Home at last
(This is labelled as days 34 & 35, since we crossed the date line on the way home, effectively losing the day we gained on the way there). Our entire trip lasted 35 days all up.
Our flight, QF108 from LAX to SYD was uneventful – the best kind really.
It was made much more pleasant by the last minute upgrade to First Class for us. We bought discount economy tickets, then I used frequent flyer miles to upgrade us to Business Class, and then we got bumped before boarding up to First Class. Can’t complain about that – especially for a 15 hour flight !
Of course, this now disproves my theory that when travelling with Leanne (who has no frequent flyer status), I would never receive an upgrade to First Class.
The upgrade meant we both got a good sleep on the flight home, although I’m wondering if there would be some adverse side effects of this – Leanne might never want to travel business class again (let alone economy class !!).
Anyway – we finally got home just after 10am to a rather musty smelling house. It’s warm and quite humid in Sydney today – not exactly the pleasant weather I was hoping for on our return.
Our held mail was delivered this afternoon – a stack nearly a foot high (mostly bills, of course) … so now I’ve got to catch up on 5 weeks worth of accounting and filing. *sigh*.
Not all of the charges from our trip have appeared on our online Amex statement yet, so I can’t get a final total of the cost … but so far it looks resonably close to what I had budgeted for. At least we’re not using credit to pay for this trip – so once the next Amex bill is paid, that’s it for the costs.
This will be the last post about our holidays. Hopefully I’ll find some time to start going through the photos and uploading them today or tomorrow. Have another couple of rolls of 35mm film to get developed too.
Some final stats on the trip:
- 35 days away
- 32 hotel nights (39 nights if you include the double booking in Las Vegas)
- 11 hotels
- 2 nights Sheraton Delfina, Santa Monica (was Four Points Sheraton)
- 4 nights Staybridge Suites San Diego Downtown, San Diego
- 1 night Crowne Plaza, Phoenix (was Holiday Inn Select Phoenix Airport)
- 2 nights Holiday Inn Express, Grand Canyon
- 1 night Westin Casurina, Las Vegas
- 6 nights New York New York, Las Vegas
- 7 nights MGM Grand, Las Vegas (didn’t actually stay there)
- 1 night Westin LAX, Los Angeles
- 5 nights Hyatt Regency, Miami
- 9 nights Disney’s Yacht Club Resort, Walt Disney World (Orlando)
- 1 night Holiday Inn Express Hollywood, Los Angeles
- SYD – LAX, QF107
- LAX – FLL, AA384
- FLL – LAX, AA2083
- LAX – SYD, QF108
- Mazda6 (collected LAX 30th Dec, broke near El Centro 5th Jan)
- Toyota Camry (collected IPL 5th Jan, returned LAX 16th Jan)
- Ford Taurus (collected FLL 16th Jan, returned FLL 16th Jan – suspect brakes)
- Lincoln Town Car (collected FLL 16th Jan, returned MIA 17th Jan – didn’t like it)
- Toyota Camry (collected MIA 17th Jan, returned FLL 30th Jan)
- Ford Taurus (collected LAX 30th Jan, returned LAX 31st Jan)
- California
- Arizona
- Nevada
- Florida
It’s good to be home.
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