Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2006
part one of mission S.B. ...
S.B. eating dinner on the plane...After absolutely minimal sleep (for both of us) we were up at 5am to prepare for the long trip ahead. Made it to Canberra airport at 6ish and after MASSIVE lines through security (monday business trips i guess) were up in the departure lounge. Both lots of families were there to wave us off, along with Sam and Mick and Chloe (who made it just as we were about to walk onto the plane!)
The flight to Sydney was ok, arrived in the airport and had to check in and stuff almost straight away! Rang Prue cos her and Jo BLUDGED and were still in bed at 8 so didnt come see us off! Had a quick bite to eat and chatted to a Kiwi guy who tried to sell us this phone network thing. Then we were on the plane!
After 9hrs we landed in Honolulu (at 11:45pm local time, but still 26 degrees!) and went through immigration and customs even through we were only there for an hour! Chatted to a random English chick called Jennifer who'd just been in NZ for 5 months and sat in a REALLY nice departure lounge with HUGE windows looking onto
our sink at the hostel
and yes... there's S.B. right next to it... the runway then we were off again. Honolulu to Vancouver was a 5 1/2 hour flight, tried to sleep through it, but didnt do so well.
Landed in Vancouver at 10am local time (same time as we left Australia in Australian Time!) jet-lagged as all hell! Waited at the baggage carousel until the conveyer belt stopped but my bag didnt appear! A fairly nice but clearly stressed bloke at baggage inquirys took some details and told me they'd send it straight on through to Calgary when it arrived the next day. Needless to say it took us an hour to get through baggage claim and customs!
A really nice information desk lady helped us out loads with booking the bus to Calgary, finding a hostel near the bus stop and getting the bus down to the hostel. Some REALLY nice bus drivers helped us out when we didnt understand the instructions, and eventually we ended up on main st of "downtown" Vancouver. The hostel was fairly dingy, but the guy who ran it was nice and when he couldnt find a bed in a dorm for Jase he gave us a private room with single bunks for the
where we lay our weary heads...
and yeah... that's the total of our room at the hostel... same price as the dorm. So we dumped our stuff then went to explore (and find some emergency clothes for me!)
Where we were was completely random! There were art galleries and boutique stores right next to dingy alleyways full of drugged homeless people. We wandered around for a few hours, i bought a shirt to carry me through the next day. Back at the hostel we cooked some microwave dinners and chatted to a Scottish girl with a really thick accent, another girl from Hong Kong and an older lady who seemed to have been EVERYWHERE! Got invited to go out for drinks with some people in the hostel by a big American guy but turned down politely in favour of a shower (and for me some fresh clothes provided by Jase, lol) and an early night (8pm).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.069s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0467s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
