Honolulu - Feb 14 - Happy Valentine's Day

Our prepaid shuttle showed up late but we made it to the airport in plenty of time.  Checked in and while on the TSA line met Maureen and Bill from our Roll Call...they recognized me...what fun to put faces with names finally.  Stopped at Starbucks for a quick breakfast and then to the gate.  Once at the gate,  I saw Ruth from our Roll Call sitting in her scooter and chatted with her for awhile.  Boarded on time and left Honolulu on Hawaiian Air flight at 12:05 PM.  We  had barely had time to adjust to the 5 hour time change from home to HNL - now it was time to think about crossing the International Date Line (losing a day, yikes!) and changing time by another 3 hours plus one day. Makes my head hurt doing the calculations, but we've really done well adjusting to the new times.

The 9 1/2 hour flight was uneventful (except for the unusual experience of being served a full meal for lunch, free wine and beer, frequently being offered water and Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge ice cream mid afternoon as well as a sandwich and chips about 1 hour before landing)!  In addition, service was wonderful from all flight attendants.

Arrived in Sydney a bit early - now 7 PM on Feb 15th - passengers to Australia wait on the plane for the quarantine folks to spray the overhead bins for bugs then wait another 5 min. for it to work!  Retrieved all pieces of luggage!  We had a long wait to go through customs, then a stop at an ATM machine and on to the taxi queue - got a taxi van...at a much higher cost than a reg. taxi (didn't know that :)).  About 3/4 of the way to Sydney city center, I heard a loud pop, asked the driver what it might have been..no answer, another mile or so heard the clear noise associated with a flat tire suggesting that the loud pop was a blow out!  So...we sat on the side of the road (fortunately just before entering the tunnel) until another driver stopped (about 15 min), transferred luggage, paid an exorbitant taxi fare to the first driver and finally ended up at the Marriott Sydney Harbor feeling a bit frazzled.

Checked in and, after some discussion, did not get access to the Executive Lounge as we usually do but did end up with a room on the 18th floor with a wonderful view of the Harbor Bridge and a cruise ship (not ours) - looks like a fairy land with all of the lights reflecting on the water.  Off to bed at a 'normal' bed time - hard to say what that is with all of the time changes - so that we can get up early for a 7:45 AM pick-up for our winery tour tomorrow.