I’m sitting on the final leg of my voyage down under – Sydney to Melbourne. It’s currently 7:02pm on Wednesday September 9th in Montreal, 9:02am on Thursday September 10th in Melbourne. This hour and a half flight is the final stretch of the trip which started on Tuesday morning, September 8th, when my family dropped me off at Trudeau for 7am in order for me to catch my 8:30am flight to Los Angeles.
The flight to LA was fine, I slept most of the way. Without naming any names because I don’t want this video to be searchable, I’ll say my friend, Tody, was on the same flight as me to LA (where he lives), and he accepted my offer to drive him home from the airport. So the video below includes some movie magic I made with Tody. Don’t mind his lack of participation in the video, he has a pretty rough migraine… Anyway, he showed me some sights on the way to his bachelor pad, then we went into his place, had a beer, discussed the rest of my day and what my plans were for the year ahead, and I was on my way.
Then I went, of course, to get my AT&T SIM card – because I needed to be in touch with some people while I roamed the streets of LA all day. As soon as I loaded up my phone with the US card, I called my new friend, Dave D. Dave D is an old friend of Jess’s. We had a blast. He’s a great tour guide, showed me the Hollywood Hills, the Chinese Theatre, Sunset Blvd, the Hollywood sign, and more. We also ate lunch at the 105-year old Farmer’s Market at the Grove (I think?) – had a great roast beef sandwich and fresh squeezed lemonade (yes, with real lemons, Dave).
I left Dave D to head over to Dave A’s pad. At Dave A’s were his girlfriend Aimee and her sister, Maggie. Kind of ironic, that name… We went to Spanish Kitchen for dinner, where I had one of my top 5 best meals ever. Incredible tacos – thank the lord for Taco Tuesdays!! Grilled lobster, grilled shrimp, beer battered halibut, grilled chicken, mmmm. By 7:30pm, it was time for me to head off to LAX to catch my 10:30pm flight to Sydney.
The flight to Sydney was on an Airbus A380, which was an adventure in itself. This thing is HUUUGE! And the seats, even in economy, are unite roomy. The 10″ (guesstimation) touchscreen entertainment systems are great, with as much TV, movies, documentaries, etc as you can handle. You can also make phone calls or sense SMS messages from seat to seat or form seat to someone on the ground. You can even receive calls and SMS messages while in the air. Tekmology these days, I tell ya. The flight went by pretty quickly, even though I didn’t sleep much at all. The people sitting next to me were really quite annoying, between the kid with the fluffy hair falling asleep on my shoulder (he was drugged) and the hippy lady climbing over me every 45 minutes to go potty.
Now we’re 10 minutes from touchdown in Melbourne. I landed in Sydney about 30 minutes earlier than planned (came in at 6am local time) but I was still JUST in time for my connection to Melbourne. Will have more to write, I’m sure, once I’ve landed and settled in at Timmy’s.