Off to Queensland

This morning we were up reasonably early to get our ride to the airport. We arrived at LCCT about 8.30 and our flight was at 10.20am. Because we had the premium seats, we sailed through check-in and then headed to The Coffee Bean for a drink. We did a bit of duty free shopping and then headed through immigration in time to get to our boarding gate.

We boarded the plane and settled in for the 8 hour journey to Coolengatta. We sat on the runway for half an hour while someone was looking for their passport so we took off half an hour late. I watched an episode of Fawlty Towers (a true classic!) on my iPod before we even took off and then once we took off I watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas - definitely not a comedy!

We had some lunch and then I pretty much read my book for the rest of the flight and by the time we landed I was half way through My Sister's Keeper. The flight was painless but long.

So we waited for our bags which took over an hour to arrive because the conveyor belt broke down twice. The first time it stopped, about 50 bags had come out and had been collected so when it stopped, about 150 people that were left were standing around wondering, like us, if they had managed to lose that many bags! Eventually our bags came out and we moved on to customs.

Unfortunately we had decided to declare a packet of M&M type chocolates. This meant that despite showing the customs officer the chocolates, we still had to line up with 100 other people to have our bags scanned. Luckily, we were not in Line 3 where all the people were having their bags searched. Out of all the people on the plane, only about 3 people we saw walk through without undergoing some kind of scan. Ridiculous! Obviously this meant that we were really late meeting John and Caz. It took us over two hours from when we landed to when we got out. We figured the customs officers were getting paid overtime if they worked past 10pm.

Anyway, we finally made it and Caz and John drove us to the apartment on the Coolengatta beach. We sat up for a while catching up before heading to bed about midnight. Finally home in Aus.