Australia - time to go home

Final Day

We woke up early hoping to walk in the Royal Botanical Garden, maybe catch a tour of the Opera House, but it was raining.  So we relaxed in the hotel room all morning until check out. There was literally nothing to do. Some of you may have seen me on Facebook or Farmville, lol.  Our flight did not leave until 3:40 pm so when it was check out time we head straight for the airport.

Going through Immigration was a breeze. Next was security. I was told that security after Immigration follows US rules but they didn’t. We didn’t have to take our shoes off or any of that stuff. Then we did a little shopping. Nothing duty free, really. Just a Swarovsky crystal (blue tinted clam with a real pearl) for my collection and an opal necklace and earring set. DH kind of wanted me to look at the opals since they’re significant to Australia. Of course, if he’s offering to buy me jewelry (expensive jewelry), I’m not going to say no.  But there’s till one more security check just before our gate. Again, it was a breeze. It may have been crowd control, dunno. They only checked our boarding pass, not our carry ons; nor did they make us go through another metal detector or anything. 

We arrived in Dallas a little bit early. No problems going through customs. However, when we got on the plane bound for Houston we were in for a little bit of a shock. After spending so much time on very large planes, our Houston-bound plane was teeny-tiny. I mean, 1 seat on one side, and 2 seats on the other. It was smaller than an airbus. I think the name of the plane was American Eagle.You barely had room to stand. And only one flight attendant on the flight. The planes we had been on were 2 seats on one side, 3 on the other side and 4 in the middle. And that was in economy. The business economy it was more like 2-3-2. And First Class being only a handful of seats.

Anyway, the dogs were really happy to see us. One was so happy she sounded like she was in pain or something. And it will feel great to sleep in my own bed once again. We don't know yet how we're going to route our next trip to Australia; hopefully somewhere exotic like Beijing or Indonesia.

Freda