I left Montreal at 4 p.m., the first leg of my trip was to Toronto, where Wes joined me. As I disembarked in Toronto, after my first flight of the day, it occurred to me that I was barely 1/22nd of the way to Australia - a daunting thought.
I went to the Air Canada lounge to wait for Wes, and the fellow sitting next to me turned out to be a fine Australian chap, a mate in his local lingo. Mike and I chatted, and he gave me some tips, including on snakes and spiders, and other things that kill you. When Wes arrived we conspired to tell him a wonderful (but alas a tall) story about a fellow who found a brown snake (the second deadliest in Australia - second only to the famed Taipan) in the toilet bowl, quite luckily, just before he sat down. Great fun.
The next flights were long, 5 hours to Vancouver and over 16 hours from Vancouver to Sydney. It is a blessedly long time - no phone, no BlackBerry, nothing that needs to be done. Thinking of it as long flight misses the point, it’s a lot more fun to think of it as a short vacation. I read a newspaper, slept for 8 hours, had a snack (dim sum), read a second newspaper, read my Australia travel guide and made some notes, slept for 2 more hours, had more dim sum, watched a movie, edited some photos, wrote part of this entry, had breakfast, and read a little. Quite the trip.
We just arrived in Sydney, we are staying The Four Seasons, Wes’ favorite hotel, and we are going out to explore.
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