Wanderung 33

Flight from Perth to Sydney

Using our rolls purchased the day before, I fixed us toast for breakfast and we used the last of the raspberry jam and almost all of the butter that we had bought at the beginning of our West Australia trek, which let us start the day with a meal and had the side benefit of making me feel that we weren't wasting any food. We took our time and had a nice, relaxed drive out to Perth`s airport, and it was a LOT easier than driving out of the airport in the dead of night had been!

We also found a convenient BP gas station right outside the airport premises, so we filled up the rental car before reluctantly returning it--the Hyundai had gotten us around West Australia quite competently and comfortably. For the record, regular gasoline was 1.34 Australian dollars per liter, or over $5 US per US gallon! Although not as high a price as Europe, the price is still high enough to encourage Australians to purchase efficient automobiles. The other noticeable thing about the gas pump picture I'm inserting below is that the diesel fuel line is clearly marked with a warning sign, which I am very grateful for because I have, in fact mis-fueled a rental car once! But not this time, so we returned the car to the rental car parking lot at Perth airport in good order.

The route from the rental car kiosk back to the terminal was just the same as we remembered from our trip out to Perth. Signing in at the Qantas ticket counter was very pleasant, in contrast to the trouble I had using the automated luggage machines at the Sydney airport. In fact, we were early enough that we could have taken the earlier plane to Sydney, but it was pleasant just to relax and use the free airport wifi to play around while we waited for our plane. We even saw our luggage being loaded onto our airplane and Monika got a picture of it.

When we finally did embark, Monika was lucky in having an aisle seat with no middle person sitting beside her, and I was unlucky in having a huge French -speaking guy built roughly like a rugby player (American: built like a fullback) stuck into the middle seat beside me. He was a nice guy, really, but even a poorer fit for that seat than I was in mine.

Still, the Qantas folks fed us quite decently and offered free wine with dinner and chocolates for dessert, so I just endured the flight and waited to get to Sydney. There we collected our luggage and walked what SHOULD have been 2-3 blocks to the Ibis hotel that we had reserved for the night.

But because most of the sidewalks just ended or were blocked off due to construction and there were no pedestrian maps available, we continually had to try to re-route our walk to the hotel and it took us well over half an hour of walking on the shoulders of busy streets to get there! That was dangerous and I was pissed at the airport authorities for just completely ignoring any kind of information for those who would predictably be walking to the 2 hotels and 3 restaurants inside the airport premises. So if you try to do this, use a map app and print a detailed map of the airport before you walk out the door to help keep you oriented, especially if it is at night! Still, we did get there and settled in to try to sleep off some of the jet lag caused by the 3-hour time zone shift.