The Longest Flight Ever

You know how when you fly across the US on the redeye back from Vegas, and you're like "wow, that's a really long flight!  I feel like crap"?  Well.... let me tell you something my friends.  You've never traveled until you've been on a flight to Sydney, Australia.  Holy smokes is that far!

I flew from Chicago O'Hare to LAX to Sydney.  Whew!  We left on a Thursday and arrived on Saturday morning.  You literally lose two days flying.  It's kind of hard to wrap your head around.

The flight from Chicago to LA wasn't too bad.  I tried to stay awake and not read any of my magazines or books since I was saving everything for the 15 hour flight from LA to Sydney.  I was lucky enough to be able to fly first class on that leg of the trip, so there was a meal and enough on the tv to keep me entertained for four hours.

Upon arrival in LA I headed straight the the American Airlines Admirals Club.  I like to call it a little piece of heaven.  It's so nice and quite in there.  No screaming babies, no loud obnoxious cell phone talkers, plus free snacks and soda.  Glorious.  I was joking with my husband over text that maybe I would be sitting next to someone famous on my flight to LA.  Hey, there's a chance - I was on a flight from Chicago to LAX with Jeremy Piven once (no, we didn't 'hug it out').  Unfortunately, no dice.  However, I had forgotten about the Admirals Club.  I'm sitting in a nice cozy corner, near a window, charging all of my electronic devices when in walks.....

Okay, so I didn't exactly know who it was, but I knew they were famous and he had some Ari Gold type agent with him catering to his every need.  So, who was it?!  Thank god for Google.  I knew he was in a movie with Beyonce (of all things, go figure) and from there I figured it out.  It was an actor named Idris Elba.  He's actually been in quite a few movies.  Check out it out on Wikipedia (my source for all solid, verified information): Idris Elba.  So not super exciting, but hey - it was something.  And we were on the elevator together back down to the main entrance.  He's a really nice guy.

There concludes my adventures in the airport and in America for that matter.  On to the dreaded 15 hour flight.  I was definitely a little worried about being on a plane for that long, especially with 90% of the flight being over water.  I mean, even if you sleep for 8 hours, you're only half way there!  How do you entertain yourself for that long?  I'll tell you how... Qantas business class, baby!  I was on the Qantas Airbus A380.  Yeah, that's the way to do it.

It's still a fairly new plane and pretty fancy, so all of the flight attendants have to explain how your seat works when you board.  I didn't want to be the girl in business class taking pictures, but when other people starting doing it I figured I might as well!

My seat/bed for 15 hours

That was my seat/bed for the next day....seriously.  It actually turned out to be quite manageable.  My flight was delayed about 2 hours so it was after midnight Pacific time by the time we actually boarded.  I was pretty tired by then so I skipped dinner and went to sleep right away.  The seat actually lays completely flat and they give you noise canceling headphones (I know, my life is really hard) so I actually got about 7 hours of sleep.  Woo hoo!

Oh wait.  There's still about 8 hours left.  Oh snaps.  Since I skipped dinner, everyone else was still sleeping. I got up to use the restroom and stretch a bit then headed back to my seat.  Except for the fact that it was pitch black and I couldn't remember where my seat was.  I literally stepped over into a seat that I thought was mine (I was sitting by the window) and there was a body there.  Whoops.  I was one row back.

After that debacle, I was pretty much wide awake.  I watched two full movies, ate, watched tv, read, tried to look out the window but it was pitch black out (since you leave at night you chase the dark all the way to Sydney), and watched more tv.  You have your own tv/entertainment center loaded full of programs so I got caught up on The Office and Modern Family.

Finally, 14.5 glorious hours later, our captain came over the intercom to announce that we were making our initial descent to Sydney.

After all the build up of the past few months and the packing and the flight, I had finally arrived.