Airport, taxis, and hotels

Our flight landed in Sydney around 11:00 PM. If we had been lucky, we would have booked our continuing flight from Sydney to Brisbane for only a half hour later. If we had done that, we would have missed that flight, but Qantas airlines would have put us up for the night in some fancy hotel, escorted us to the hotel in a free shuttle service, and payed for the difference in the tickets.

Instead, we did the reasonable thing. Bought tickets for the following morning, where there would be no way we would miss our flight. The next flight into Brisbane was a lousy 30 minutes after our flight was supposed to land. When I saw this information on the Internet, I thought, "I wouldn't want to accidentally miss the connecting flight, going through customs and finding our luggage--let's play it safe and book it for the earliest flight, the following morning." Done. However, all those lucky son-of-a-guns who took the risk, and booked the earlier flight, really got hooked up.

Not us. Our flight in the morning, was first thing at 5:00 AM. We figured we could just camp out at the airport until that time. We wandered around the airport deciding where to stake out our claim. Everywhere was so loud and bright, our options where slim. We finally decided the row of chairs we had already passed seven times would be the best place, as there wasn't any real other places suited for our homeless evening. We pulled out the portacrib, threw blankets over the top, trying to hide the brightness, placed the boy in the crib, trying to convince him it actually was night, and we layed down on our row of chairs.

J had better plans for us. He was not convinced it was night time. A matter of fact, he was rather annoyed at us for trying to put him in this cave. He ripped the blankets off. We tried laying him down, and covering up the portacrib, again. This pattern repeated itself a few times. It wasn't until the 5th person walked by and said to her friend, loud enough for me to hear, "How sad...They must be homeless...That poor baby" that I lost my patience.

"Chris, we need to go get a hotel. Now." We packed up our portacrib, and off we went, wandering around this foreign place, once again. We eventually made it outside, where it was FREEZING COLD. We had to dig through our luggage to get the little human adequately covered. Somehow we found a sign that said "Taxi service", and we made our way to the empty line. A car pulled up, we loaded our gear, and we were off, once again.

"Where to?" the nice taxi man said with his obviously-thick Australian accent. Chris hurry and looked at me, as if I was supposed to know anything. We hadn't really planned up to this point. I just wanted to get out of the airport, and sleep. I was so stinkin' tired. We told him we wanted to go to some hotel... any hotel... Some nice person inside the airport told us of a cheap hotel near by, but, with our luck, we both forgot the name of it. The taxi driver, conveniently, told us there was no hotels close by, that he would have to drive for a long time. Whatever. At that point I just wanted sleep.

He started driving, and low and behold, only about 3 minutes later did the bright yellow sign of the previously mentioned hotel shine in my face! "Wait! That's it! That's the hotel we want." Lame taxi driver, trying to scam us poor, unprepared, unsuspecting Americans. He mumbled something about how he can't get there, that we told him too late, yadda yadda yadda. He made a U-turn and we were there!!

By this time it was around 1:00 AM. Our next stupid flight was leaving in a measly 4 hours, but I had never wanted to sleep more in my life. I was annoyed with myself for trying to "wing it", by staying at the airport. I could have been asleep hours ago...I stumbled into the foyer of the hotel. I don't remember saying much to the man at the desk. I simply remember handing him my credit card and passport, he typed on the keyboard, handed me a key to the room, and took all our luggage. Nice. That worked good enough for me.

We got on the elevator, pushed the number seven, and walked right up to our room. When we opened the door, we were torn. Our room was SO NICE... VERY NICE. This is something that would usually be a positive thing, however, knowing that we were going to be there for about 3 hours, made my mind start wondering how much money we paid for this three bed suite...

Oh well, I was too tired.