Today was the longest 21st of November that I can remember, in fact mine went for 34 hours.

I checked in my one bag at the QANTAS counter in Melbourne due to the multi leg flight. The lady said I would need to collect my bag at Vancouver to recheck it through to Anchorage. The plane left Melbourne airport at 10am, on a flight to Brisbane (1 hour 10 minutes), then had an hour to wait for the next flight via Air Canada.

So when I handed my Boarding Pass to the lady at the Air Canada ticket login machines, we found that I didn’t receive a luggage voucher from Melbourne. And when she looked on her computer, my luggage was not registered. So not a great feeling, thinking I’d lost my luggage this early in the holiday! I remember how much this caused a problem to my brother Chris a number of years ago when he went to the USA. Anyway, the lady gave me my next 3 boarding passes and smiled and said to leave the luggage issue with her, she’d check with Melbourne and see what she could do. So I did all the customs stuff and sat down for a wait. So boarding was announced and as I went through, she caught up with me with an update. She’d located the luggage and had it checked all the way through to Anchorage so I would not need to worry about that. I was quite glad to hear that.

Then I got onto the plane and found my seat. So this was a Premium Economy seat. And I had a window seat on the right. I could not see out the windows as they were pretty dark, which was not what I was looking for – until I found that there was an electronic dimming “sensor”. The sensor was round with white on the top half and grey on the bottom half. And there are little lights on the left of the sensor. Only one light goes on at a time. The more pushes on the top half of the sensor, the lights go up, and the more pushes on the bottom half, the lights go further down. As the lights go higher, the window gets darker. So cool. I could not find this on the internet except on a Dreamliner (787 800) even though I was meant to be on a 737 800. Here a shot out of the window after the flight got up to cruising height.

But even more impressive, the seat was so good. Where the Economy seats were a 3-5-3 configuration, the Premium Economy seats were 2-3-2. So much leg room and shoulder room. And below was my first meal (of 3 during the 13 hour flight).

The entertainment system had lots of movies, TV shows, music albums, games etc. Better than I’ve experienced on any other flights. And the alcohol and foods available were free. So I watched 2 movies, 4 TV show episodes, listened to 2 albums and read about half of my novel, Lee Child’s new book Night School. Just loved that flight.

So sadly the flight ended. But Vancouver airport was great. And I got to see my first glimpses of snow-covered mountains in North America.

The next flight was to Seattle. The plane was about 15 minutes late, as it was towed out of a hanger to the plane entry area and then had to be checked by a bunch of engineers etc. I was pretty surprised, it was not a normal jet, but a turbo-prop Bombardier Q400 Dash 8, with 2 propellers. It did look pretty cool. So I got on with the other passengers, and the air hostesses went to count us. First she came up with 10, then 11 and then her colleague counted 11, and had to recount as there were meant to be 12 of us. It was quite funny and we all laughed because the plane took approximately 160 passengers, but only 12 of us. So they decided in the end there were actually 12 of us onboard (they always counted 12 going from front to back, and 10 or 11 going from back to front) and everyone had a good laugh. So we took off about 25 minutes late and we got to Seattle in about 50 minutes.

Seattle Airport looked surprisingly small and run down. But it had great shops and so I changed some currency into USD and went to look for B Terminal where I was to fly out. It turned out the airport was huge with 4 joined terminals and I had to catch a train from where I was to B Terminal. And that terminal was also very large and had lots of shops. It also wasn’t too rundown like where the arrivals was. I went to Starbucks and waited 20 minutes for a coffee. And it wasn’t that great, but I prefer a decent espresso.

Then I went and waited for the plane at Delta Airlines. And Delta Airlines had overbooked the flight. They announced this about 45 minutes before the flight and asked if there were anyone from my flight was interested in going on the flight the next morning and they’d pay for a hotel. Then 10 minutes later they asked again, but said they’d offer up to 3 people to go on a later flight, and give them a $500 voucher for use in the next 12 months. So some people went up to speak with them. Then 10 minutes they offered the last offer again but with an $800 voucher. I would have taken it if (a) I wasn’t worried about my luggage and (b) I could use the voucher! So one gue who went to them after the $500 voucher offer went up and looked like he was wanting the higher offer. They didn’t look like they said yes, but changed the announcement 5 minutes later to ask for more offers, but would tell you what they’d offer only if you went up to the counter. Very interesting “Dutch auction”. They also kept announcing that if people had 3 bags, they would have to check one into cargo, which they could do, due to the fully sold out flight.

So we got onto the flight, and it was packed but no worse than any FIFO flight I’ve been on between Perth and Karratha / Port Hedland. The plane left at 2.55pm. The hostesses were fantastic though and it was a quite enjoyable flight, with the pilot speaking a couple of times that the plane would likely get into Anchorage a half hour early (not bad for a 3 1/2 hour flight). I got to watch a movie and 2 episodes of a TV show.

Got into Anchorage airport and there were a number of shops closed at the airport but also a few still open, mainly hunting, camping and food stores. I waited to get my luggage – it turned up, yay – and then went out to wait for the taxi. Luckily I had put on my thermal undershirt in Seattle, because not surprisingly it was DAMN COLD! It was -8C. I caught a taxi to the hotel (Quality Suites Downtown Hotel) and the taxi driver was great. Initially I went to sit next to him in the front until I found it was the driver’s seat – left hand driving duh!! – so sat in the back. He told me about a few great places to visit and some really good restaurants around where I was staying. So I checked in, at 6pm when it was dark, watched a bit of TV then ordered dinner. This was my first American meal! Yum.

Then off to bed.