1 - Australia!

We're on our way!!!  Three cheers to American Airlines for changing our flights to keep us away from the hurricane mess.  Our original flights connected in New Orleans.  American changed them to a non-stop Charlotte to Los Angeles.

Left home at 3AM this morning for Charlotte.  Turned in the cheap ($25) Dollar Rent-a-car at the Charlotte airport at 5:30AM.  Easy-peasy.  Nice set-up, you just walk to the terminal building after turning in your rental car.   (we'd never used a rental car at CLT).

Checked in at the American desk - the kind counter person got our bags checked all the way to Darwin.  This is nice since the last flight is on Quantas Airlines.


Since we're first class - we get to use the Admirals club lounge.....

So we headed there for coffee and a little snack since we'd been up since 2AM!  Nice coffee bar and continental breakfast items.  Cool espresso machine that ground the coffee beans and made your coffee automatically while you waited.  All free of charge, of course!

We had a little nibble - but we knew that we'd ordered omelettes with brie on our flight, so didn't over-do.  Before we knew it, the 7AM boarding time was called -  off to Los Angeles!!

I will pause here and vent a little. First "Fail" of the trip!   I bought a brand new 64GB Scandisk brand-name memory card for my camera.  Just for this trip.  I wanted to be able to take and save lots and lots of photos, of course.

The photos you're seeing here are from my cell phone.....I took several in-flight photos with my camera.  When I tried to upload them, I got an error message.   Nothing I could do would make it work.  Now it's asking me if I want to "format" the disk.  Bummer!!!  Not cool!  I specifically bought the brand-name one just to be sure it would be good.

So, I'm pretty disappointed, but will buy a new card when we get to Australia.  Meanwhile, you'll just have to suffer with cell phone quality photos!


Uneventful flight non-stop to LA -  landed around 10AM PDT....we're at the Admirals Club there - very nice but crowded.

Teresa would LOVE the food - vegan and really wonderful!

So, we're just hanging at the Admirals Club - we may take an Uber ride out to the beach after while since we have a very long layover (over 12 hours!!)   Our flight to Sydney leaves at 11PM PDT - or 2AM east coast time!