Sunday, February 11, 2024
Our final day in Australia.
We lazed around the hotel all morning, packing and consuming what we could. We checked out at 11:30 and left our bags stashed at the hotel front desk. We walked over to the Maritime Museum on the other side of the Pyrmont bridge.
After seeing several ships and boats at the piers, we had lunch at the museum café, then ventured into the main building of the museum.
Lots of cool stuff to see inside the museum building, including meticulously carved ship miniatures to historical shipping and immigration, to a beautiful exhibit of prizewinning ocean-themed photography. This exquisite model was featured, accompanied by the artist who created her. He made everything himself, and carved all those tiny pieces using a Dremel-type tool.
When we’d seen all we could, we headed back toward the hotel with a cold beverage on our minds. Goodbye, Darling Harbor!
Hearing the sound of music, and thinking the Year of the Dragon celebrations ongoing, we headed toward it. However, it turned out to be a pro-Palestinian protest march, so we veered out of the way and found a seat and a couple of cold beers at the Belvedere, just a few doors down from the Fraser Suites.
Soon it was time to collect our things and meet our driver for the trip to the airport.
We got checked in without too much trouble, found a place to get another beverage, and waited. We boarded our flight and departed Sydney at 9:00 pm.
Also, February 11, because this was the 48-hour day.
Twenty-four hours of jet travel. The flight to Honolulu wasn’t nearly full, but as we were in a pair of seats, there was no extra room in our row. I doubt extra space would have helped much anyway, as the seats were just dead uncomfortable and sleeping was nearly impossible despite drugs and pillow and eye mask.
Arriving in Hawaii about 10 am, we were shuffled into a long queue with all the other passengers for immigration processing prior to baggage claim. We had not expected to go through this in Hawaii, although in retrospect this should have been obvious, but in any case, we should NOT have gone into the same line as the non-US passport holders and we ended up spending nearly an hour in line when we could have passed through a line specifically for US passport holders. Lesson learned. However, time was now short to catch our connection on Alaska Airlines. The border agent only asked us whether we had any food or agricultural products, and then took our photos and let us through. We grabbed our luggage and practically ran to the Alaska counter where we had to re-check our bags, rush through TSA (thankfully a short line!), making it to our flight just as it was boarding. Just enough time to take a picture as we were rushing … Hello, Hawaii!
The flight was relatively short at only 5 hours, dropping us into SEATAC just as the Super Bowl was winding up. We were treated to a parking lot van filled with football fans watching the last bit of overtime on someone’s phone, which they held up for the entire van to see as the Chiefs pulled out a win for Taylor Swift.
Two hours in the rain later, home again, and a very sound sleep in our comfy bed with our comfy pillows.
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