Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry christmas!!

Its christmas day already! wow!!!
In short our flight to canberra via virgin blue was on the 23rd at 9pm. However i had packed everything by about 1pm, a taxi to the shops to have lunch out and then a short walk to the train. 1hr train to southern cross, we arrive at 4.30 catch the skybus (airport shuttle bus) $30 (for 2 adults & 1 child one way) which is great no smelly, bumpy, cranky taxi drivers ripping us off by going the long way. No traffic at all leaving the city. 20mins later we wait at the airport for like 3-4hrs. In that time i gave hubby a hand massage, watched all the odd people find ways to jump the long check in queues!! (shockers!!not the ones that the attendants wave thru as check in time for the flight is closing soon) Have dinner, look at the overpriced junky toy store. We used the virgin blue self check in service and find that we wont be sitting all together. in the same row but 2 together on 1 side and me on the other side. I don't think i want to fly virgin blue again! Seriously it was choas!
1) Several planes were delayed. so our departure lounge was packed with people on our flight & the delayed flight
2) The amount of last calls for people not making it to flights was constant.
3) They swapped departure lounges for some flights
4) they swapped our plane for a different one. So they had to check that everyone still had the same seat on the new one as they did for the old one.
5) the aisle is smaller than jetstar planes
6) theres less leg room, smaller seats on virgin compared to jetstar

however i did like the little screen on the back of chairs each with their own credit card swipe to purchase foxtel. For $5 Tia watched the kids channel and was so happy and quiet!! Our head flight attendant was funny, on the way out she said "We must advise you that canberra have strict quarantine regarding krispy kreme donuts, you may hand them over to the attendants upon leaving. make sure you take everything with you as anything left will be divided between the crew and anything left over will be found on ebay tomorrow!"
and as usual we sit up the back and overhear the terrible love lifes of the gay/straight flight attendants.. *sigh* i wouldnt mind doing that flight attendant job, looking pretty, doing a few things then chatting away while you count all the snacks, sandwiches etc.. lol!

anyways all is good. Went shopping yesterday on christmas eve, had hungry jacks *horray!* next time we shall try kingsley's. Which is the fast food place canberra people swear is the best! lol! Its basically chips, chicken (southern, tandorri or pepper style)
Got presents for everyone but aunts, uncles cousins (who are all teens anyways) and couldnt think or find anything for my grandparents. so hopefully the sales tomorrow will turn up something.

anyways my dad is working today, so we will be opening presents when he comes home after 3pm. Im glad Tia isnt old enough to bug us about opening presents now (and repeating every 5minutes) and everyone else is old enough to wait. Not to mention its almost 11am and we are still all wrapping presents and borrowing wrapping paper! lol!

Hope everyone has a safe and happy christmas!

4 comments:

Jadey said...

Merry Christmas Tiff! I hope it all worked out well with your family. I love family christmas.

maria said...

*Thank you* for this newsy update Tiffany! That Virgin Blue checkout sounded very familiar.. I've done one of those before. You can hire personal DVD thingy's (A touch bigger than a Nintendo DS).. on Jetstar for $7 and they have shows on demand. You might already know that.. sorry if you do! :-)

I pre-booked two of those machines on the Jetstar website last June before our trip away to BNE (as the website advised because there might not be enough for everyone on board to go around). I paid $10 per machine per sector as that was quoted as the price.

On board they had no record of our booking or my payment and were suspicious of my claims. They said they didn't even have the machines. Then they changed their tune and handed us the machines.. and went up and down the aisles offering them to hire for $7!

On our return journey we asked for the units again (I'd paid $40 for the return journey) - But they refused saying they had no record of such a booking. This was after someone at check-in told us they would make sure we'd get the machines when we boarded.

So we were refused the machines, then told our credit card had been refunded the entire $40 and we could hire them for $7 on the spot if we wanted... but we didn't. The $40 refund came 7 weeks after the trip. Following the online advice was the wrong thing to do. Apparantly pre-booking is recommended if you're flying overseas.. but it's hard to know what to believe in my opinion.

I've never heard of "Kingsley's".. hmmm.. I will have to Google it and check it out!

I hope you're having a lovely time & feeling well..and Tia is really enjoying herself too.

Bless you.. Look forward to more posts! :-)

maria said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Hoping you had a brilliant Christmas, Tiff! :)
Wishing you and your family a Happy New Year!