G'Day!

Honolulu Airport Hotel to Sydney The HAH is much a used and abused hotel, but provides a good nights rest, and a more than adequate breakfast looking out across their pool area. We take the HAH shuttle to the airport. At the airport we check-in with QANTAS only to find that there is no Australian visa for Miranda. There should be one, its done automatically by American Airlines. OneWorld alliance partners? Do these two airlines actually talk to each other? We are ticketed, and then told to wait while the visa is issued. Certainly good service, well we are going Business Class (the top on the pile as far as QANTAS in concerned for this leg of the trip). Its done in minutes, which seems like a good sign. The fight to Oz is in the nose of the plane in Row 3, on the right-hand side of the aircraft. Its about a 10 hour flight, over the International Date Line. Enough time for three movies, two meals and sampling of a few fairly ordinary wines. The steward notices Miranda’s John Lennon T-shirt and tells her he had him on the plane at one time. Probably not the phrasing he was looking for but it gives them a topic of conversation for the rest of the flight. We arrive into sunny Sydney at 7pm on December 10th to a downpour. One thing about being in Business Class you get off quickly and so we get to Immigration fast only to find that the visa Miranda was given in Hawaii has a problem and she has to accompany officials while I head off to collect the luggage. Another perk of flying Business is that your bags come off bloody fast as well. We could be out of here in record time! Miranda appears just as I load up the bags and we head to Customs where she declares several bags of spices and chilies. They get more than the once over, with comments of “You can buy these here in Australia”. In the end she gets to keep them. It would be nice to find an ATM that works and we try three but none can process our request for the mighty Aussie dollar “at this time”. Fortunately we have Euros left from our recent trip to Europe and they are quickly exchanged. Miranda has organized a room at the Gemini Hotel in Randwick, so we call for their shuttle and do as instructed and go to Bay 24 to wait for the white van to arrive. We don’t have long to wait before it pulls up and the original Aussie battler jumps out with a white bath towel thrown over his head and shoulders as protection from the rain. He hurries us to get our carry-on bags and ourselves into the van while he gets the bigger bags. One gets thrown onto the seat next to me, the other onto the front seat, and we are off. He seems to want to have a conversation, but with all the rattling and road noise and his soft voice its hard to make out exactly what he’s saying. And so after a while he turns on the radio. The Gemini looks like a very nice hotel with a very modern lobby. We head up to room 403. Miranda enters and stops almost immediately and I think that she has been stunned by the elegance of the room but no she just reached the limit of the room’s dimensions. Small is not quite the right description. In addition the room overlooks Belmore Road and its pretty regular traffic. Without any air-conditioning we have to keep the window open to get some air circulation, but I’m too tired to worry about it and fall onto the bed. At some point Miranda mumbles something about ear plugs and I tell her there are some in the bag of goodies I got from the QANTAS steward.