picked up at the hotel until 5;30 PM for our 9:20 flight, that we would go back to the lobby and hang out, use their internet and then head out, being very relaxed. When we had been back no more than 15 minutes, the skies opened up and it poured for the better part of a half hour. Then it was beautiful for a while, then more rain. We weren't that excited to fly in the rain, but oh well. Finally the appointed time came and we transferred to airport, actually leaving at 5:00 PM to be extra safe. We were glad we did as when we got to Hawaiian Airlines, it was a zoo. They have only one flight to Hawaii from Sydney and only 5 people to check you in. So it was an hour line, but the good news is that the other passengers were friendly and we had a great time sharing vacation and cruise stories. Once through that and through security and immigration, it was on to the gate and a sandwich before boarding. 

The flight to Honolulu was long, 10 hours, but uneventful. The tablets with the movies helped quite a bit. There was no screaming passengers and a lot of them seemed to have some success sleeping. Neither Felice nor I was particularly happy with how much sleep we received, but what can you do? I would guess I napped for about an hour total. We finally arrived at the airport in Hawaii and felt like our 3 hours would be great to get a bite and check in with the kids, maybe even have a Facetime conversation to celebrate Sydney's second birthday with her. We were so wrong about that. First, once we got off the airplane, they had us walk from one end of the airport (think the top of the letter "U") to the middle (the bottom of the  "U") to get our luggage and when we finally got it, go through immigration and customs. Then we had to recheck our bags and go through security. Once finally done, we then got to walk all the way back to where we had come from. Once there, we realized that there was no food so we had to walk about 10 minutes to find some sandwiches and 10 minutes back to then be able to sit and eat them. We barely accomplished this and calling the kids before our flight was called. A lesson is to never short your time between flights, especially international flights. Now we were on the smaller airplane for the shorter (6 hours) flight. After you have been on an airplane for 10 hours, 6 hours seems short. Not really. The flight was fine and on time and Corrine was there to pick us up. Unlike our normal ritual, we did not unpack our bags upon arriving home, but rather just got ready for bed. 

We should have unpacked our bags because even though we had been up since 2:00 PM Saturday afternoon MST and it was now approaching midnight of Sunday (34 hours with little sleep in the form of naps) we could not fall asleep. It was due to something called, Jet-lag. I have come to find that you can expect to take 1 day of recovery for each time zone hour difference. We were 18 hours different from MST while in Sydney due to the International Date Line. So an 18 day recovery period is not something I looked forward to. We finally slept from about 3:00 AM until 8:00 AM. Here is what my friend Wikipedia says about jet-lag:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_lag

It took more than a week for us to get back on our sleeping schedule, but frankly, if that is the only downside to our trip, I will take it.