Off to an Unexpected Start

On our last morning on the Gold Coast, we spent trying to pack all the extra stuff we know had. Bill’s parents had brought a luggage we packed before leaving incase we wanted some different clothes, and so packing became so much harder than normal. My parents had a really early flight, so Jim dropped them off, and Bill’s family’s flight to Cairnes was 2 hours before ours, so we were the last to leave. We had a little extra time, so we headed to the mall to look for two cards I wanted. We didn’t find them, but Bill got some new sandals. Finally! He had been trying on every pair he could find since New Zealand, but didn’t like any of them. The ones he had just kept getting worse and worse, so I was happy to see them go.

We headed out the hour drive to get to the airport which slowly turned into 2 hours as the traffic just kept getting further and further backed up. The panic in my face got worse and worse as I thought that our whole plane ticket gets cancelled if we miss this flight. If we miss any leg of our flight, the rest of the entire ticket gets cancelled. This is putting the pressure on. We finally get off the motor way as we try to find a gas station to fill up the tank on this rental car. As we see one on the other side of the road, we use the next round about to get there.

What not to do when flying to Cairns...

Now the problem with getting gas in Australia is that there isn’t any credit card machines, so you pump and then have to go pay inside, the old fashion way. Normally, not a problem, but the bloody lines aren’t moving and we’re sitting behind a blond who can’t seem to figure out how to put gas in her car. Finally, another lane open, Bill pulls in. I run inside to get in line because I’m sure by the time I’m in front, he’ll be finished pumping. Some guy is getting a refund in front of me and another couple just brought groceries, so he finishes way before I can pay. I run t get back into the car.

The only smooth part of this morning was returning the rental car, and since we didn’t need a receipt took no time at all. Bill loaded all our luggage onto a trolley and off we go running to find the Quantas area. Of course, it’s all the way at the other end and goes pass some baggage claim areas making it seem like it should be the other way. We finally get there, and go to scan our cards, which tells us to go to the service desk like it did in Melbourne. We were counting on this to by pass the 45 minute line everyone else was in. However, just as we’re about to go to the counter, the first guy goes for a break, so there’s only one counter open and he’s on the phone trying to help a customer.  Another woman comes to help move people around, and basically tells us we have to go wait in the big line until they call us for the expedient lines.

So now we’re in the back of the long line, and luckily, I don’t have my watch on as I know it’s not long until our flight. Other people are being told to go to lanes 21 and 22 if their plane is close to leaving, so I ask and she says to just go. We finally get to the front of the line there, and the lady looks puzzled at us because our flight hasn’t been called to these lanes yet. But she goes to help us anyhow only she can’t find our names in the computer as our flight is actually for tomorrow. We got our dates confused with our parents and had just assumed since we gave them our flight info, they’d made reservations on the same date.

So now we have to run over to ticketing to see if we can get on this plane. I make it before Bill, and the guy looks at the ticket as I ask him to change it and makes the comment, “I don’t know how much it will cost.” I blurt in an explanation of it being an around the world ticket and dates are flexible so he huffs, “You’re suppose to do this before, we’re not an international terminal.” I don’t have the energy to explain why we hadn’t done it before by this time Bill made it over with all stuff and remarks, “It’s full, isn’t it.” I had no idea as the guy wasn’t saying much to me and I was trying to fight back the tears and hyperventilation. But then he just looks up, gives us boarding passes and tells us to go back to the lines we came from as we have 10 minutes.

We get to another girl and she happily takes our boarding passes and checks our luggage. Her remark was, “Check at the gate if you can get seats together as they might be able to help.” And so, we make it through security and after going to the bathroom, Bill asks if we can get seats together saying it’s our honeymoon. And as they call boarding, we have exit row seats next to each other. So we arrive 23 hours early for our first plane ride as a married couple. We’ll just have to see how the rest of it goes, but we made it!

We get to Cairns and tell Jim our woes about our flight, and he starts to tell us his woes about the hotel we’re in. Apparently, they stopped working with the site they used to book a week ago and didn’t want to give us a room as they were fully booked even though they had already paid. But they had one place left with a broken washer that they could give us as if they were doing us a favor. They stopped working with this site because it charges half the price they can rent them for. By this time, Bill and I were just glad to sit down and relax and were glad they worked it out.

We went straight to eat as Bill and I hadn’t had anything since breakfast as we were too busy running around and then we called it an early night.

Michelle

Well now that we got to Cairns (pronouced Cans) we still have a week of stuff that we have done to update everyone on.  We will continue to work on that, so check back for the exciting conclusion.  Plus we posted like 4 other ones today, meaning that we only have 1 old one left to update.

Enjoy

Bill

PS Pictures coming soon