[ <<previous | index ]
Once underway, the flight was uneventful and fairly short, coming in a bit under eight hours, compared to the nine and a half outbound. We arrived at Sydney a bit after 08:00. As we were taxiing to the terminal, the pilot announced that we would be disembarking by stairs to the tarmac and catching buses to the terminal! The cabin crew lady sitting facing us rolled her wyes. I wasn't even aware that they still did this at Sydney Airport at all. I've never been on a flight that did this here, other than for small propellor planes for domestic flights that aren't capable of hooking up to a jet tube.
So we managed to get into the arrival terminal by this unusual method, which took a bit longer. I also managed to pick up my duty-free bottles at the counter, after confessing I'd lost my receipt. They just checked my passport to confirm my name and handed over the goods. So that was good.
But worse was to come. Although we had no checked luggage to wait for and could proceed immediately through to customs, we hit a brick wall there. Some other busy flights must have landed before us, and hundreds of passengers were queued up waiting to go through customs. We had to walk a long way to join the back of the queue. Annoyingly, some other people approached the exit, saw the size if the queue snaking across the baggage claim area, and decided to simply push their way in ahead of everyone further back. So the combination of factors meant we spent almost an hour waiting in the queue to get into the customs area.
And that wasn't the end of it. Once we reached the front and handed our customs forms to an inspector, he instructed us to join some other randomly selected people for a sniffer dog test to search for illegal drugs or other banned items. So that took another few minutes. Ater getting the all-clear, we finally exited the arrivals process, well over an hour after having begun it.
We caught a train home, showered, changed, went out to do some grocery shopping to restock the kitchen with perishables, and then drove over to Loki and Rach's place to collect Scully. She was very happy to see us again!
[ <<previous | index ]