Holy Cow! We really did it...

So we woke up at 9:30am on Thursday morning.  Our plan had been to be on the road to JFK at noon.  Thank goodness we had made the decision the night before NOT to go back to the house one last time to do laundry.  We would not have had time to do that and we would have then had to re-pack to redistribute all the dirty clothes in separate bags so as not to soil the clean ones.  So we got a bit of a late start and of course I was freaking out the whole time.  Jim kept telling me to calm down.  Not a good comment at the time.

We made it to the Milford Mazda dealer at about 11am to return the car.  I was told that it would take less than 10 minutes.  Well, it took longer than that, but not too much.  Jim was nice enough to let me walk down to the Dunkin Donuts (I know... I know... but there was no Starbucks nearby and I was dying for a coffee) and get a mocha.

By the time I got back, everything was done.  Now we just had to return the plates to the DMV.  Apparently that service is not included when you return a leased vehicle.  We were completely unaware that we would have to do this, but thankfully you can return plates to the DMV in Milford and there was no one there.  As in... no lines.  So we just dropped the plates, got a receipt and were back in the car in less than 10 minutes.  We were on the road in time!

There was a whole fiasco with the luggage.  The night before I had called Qantas to pay for each of us to have an extra piece of luggage.  They took our money just fine... $105AU each piece.  Then we arrived at JFK only to find out that American Airlines (who were flying us from JFK to LAX) rejected the idea that Qantas could charge us for extra baggage and they don't get their cut.  So then we had to pay American Airlines $150US for each piece as well.  Unbelievable!  But, of course, we had no choice.

Finally free of all that luggage, we went in search for food.  We got pizza and then went to wait for the flight.  We bought the tickets so late that our seats weren't together.  That coupled with the fact that American Airlines had cancelled another flight to LAX made it impossible for us to change the seat assignment.  So I was in a middle seat sort of toward the middle of the plane and Jim was in an aisle seat in the last row.  After a 6 1/2 hour flight and landing in LAX, we barely had two hours before hopping on the Qantas flight to Sydney.

We had the middle and window seat to Sydney.  Poor Jim.  He only likes the aisle, but there were simply no seats.  This flight was about 16 hours.  I must have slept at least 10 hours.  I watched two movies: Contagion and Dream House.  They were pretty good.  Other than that, I watched some TV episodes that they had.  The food was okay.  When we finally landed in Sydney, I was in desperate need of a shower.  LOL!  And it's HOT in Sydney.  Today it's supposed to be 27 degrees Celsius.  Assignment of the day - figure out the temperature.

So...  we've arrived in Sydney on Saturday, February 25, 2012 at 8:21am.  :)