What can I say? After the drama getting over there, the return was pretty mundane. Sad goobyes followed by hour after hour of unrelenting airplanes and airports. All told, it was about 28 hours of travel door to door. There were no dramas like the trip over, tho we did have the joy of going through some form of Immigration/Customs and airport secruity at Sydney and LA and again in Toronto. Annoying, but again no dramas or 'freedom-pats'. The kids were sad to leave grandma and grandad (and the beach), so they were extra grumpy. Tom especially was on a hair trigger for much of the trip. The kids are usually very good travellors so on this occasion I feel a bit sorry for the people around us, except for the guy right in front of me put his seat all the way back seconds after take off and left it there for the next 12 hours. Lets just say I didn't feel too bad about bumping the back of his seat on the many, many occasions I had to get something for the kids out of the bag at my extremely hard to reach feet..
LAX is a dump.
Seriously. The whole place is dirty. It has clearly been retrofitted (badly) to accomodate post 911 security requirments, there is no play area for kids and no WiFi for travellors. These signs (see piccy) were the cherry on top.
Toronto's airport, however, is not a dump. Free Wifi, no toxic waste and the longest moving sidewalk I have ever seen. Its brilliant. It has been engineered such that it moves slowly at the ends where you need to get on and off, but is very fast in the centre. Initially I was annoyed at having been landed what seemed like miles from the Customs & Immigration, but getting to ride the longest, fastest moving footpath I have ever seen made up for it.
We finally rolled into the driveway about 1am. Everybody had a snack and changed into their Pjs before passing out for a few hours. We were exhausted enough that first night to sleep well, but jet-lag took its toll on subsequent nights. I remember 3am being a lotmore fun in my twenties.
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