Wow what a trip—and I don’t mean the psychedelic kind!

the tail 8.1 metres

The largest croc ever found in Australia---at the airport to greet us!

It is 9:00 pm here in Melbourne Australia on Thursday April 5th, 2012 and guess where Jim’s having dinner????? NANDO’s Peri Peri chicken, his most favorite dining experience of all of our European travels! We were walking around the neighborhood after waking up from a deep, 7 hour nap and were looking for dinner. I headed downhill Spencer Street since we had come from uphill Spencer Street to get to our hotel.

As we turned the corner Jim says, “Is that a Nando’s sign right over there?” Sure enough there was his favorite Nando’s Peri Peri chicken restaurant right here in Melbourne with a patisserie right next door. So we enjoyed a peri peri chicken platter with delicious chips (fries) and brought home a tasty lemon curd tart for dessert (the edible kind).

Our flight from LAX to Melbourne was very long and a little bumpy. We soon realized that we should have upgraded to a sofa couch just to give us legroom and a way to move around. New Zealand Air has a wonderful crew. The 777-300 is fully updated, modernized and very user friendly. To accommodate the newest and the best they have compromised on the seats and space. To those of us in economy there are 3 seats on the left, 4 in the middle and then 3 on the right. There might be 24” aisles but that would be stretching it. So anyone on an aisle seat will always be knocked in the shoulder or arm by the food carts, passengers and crew. The crew does a pretty good job of excusing themselves before they knock into you but not always. Lucky for us the longest stretch of the flight was mostly sleeping for everyone but us and there wasn’t much moving going on.

We had aisle, middle and a nice German man had the window. We were all around 6 ft. tall. The seats contain the computer screen and it is encompassed in a molded plastic. You really could not cross your legs at all. You basically just had to sit upright with your feet flat on the floor for 13 hours!  The bathrooms are cool though and each bathroom has really interesting wallpaper that makes you feel like you are in a library, or one with a chandelier hanging, etc. The 777-300 does not have individual air controls and we were very warm on the ride. The seats are made of a fabric that doesn’t breathe very well so it was difficult to cool down. Both Jim and I were fanning ourselves most of the ride. We didn’t sleep at all.

Once we arrived in Auckland we had a 3 hour wait until our flight to Melbourne. Once on the plane we were again seated in economy but our seats had changed to the middle section.  There seemed to be less room in those seats than the 3 on the side.

Once we got to Melbourne we hopped up ready to get going and get to our hotel. Of course others were too and since the pilot had released the seat belt sign we all moved towards the door to begin deplaning. No one was moving and soon the Captain came on and said that he had missed the gangway and we had to be towed forward so we all had to return to our seats.

We all back up and return to our cramped spaces with our luggage now in our hands. After we are towed quite a bit (don’t know how the Captain missed his mark by that much) we were finally let loose to go through customs and immigration.

Trying to be honest we had put on our custom card that we had granola bars and trail mix (it asks you if you have any food with you and they stress the fine is hefty if they find something undeclared—do M&M’s count?) and of course I said yes. “Please go to aisle 5”. Once at aisle 5 I am asked again what we have and I tell them. “Please go to aisle 2” where once we are there a dog begins sniffing our suitcases and backpacks. Once it hits Jim’s backpack it starts to claw at it! OMGosh we look and feel like some sort of drug/food smugglers at this point! How embarrassing!

We are then ushered to another area where they proceed to go through our luggage asking if we had jerky, insulin (because of all of Jim’s medications), etc., etc. I pull out the peanut butter granola bars and the trail mix with M & M’s and that is all we have She seems perplexed that the dog would claw at the backpack for that.  She then asked if we sat near the kitchen on the airplane. “Yes” we had. “Did we store the backpack up in the overhead?” Yes we had. “Well that explains it”. The dog had sniffed the sausage and egg smell from breakfast and so we were off the hook! Thank goodness. I could see the local headlines in the Melbourne press...”Chandler, AZ USA couple jailed for Costco granola bars and trail mix laced with peanut M & M’s”!

We then found our sky bus that brought us to the city center of Melbourne and we walked about 10 minutes to our hotel. After a hot shower, good teeth brushing we snoozed soundly for 7 hours and then woke up looking for a place to eat.

 I headed downhill Spencer Street since we had come from uphill Spencer Street to get to our hotel…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Print this post