The Highs and Lows of Air Travel

The Highs and Lows of Air Travel.

September 20, 2024

We leave for Montreal tomorrow so I thought it would be a good idea to check in for our flights 24 hours before. It may be a good idea, but the execution of those good ideas doesn’t always work out!

Being the adept computer user that I am, I have scanned all the documents we need (passports in particular) and uploaded them to United’s website. So, I should be able to check in and print boarding passes, right? You know the answer to that question is a resounding NO.

First I tried United’s suggestion of how easy it is to check in using their app on my phone. Nope, not easy. Didn’t work. Tried the app on Randy’s phone. Nope, not easy. Didn't work. So, the computer it is.

Went swimmingly. At first. Little green boxes everywhere telling me I had all my ducks, uh, documents, in a row. Everything was done, entered, ready to be printed. So, I printed out (Aside: you will find, if you don’t already know this about me, that I write a lot of “Aside” comments. This is the first for this trip: as much as I love and use computers, I don’t trust them. At all. Ever. Hence the printed boarding passes!) our boarding passes. Except, despite the little green comments that everything was done and dusted, Randy’s boarding passes printed, then a note saying that MY boarding pass would not be printed because I had not scanned in my passport.

Grrrrr. Back to United’s website, and my entry has a little green box saying, “All documents done.” I tried to access where I would put my passport information, but it wouldn’t let me. Tried calling two different United telephone numbers, both busy. I could feel my blood pressure rising. Grrrrr. Too late to make this story short, but after muttering several cuss words, and restarting the website, I started with the check-in process again, and this time, it worked. Don’t know what the glitch was in United’s website but all I cared about was having a PRINTED boarding pass.

I’m not even going to try to use the boarding pass on my phone.

100 Days to go!

 Well, here it is, almost a month since I wrote anything about our upcoming cruises. Just not close enough, I guess, only (!) 100 days until the Canada cruise and 167 days until our Sydney cruise.

Life goes on regardless of whether we go on a cruise or not. But not always without glitches. I love to cook and our oven light was out so I called our maintenance people to fix it. However (you knew there was a "however"), it wasn't just the light, it was the oven motherboard so now we don't have an oven, nor do we have burners (they need the motherboard to light). That probably means we won't be able to have dinner guests on Friday night. Oh, well.

So, I tried to get reservations in Solis, the fancy (but included in the fare) restaurant on board Seabourn Quest. Impossible on our Canada trip unless we want to eat at 8:00 or 8:30pm! But I was able to get a few reservations on our Australia trip later in the year.

Not excited yet about the cruises, but thinking more about them, so the excitement will be coming!

Cruising again!

It's been a long time since we cruised, about 2019, I think. We made the decision to try cruising again mostly because we really love cruising and also because the Covid scare is more or less over. Well, it's not over-OVER, it's just that we no longer seem to think we need to wear masks and the people we know who have gone on cruises (including long ones, as we like doing) are not getting sick.

So, we're crossing our fingers and signing up for a 46-day cruise from Los Angeles (LAX-you're going to have to get used to my using the airline codes for cities. You can google them!) to SYD, November 27 to January 13. 

And just to be gluttons for punishment, we're going on a second cruise---well, it will really be first, but we chose it second---from Montreal (YUL) to New York (EWR) in September.

Both are on the Seabourn Quest (Ships (seabourn.com) and Seabourn Quest) a line we chose entirely because of the itinerary from LAX to SYD. It has a great reputation (both the line and the ship) so we're looking forward to our next adventure on a cruise line we've never been on before.

Now the planning starts: we (that is the Royal "We" as I will be doing the planning and Randy will be doing the "Yes, dear."). We have to get airplane tickets to and from YUL and EWR, a rental car to LAX, hotels before and after, and most important of all, what to do in Australia when we get there other than see our friends in SYD and our son and DIL in Ulladulla (no airport code for Ulladulla as the closest is 43 miles away, Moruya, MYA).

In Australia, aside from the above desires, we want to go to the Gold Coast and Brisbane and MAYBE the Daintree. We have been to both before but one of our goals is to go places we've not been to. We have spent oodles (a non-quantifiable time period over the past 40 years) of time in Australia. I kept journals (paper in the old days) and one trip is chronicled at Australia Grand Adventure (pamryan.blogspot.com)  and a longer cruise at World Cruise 2012 Sydney to Sydney (worldcruise12.blogspot.com).

On to the planning!

Already thinking ahead to dining on board the Quest! This is a menu from another Seabourn ship, but I'm sure Quest will be equally great! And they have unlimited caviar! Yes, indeedy, unlimited caviar!