A lot of travel…

So it’s been almost half a week, a lot of it has been travel. A brief rundown of the days:

Sunday
After my previous post I landed in Sydney. Transfer was relatively painless head to the transfer area and Qantas bus takes you through to international terminal. Security & immigration were both pretty quick. I was pleasantly surprised by premium economy on the A380. Great service & food, decent leg room. The main downside from business was that the seats don’t lie flat (and being in the back row I think I had less recline than most). I wanted to sleep for the first little while and I did dose, but didn’t get great sleep. Coming through customs in LA was a long wait but pretty simple. I found the hotel shuttle bus without any issues. Hotel room was simple but fine, I ordered room service. Then I thought I would try and have a shower before bed. I tried for a good 10 minutes but I could not figure out how to turn the shower on. In the end I was so tired I gave up and went to bed. I slept well and woke up reasonably early to give myself plenty of time at the airport.

Monday
I took the airport shuttle back to the airport and I as I hadn’t been able to checkin online I had to go to the JetBlue counter, but there were no problems there. Security was fine and then I waited in a line for a good 30 minutes to get a coffee. As far as US coffee goes it was pretty decent – this order was just a straight hot latte (which not all cafes seem to have). Bordered the flight to Newark and I was blown away by the quality of JetBlue. I was expecting something like a JetStar equivalent but it was better. Primarily in terms of leg room – I reckon I had very similar to the amount I had in premium economy – I have never been so comfortable in economy class! No meal but free drinks, coffee, snacks and you could help yourself to more, so that was a good experience. Landed in Newark, had a decent wait for luggage then paid $8 for a <5min monorail ride to the hotel shuttle pick up point. This hotel was slightly nicer than LA, it was a slightly bigger room with a couch. The first thing I did was made sure I could use the shower and I figured this one out. It also confirmed something I noticed – one of the main differences so far – US toilets have more water in them! I don’t know why, but the literally the water in the bowl is half way to the top, which compared to Australia is just weird. There was no room service at this hotel so I spent some time looking for places, but there wasn’t a lot around. I went down to the restaurant and eventually decided to eat there. I had salmon and the house white and it was really good. I then went back to the room had a nice bath while watching Master Chef before heading to bed.

The other think I noticed about the US is that food seems to be quite expensive. I remembered it being cheap from 2005 but not so much so far. Although it did occur to me that I probably haven’t been eating in the cheapest places (airports, hotels) so far, so it might change.

This post has got really long and I’m typing this on Saturday, even though I started it Tuesday so I might end here and start a new post for the next few days.