Tasmania to Tokyo – In Transit / Sydney – Day 2

Tasmania to Tokyo – In Transit – Day 1 can be found here.

Sleep ebbed and flowed, the noise of the cabin entering and leaving my mind as though someone were twisting the volume knob on a stereo.

At some point I looked over and saw my wife enjoying the midnight snack – a chicken sandwich. My brief, blurry inspection led me to believe it was chicken salad – and so I turned my head to the other side and promptly went back to sleep.

It turned out to be chicken with curried mayo. I missed out on a culinary treat in favour of more rest. It was likely the better of two options.

Premium Economy scores a whopping 8 inches of recline, plus the headrests slide up and down. Compare this to 6 inches of recline on Economy – though it always feels like less, particularly when one is concerned about squeezing out the person behind you. Though that’s less of an issue on longer flights where everyone is sleeping – or ought to be.

I’m sure I made an undignified sight, as do most sleeping on airplanes. The cabin was a hair colder than comfortable, so I took my puffer jacket and put in on backwards. The hood tucked under my chin to form a makeshift pillow. I manage somewhere around 7 hours sleep. Sufficient unto this 34 hour-long day.

Or is it a 0 hour day? We do miss all of Saturday, after all. But it’s okay. We’ll be getting it back later, in April – albeit in the form of a second Sunday.

There’s still almost 6 hours of flight ahead of us, so I pass it by reading guilty-pleasure military SciFi. I am a perennial fan of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and have been chasing that high ever since. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War – and it’s most recent instalment, The Shattering Peace – has served as a reasonable successor.

(Though part of a series, Shattering Peace stands well on its own – highly recommended for those looking to try out Scalzi, as is the Kaiju Preservation Society for those looking for something more expedition-oriented.)

Following the space marine thread, I crush Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s 400-page Helsreach in a single sitting before moving on to Armor by John Steakley. Steakley’s anti-hero could hardly be a greater contrast to Dembski-Bowden’s steel samurai. We’ll see if it picks up.

Back to the flight, where dawn eventually catches up to us:

We’re enjoying sharing a single row, but it does mean we lack for windows – apologies to whoever is sleeping in this photo. I cropped you out the best I could.

We’re still in “night mode”, which has minimal service so as to allow maximum sleeping. I page the flight attendants for a coffee and a tea for my wife. I rarely use the page button, but I am in desperate need of caffeine. No cappucinos available, as those are reserved for Signature class – though in my experience the machines are almost always out of order.

Time for breakfast:

Scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, and hashbrowns. It tastes better than it looks!

Despite our two-hour-late departure out of Vancouver, we were only due to be 45 minutes late on arrival, or so we thought. Torrential rains have delayed outgoing flights out of Sydney Airport – and we’re facing heavy turbulence on the way down – so we circle for a spell:

We don’t land until after 10 am, and are then told that it might be another 30 minutes before we get a gate. Thankfully we start moving soon thereafter. That’s the way to do it – under-promise and over-deliver.

Our 777 spills out into Sydney’s Terminal 1 and we join the legions of other recently-arrived passengers arriving. But Australia uses a remarkable system for customs – simply scan your passport and have your photo taken. It then cross-references you against your visa application. Then take your ticket, and off you go. We never even saw a customs official or got a stamp in our passport.

The lack of passport stamp is fortuitous for me, as I am down to my last 13 blank passport pages. This seems like a lot, until you consider that we will be visiting a further 9 countries on this trip – some of which require two blank pages for their visas, like Indonesia. I genuinely considered printing out a multi-lingual sheet that read, “Please stamp a partly-full page if possible.” But Australia’s system has granted me a little more breathing room.

The efficiency continues in the baggage area itself – officials circulate among the crowd, answering any questions people might have regarding the declarations forms. We confirm that we do not need to declare the pre-packaged gifts we have brought. Very handy, considering we always prefer to err on the side of caution in these matters – and this saves us a trip through the declaration line.

The baggage carousel starts moving, and soon disgorges our mountain of luggage. Premium Economy has afforded us priority baggage handling. All of our many AirTags are with us now, except for my keys – 15,745 km away – and the stolen AirTag from our spring 2025 trip that somehow ended up in Nigeria, but which I refuse to remove from my Apple account out of spite. That’s somewhat closer at a mere 15,164 km away.

We hand off our customs declaration form, and enter the arrivals area where we search for our transfer driver.

And search.

I’ve oft remarked that transfers feel like the weakest link in the travel chain. Or like a death-defying circus performance in which one launches oneself from one trapeeze to the next. Sometimes you miss.

Or – in this case – sometimes the transfer company forgets about their booking.

We attempt to call the Pier One Sydney Harbour on the number provided by their concierge in case there are any issues. No answer. We then call the main hotel line. No answer. We e-mail the hotel. No reply.

Ten agonizing minutes pass. No sign of our driver anywhere in the terminal, nor have they reached out via WhatsApp. So we throw up our hands and call an Uber. (We had considered taking a taxi, but have heard some horror stories in terms of taxi scams.)

Thankfully, Sydney Airport is well-equipped to handle ridesharing. We speak with an attendant, who takes one look at our luggage before declaring we need an Uber Max – with even more luggage capacity than an Uber XL – and indicating where we should go to wait for the larger Ubers.

Uber was at least was a relatively painless process. After initiating the ride via the app, our driver showed up 5 minutes later. We quickly loaded Mount Luggage:

And we’re on our way. Price is roughly AUD$130, more expensive than a cab but $50 less than the ride we had arranged through the hotel. It’s a quick drive – only 20 minutes – but I expect the price is influenced by surge pricing and the cost of various tolls. We don’t care, though. We’re willing to pay a premium for a smooth transfer.

We soon pull up to the Pier One Sydney Harbour. We go to check in, and note our displeasure at having been stood up at the airport. They promise to look into it. In the mean time, one of our rooms is ready while the other is being serviced. It’s a start.

The larger of the rooms is quite nice:

We then head down for lunch. The restaurant is closed, but the bar is open.

The kids and I have hamburgers:

While my wife has a muffuletta sandwich:

The burgers and sandwiches aren’t cheap at AUD$24 each – not including fries – but we’re completely unprepared to go forraging for other options at this stage. The fare proves tasty, at least.

With lunch finished, we ready ourselves for sleep – in complete and wanton disregard for any and all advice offered us on how best to acclimate to Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

We return to the room, where the sofa bed has now been made up:

But still no second room.

I follow up with the front desk – our second room has been cleaned, it’s just awaiting final clearance from housekeeping. Ten minutes pass – still no sign off.

I trade texts with my wife, who notes that it sounds as though they are trying to open the connecting doors. I clarify with the front desk – functional connecting doors are not required.

They check with housekeeping, and with that final piece of the puzzle completed we are able to claim our second room and move one step closer to nap time:

Much like the first, only smaller and slightly less expensive.

I often wax poetic about the glorious feeling of a post travel shower. This was perhaps the finest of all. 34 hours had passed since we left home. I am a man transformed by hot water and hand-pump soap.

Then – a ninety minute nap. Waking feels like climbing out of an abyss. Somehow we manage.

Off for a walk around Sydney Harbour.

But before we get much further, my wife has a surprise – a special flag for the occasion:

Usually the 7th Continent flag is reserved for Antarctic voyages, but we’ve done this out of order. So she found a special flag for the occasion. (The kids will get the chance to fly theirs after they set foot in Asia.)

We continue to explore. Sydney’s harbourfront is a wonderous blend of old and new, natural and made.

We toy with the notion of trying a different restaurant for dinner, but can’t manage a unanimous vote. Back to the hotel restaurant.

Steak for my daughter:

Trout bowl for my wife:

And a chicken sandwich for myself:

And pasta for our son (not pictured).

The kids’ steak and the trout bowl are tasty, but the chicken sandwich is underwhelming. The foccacia is fresh and crisp but there’s scarcely any chicken. We also struggle to get a lemonade – the first we ordered at lunch was lovely, the second was Sprite, and the third was unsweetened lemon juice.

Some research reveals that we should ask for a “lemon squash” to get something more akin to Canadian lemonade. We’ll try again another day.

We debate ordering a bottle of wine from the hotel, but I am far too cheap to pay hotel prices for wine we’ll take back to the room. So I take a wander down to the nearest wine market, snapping some photos along the way: