Hasta la vista, Brisvegas

September 19. Monday morning. Brisbane International Airport.  Wielding a rather dodgy little usb keyboard. Still better than overworking my thumbs I reckon.

We arrived bright and shiny and more than 4 hours early. There have been so many holiday check-in line horror stories in the news lately that  we decided to err abundantly on the side of caution. Rather too lavishly, as it turned out: Check-in didn’t open til 3 hours pre-flight. Ah well. We didn’t much care.

We are on our way to Spain!

What to do, what to do?  (Quite ridiculous question if you know me and husband.) Naturally, coffee was had (and a sweet bite of brunch. I was peckish after the final sprint to the ‘packed, cleaned, sorted’ finish this morning.)  I should point out here that coffee would have been had in any case, and will continue to be had until we want to get some zzz’s on the plane. And then yet more coffee will be had. You get the picture.

Chillaxed. Chillaxed some more. After a while, we watched the seriously eager travellers begin to queue. Some had a small mountain of baggage. Some had small children. Some had both. Before there were too many of them, we joined the Row 6 vigil – just in time! Out of the ether, massing in a twittering flock behind us came the population of a small town (ok, some might have been ‘gramming, I wasn’t looking THAT closely). I estimated us to be in the first 30 or so and rejoiced. Further happiness was soon ours:  reaching the counter after only a moderate wait, our polite request for seat change was graciously received and we were back together in the same row.  (Split seating had been an unanticipated side effect of separate bookings).

So why separate bookings, you ask?  That’s a bit of a tale. I’ll reveal more in due course.

Like most Aussies, we haven’t been overseas for years. (Unles you count Tasmania, which some would. I would not; I have friends there and it’s not that weird). Imagine our amazement on discovering the departures process has been beautifully streamlined. You can put your WHOLE CABIN BAG in the tray and by some arcane tech wizardry, it detects and approves your painstakingly selected stash of liquids, aerosols and gases. No more frenzied clutching of little ziplocs, balancing them in one hand, passport in the other, sanity falling out of your backpack with your unmentionables. No sirree, we breezed through in about a minute.

And passport control? Feed it in, take it back, stand on the spot and smile for the camera. Actually, don’t smile for the camera or you might not look enough like your highly unattractive deadpan ID. And remember to take your glasses off, Lou! (Just in time, phew).

So now, to wait in relative levels of comfort, with lunch, and of course – more coffee – until we board for our first flight leg to Singapore…

Stand by for more exciting installments of our Spanish sojourn!

P.S. NO coffee was had 😞  Flight called unexpectedly quickly…only to stand in queue, lamenting our coffeeless status, for thrice the time it would have taken to get one. Sigh.

But on the decidedly bright side, the newly paired seats were in the first economy row! So at the trifling inconvenience of stowing all our stuff on high, we scored bonus legroom – and freedom to leave our seats without apologising to strangers whose laps we’d just fallen into…

Winning so far!

#vivalasomething22 #thankyousingaporeairlines #stillnosleepreally