Flights to Australia

We have finally arrived here in Cairns, Australia for the beginning of our 2 week adventure Down Under. Our car broke down two hours before we were supposed to takeoff from Tucson, requiring an emergency battery replacement. We got to the airport about 45 minutes before our flight but had just enough time to get through security and on to the plane.

Our flights down here were not nearly as bad as we expected. After a short jaunt from Tucson to LAX, we spent 5 hours in LA before boarding our flight to Sydney. We were in the very last row of the Qantas 747-400 (row 75!). It turned out that we couldn't have found any better seats! Being the last row, we had extra storage below below our seats, leaving all the space in front of us for legroom. There was also a large exit door next to us, leaving plenty of room to get up and stretch at anytime. We were very impressed with Qantas! Even in coach, we had personal TVs with a selection of 60 movies and 200 TV shows. Both hot meals were delicious and there were snacks whenever we wanted them. It will sure make it hard to go back to the US airlines! We had a brief layover in Sydney before boarding our flight to Cairns. We were dreading this last segment after our trans-Pacific flight, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable. We were on a large 767-300 with about 100 of the 250 seats filled. Whenever we got bored, we just changed seats for a different perspective. After 29 hours of travel covering 9300 miles, we finally arrived in Cairns. We were shocked that customs only took a couple minutes and they didn't even quarantine our peanuts! A driver was waiting at the airport to whisk us off to The Hotel Cairns. Now it's off to explore the city...