December 6th (Monday)

So we started off our journey at Regina's airport. We weren't worried about our luggage (expecting it to get lost) but were worried about catching our flights (Regina - Denver - Los Angeles - Sydney - Melbourne). It was definately the longest 30 hours of our lives. In Regina we were sitting by our "gate" and talking to a group of people (suprise surprise - we both love to talk to people) who's flight to Calgary kept getting delayed. Josh and I are chatting away and I look at my watch and realize that our flight leaves in 15 minutes and there is not a soul at our gate - no United workers - no one. All of a sudden we hear last call for our flight going to Denver so Josh and I are off running through the airport - thank goodness Regina is a small airport. Once we arrived at our plane we were happy to see that we weren't the only ones late. They made a mistake and the plane pulled into the wrong gate. Even though it was a rough start to be late for your first plane ride of the day at least we weren't hitting each other with our carry ons running through the airport :)

We landed in Denver ahead of schedule and after we went through customs we learnt that our flight was cancelled. We got a little stressed because of the ripple affect to connect with our other flights. United was very good and made sure that we made it on a different flight in order to make it in time to LA. One thing we learnt very fast was the difference in customs between (the States and Canada) and (Australia and Canada). Our standards are definately not as high. In Denver I got pulled aside - quizzed and patted down. If my answers weren't good enough or if they would have felt something even a little out of the ordinary they would have taken me into this other room with this big machine that I would have to stand in and kind of X-Ray through my clothes (better than getting stripped searched). This is very common for them - they do it on a rotation like every 10th passenger. You could not walk to your gate even if you wanted to - the airport had an underground subway that stopped at each of the gates. It was down the last minute that we made it in time for flight.

In Sydney we just had to refuel and then we were off to Melbourne. The turbulence on all of the flights was okay not too bad. But this final lag was un real - people were crying. There was a big thunderstorm and lots of flooding going on all over Australia. We had to circle the airport for 1 1/2 hours in order to be able to land. It was a very rough landing and everyone was cheering. Melbourne was our last stop so we had to go through our final customs. They go thoroughly through all of your luggage - we were not expecting that.
The plane that we travelled on for the majority of the trip (not Regina to Denver) was a Boeing 747. It was a huge plane and once we seen the first class seats on from Dever to Los Angeles we asked how much it would to upgrade. They looked it up and told us it was $1200.00 per person each way. When we landed in Melbourne it was December 8th Wednesday at 1:00 pm and in Saskatchewan it was December 7th Tuesday at 9:00 pm. The jet lag hasn't been that bad, we slept alot on the flights so the adjustment would be easier.