October 5 & 6 - The Trip To Sydney

Blaise Says . . .

Day 1 down under

We left DFW at approximately noon on the 5^th via JAL.  I had done extensive research on JAL to determine if the Premium Economy was going to work and was it worth the investment, it definitely is, you get enough legroom to be able to use a leg rest/foot rest configuration and the seats are in a “pod” configuration so you extending your seat doesn’t impact the person behind you.  The flight attendants are extremely happy and do a great job throughout the entire flight, the food is a bit odd but pretty good, that said it’s still 13 HOURS!!! I struggled with having to create a brown bear most of the way but finally addressed my fears and knocked it out, figuratively, not literally… And when you arrive in Narita it’s 1am at home.  We have another 2 hours in our layover before we board for the short hop, yes 9 more hours to get to Sydney.  Right about now I’m wondering how I ever logged these places as bucket list locations, geez what a dope!!  Overall I’d say it’s been pretty painless, except for my tailbone issue, more on that later.  Excellent way to start though, hopefully the connections from Sydney airport to the illustrious “Shangri La” hotel, yes that’s the name of it, will not disappoint, I am waiting to see if it’s a dive or not, the pictures say no but we’ll see.

Ami Says . . .

We made it to Toyko, the first leg of our trip to Sydney, at 3:05 PM, 1:05 AM in Texas, on Thursday.  That is quite a loooong flight – over 13 hours.  We are flying Japan Airlines’ (JAL) Economy Plus.  Economy Plus is between economy and business.  They wanted over $6,000 each for the business class seats and these were about $2,400 each.

Although uncomfortable after a few hours, it wasn’t near as bad as it would have been in coach. The seats are SO roomy which is important when you are 6 feet tall.  The seats recline back further than coach and there is a footrest that lowers from the seat in front of you.

Blaise and I were like two little kids unable to contain our excitement with each new feature we discovered.  Maybe more so me than him.  But all that roominess was thrilling stuff worthy of unrestrained excitement!
We had to use their headsets because the plug-in was different than ours.  No worries there either – I’ve never seen nicer headphones from an airline.

The one disconcerting feature of the plane is the windows for which you could change the tinting yourself.  And then I think they made the windows ever darker after a few hours into the flight.  It took me several hours to figure out it wasn’t really night outside but it was the window tint.  There were no window blinds to shut, just the darkened windows. Then I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how the window shading worked.  It didn’t appear there was any physical shade that went down.  I have no idea how it works.  Needless to say the window tint really messes you up. That along with leaving at noon on Wednesday and getting to Tokyo at 3 PM the following day.

We also get their first class lounge privileges at the airports along with the Economy Plus seats.  That’s quite handy.  At D/FW, I had a few glasses of wine before I got on the plane in hopes of sleeping most of the trip. I did not factor in my need for frequent urination after all that wine. Crap!

I am sitting in the lounge at Narita airport as I write this, waiting for our flight to Sydney.  It leaves hear at 7:25 PM and we get to Sydney at 7 AM tomorrow (Friday). It will be 5 PM Thursday in Texas. More to come when we hit Sydney.

Not really much to write about.  Nothing interesting has happened and we’ve seen nothing odd. No weird people doing weird things. We’ve seen mostly Japanese folk and they are fairly quiet and normal.