Early start to the day, had to catch a 6:30am flight from Canberra to Melbourne. Even though our flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles didn't leave till 11am I didn't want to risk being delayed by possible fog so took the first flight out. When we got to Melbourne we went straight to the international terminal which is in the same building so we only had to go up the escalator. We had breakfast and filled in some time looking in the shops.
When we boarded we were in the middle row of three seats with another person but after take off we moved to two empty rows of three so we could lie down to sleep. We were lucky that the plane wasn''t too full. It was a really good flight with just a couple of spots of turbulence. There was plenty of leg room and toilets and they were very clean (you need to fly Virgin next time Fran). Lunch was a choice of roast chicken, Massaman Curry or a vegetarian dish. I chose the chicken and roast vegetables and it was delicious and came with a bread roll, a salad and a piece of chocolate cake (which I didn't eat).
There were lots of inflight entertainment, movies, tv shows, games, music all of which you viewed on a screen that was on the back of the seat in front. I had brought a book to read so did that instead but Annamaree watched 3 movies. We also met up with Simone and Juliana who are also on the incentive trip. We did get some sleep until the captain announced that we had to sit up and put our seat belts on. Then he told the crew to do the same. We were a bit concerned because there was no explanation but it turned out to be some strong turbulence we were flying through.
Some flight stats: air speed 900 kph; altitude 37,000 ft; total distance 12,788 kms, flight time 14 hrs.
We arrived in Los Angeles at 8:30am and went through the first customs where they checked our passports and customs declaration and then scanned the fingers on both hands. We then had to collect our cases and take them through customs. No problem except we got told next time to wait until called over as we both went over together. We then rechecked our bags in for the next flight. I couldn't believe how quickly we got through customs as I had booked a later flight to Salt Lake City to allow plenty of time.
We then walked down to Terminal 5 (about a 5 minute walk) to catch our flight to Salt Lake City. This was the longest queue we had seen so far but it moved fairly quickly. We had to take our shoes off and have a full body scan. The plane was pretty crowded and we were hot and tired so it wasn't a pleasant flight but 2 hours later we arrived in Salt Lake City and we ran into lots of demonstrators at the airport. We caught a shuttle bus to our motel, the Salt Plaza. The mountains around SLC are spectacular and despite the heat there were still some small pockets of snow.
We checked in and then walked down to the City Creek shopping centre and then to Harmon's to get some groceries. It is an amazing shop. We had dinner in the food hall at City Creek and then walked home in the rain. We looked a bit like drowned rats by the time we got there. As we got to the motel we met up with Teresa Dabrowski and Shannon West from the SU home office here in SLC.
We were pretty exhausted after the flights so had an early night.
Roz
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