The fun of travelling

I went to Sydney for a couple of days for work Monday and Tuesday.  Getting there, absolutely regulation – takes about 45 minutes flight time, about 3 hours from home to office.  Sydney was good too.  The Shangri-La Hotel in The Rocks is very nice, and the pizza at the Australian Hotel just down the road from it is pretty good too, as is their beer.

Coming home was however a bit of an ordeal.  My 7.45 pm flight should have seen me back in Canberra just after 8.30 and home about 9pm.  No such luck!

We took off on time, flew to Canberra, commenced descent, then suddenly the plane started going up again.  WTF?  After a few minutes the pilot announced over the PA system that we couldn’t land safely in Canberra due to fog, so would be returning to Sydney, and that it was not likely that Canberra would be clear for landings till late next morning.  Anyway, we got back to Sydney around 9.15 pm.  Fronting up to the Qantas service desk to find out what was happening, and found the staff there hadn’t actually figured out what was happening.  First, we were going to be rebooked onto flights today and put up in hotels – however, this fell through … barely any hotel beds available in Sydney (due to State of Origin football game on tonight).  So it was plan B, buses, to depart at 10.30 pm.

These turned up closer to 11, and we were on our way, for a 3 and a 1/2 hour drive.  Got into Canberra just after 2.30 am and home about 3.

After the initial confusion on Qantas’ part about what was supposed to be happening, they actually did a halfway decent job of getting us home.  Organised the buses, gave us some food and drink, and called the cab company in Canberra to tell them 3 buses would be arriving at the airport early in the morning – and the taxis actually turned up in reasonable numbers which was a pleasant surprise … my driver told me that normally at that time on a Tuesday night there’d only be about 5 cabs on duty for the whole of Canberra.

A couple of bad things, apart from my one hour trip ending up taking 7 hours.  I’ve been on coaches in places like Korea and Malaysia, where the people aren’t exactly giants, and found them very comfortable with plenty of leg room.  Not last night, the seats on this bus must have been built for midgets – Eagle Tours was the coach company Qantas hired to drive us to Canberra.  Second, we had a toilet stop at BP Marulan.  Having not eaten anything of substance since lunch time, by 1 am-ish I was fairly hungry.  One look at the food on offer at the diner at the service station cured that.  There was just nothing that looked even vaguely edible.  Crappy overheated pies (at $4.50!!!!), some sort of meat dishes covered in congealed gravy in a bain marie, frozen vegetables sitting forlornly in discoloured water in the same bain marie.   Back to the back old days, like it was prior to McDonalds and the like setting up at service centres along the highway – and its a sad commentary on the food on offer when Maccas is a vast improvement.