Day 1/2 - Adelaide - Brisbane

[Caleb]

Hey guys,

Just a quick note to let you know I'm on my way to the Airport in Brisbane for my flight to LA. I should get in around 1am Adelaide time.

Spent yesterday cruising around Brisbane and checked out the Treasury casino. It was..... different. I'll elaborate when I get more time.

I'll update this post when I get to LA.

[Caleb]

Sorry for the delay. Trying to get the internet to work was a pain.

Day 1 - Adelaide - Brisbane

So my girlfriend and I flew into Brisbane around 9:30am on Sunday, catching the AirTrain to the city from the Airport. We were staying at the Mercure right on the river, around the corner from the Treasury. It was a decent 1Km walk from the train station, not the easiest thing considering on my large suitcase the wheels didn't work. Add to that we ended up going 800m downhill in the wrong direction. The walk back up after I had caught my bearings was one of the hardest things I've had to do.

We checked in at 11am, went and had some lunch and then checked out the Treasury.

Treasury Casino

For those of you who don't know, the Treasury was actually the old State Treasury building for the Queensland government. As a result, the building is heritage listed, meaning re-modeling the internals is not allowed.

The place has a main gaming floor probably around the size of Adelaide's main floor, but all the way around are seperate rooms, probably 10mx10m packed with pokies, all interconnected with walkways. It's extremely easy to get lost. Under the main floor there is another level with is the main pokie floor, very claustrophobic down there, very loud, very cramped, not an overly nice place to be. The poker room is down on this level, shoved away in the corner.

Games on offer (sunday arvo):
$1/$2 NLHE
$2/$5 NLHE

Not sure about the rake, didn't play. But the game is dealt out of a card shoe. That just looked weird.

I hung around for a few hours, the missus going nuts on all the different pokies on offer (she's a gaming attendant back home), dropped $100 on blackjack, then left to check out the Queen St Mall.

Queen St Mall

This place is just like Rundle Mall in Adelaide, except, well.... good. On a Sunday afternoon the place was packed, every store was open, they had open air bars showing all the live weekend sport. Every nerdy high school jazz band was performing up and down the mall. They even had a Fringe Festival regular who does a knife juggling act on a 3m high unicycle. It was a great way to spend an afternoon.

We headed back to the hotel, ordered room service, and were pretty well passed out by 8pm.

Day 2 - Brisbane - Somewhere over the pacific

We woke up at 6:30am, with instructions to meet Brad (friend who I'm on this trip with) downstairs at 8am to catch the VAustralia flight crew bus to the airport at 8:30am. I had to wear a collared shirt and decent jeans to make upgrade to Business class at all possible. Very nice group of people, it's big crew for an international flight, around 16.

The way it works with the arrangement we had is basically if there is room on the plane we get a super discounted seat. The reason Brad chose the Monday flight out of Brisbane instead of a Melbourne/Sydney flight was:

1) He knew the crew and patricularly the Flight Manager extremely well, which meant they would take very good care of us.
2) It's never, ever, ever full.

We get to the Airport, get in the check-in line, and the place is absolutely packed. It takes us around 75 mins to get to the front of the line. We were a little worried by this stage. If we missed this flight we had to catch the 9pm out of Sydney with a "bad" crew.

The 777 were we flying holds around 370 people. 365 checked in. Eventually we were given 39a/39b, right at the back of cattle class, but a seat is a seat. By this stage the plane was about to board, so quick goodbye to Robyn, then race through Customs (having someone who does it all the time was very handy).

We got to the gate and then realized we hadn't booked travel insurance. So we get on the phone, trying to organize it last minute. Luckily for us, someone newbie had attached the skybridge to the plane, and as the plane was being loaded it lowered below the sensors on the skybridge so it disconnected. It gave us a good extra 20 mins to sort out the insurance while they fixed it.

We get on the plane, are greeted at the door by Dan the flight manager, who looks at our tickets and says "Ok, you gentlemen are in seats 5a/5b."

Sweet.

There are 5 rows in Business.

1 AB| |CDE| |F
2 AB| |CDE| |F
3 AB| |CDE| |F
4 AB| |CDE| |F
BAR
____ _____ ___
5 AB| |CDE| |F
_______________
_______________

Premium economy from there.

So we basically had our own little corner, seperated from the rest of Business by a wall and a bar. It was worth around $7000 for a one way trip. I paid $400 return.

Richard Branson had sat in my seat before.
Britney Spears had sat in Brads.

Moet for take off.
Crowns and scotch the rest of the way.

Inflight entertainment included Texas holdem. I got a good 5 hours sleep thanks to the fully flat sky beds, had a nice breakfast. It was the easiest 12 hour flight in the world.

[AceLosesKing]

I hate you.

[krunchie]

I hate you.

+1

(sorry caleb)

[Gabrielle Jones]

Yeh....well..... u smell! lol So jealous! The seats might have been 400 but how much u paying Brad? haha

[Brett Kay]

Yeh....well..... u smell! lol So jealous! The seats might have been 400 but how much u paying Brad? haha

In hair tips. .

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