Australia: flying to Sydney

To get to the other side of the world, we left Davis around 1 pm.  The Sac airport is a BREEZE and I want to fly out of it exclusively now.  P stayed in the ergo through security and they didn’t give me any grief about the baby food or anything at all. 

 

We played near the gate, watching the other planes take off, and eventually it was time to board.  We gave the crew a heads up about P’s allergies and they were totally awesome about it.  We boarded first, wiped down our trays/seats/etc, and they were kind enough to withhold the peanut portion of the in-flight meal. 

An hour later we landed in LA for the dreaded layover (I say dreaded because the timing of the flights on either end got changed after we had booked them so we had a solid 5 hours to kill in the international terminal).  Luckily we didn’t have to leave and go through security again because they had an inter-terminal shuttle bus for us to take.  It didn’t start running until an hour after we touched down though, so we were twiddling our thumbs for a bit at a random gate.  Once we got to the other terminal we had to get issues new boarding passes for who knows what reason.  All you do in airports is wait in lines for reasons you only half understand.  By the end of the trip I think I had 10 different tickets for the same journey.  P was less than thrilled at having to wait for dinner, but I can’t fault him because so was I.

 

Finally, it was time for food.

 

The international terminal has legit restaurants (I did research prior).  Kyle ate first, while I fed P.  Then I went and got food.  I debated between sushi, burgers, mexican, or a sando (all by celebrity headed restaurants no less), but ended up going with a vegan Cobb salad that was SO GOOD. 

But seriously, the options were plentiful.  Border Grill, Ink.sac, Chaya sushi, 800 Degrees, Umami burger…you could do a serious food tour of Los Angeles in the airport alone!

I hemmed and hawed over the options for far too long (in typical Elise fashion), but in the I went with Larder at Tavern and I was quite content.  My salad was fantastic – it’s so rare to find a vegan salad without nuts!  I was a happy girl. 

Little did I know, we were getting two meals on board too.  I knew they’d give us breakfast but since the flight was leaving at 10 pm, I never thought we would get dinner (but we did, plus snacks, which is why Virgin is the best!).

Kyle and I each got “special” meals – one vegetarian and one gluten free (to be shared based on what they actually were).  I don’t expect much from plane meals, but they were actually pretty decent. 

My first meal was chicken and potatoes, salad, fruit, and a rice cake.  Kyle’s was some kind of pasta with similar sides.  I didn’t take pics because the cabin was super dark. 

Our breakfasts were almost the same.  I got eggs with sautéed veggies (spinach, mushrooms, and tomatoes) and fruit and a rice cake.  Kyle didn’t get a special meal, I’m guessing because the “normal” options were both vegetarian.  He chose between an omelet and beans with potatoes.  Ummmmm…omelet for sure. 

 

And since I’m on the subject of plane meals, I may as well share the ones we got on the way home right now. 

 

The gluten free entree was fish with tomato-y veggies and potatoes.  Not bad!  The fish wasn’t exactly amazing, but who cares.  I didn’t have any GI issues so that’s really the only thing that matters.  

On the side I had a salad, a nut/dried fruit bar, and a fruit cake thing.

 

How cool that the bread was listed as fructose friendly?!  Then again, we were coming from the FODMAPs capital of the world.  Well done Aussies, well done.  Unfortunately, the roll was pretty gross and I didn’t bother with it after the first bite.  The bar had nuts too, so I gave it to Kyle.  He had one with pumpkin seeds and apricots (which he dislikes) in his meal, so we just swapped.  His entree was pasta with veggies and cheese.  So basically, we each did pretty well with our respective meals considering you can’t check off more than one dietary restriction.  In other words, mine didn’t have any dairy, which was my main concern (I can avoid nuts in a dish more easily than I can avoid dairy). 

In addition to chips, they served more substantial snacks on this flight, much to Kyle’s delight.  He got grilled cheese with tomato and I got fruit.  I have to say, the fruit in all my plane meals was exceptionally good.  I was expecting watery blah fruit because it’s not like they are bringing it from the farmer’s market, but dang did it hit the spot.  I shared my melon with P (it was the only thing I fed him that I didn’t prepare or buy myself).

 

Because Kyle had two grilled cheeses, he wasn’t hungry for breakfast so I ate both of ours.  The vegetarian option is on the left (eggs with sautéed mushrooms and spinach and a roasted tomato), the gluten free option is on the right (some kind of potato cake with beans and the same sautéed mushrooms, spinach and tomato trio).  To me, the beans were weird to eat for breakfast so I only had a few bites.  The side dishes were fresh fruit and fruit cups. 

 

Since this post is already getting lengthy, I will cut it off here and continue with the rest of the day (once we landed in Sydney) later. 

Oh, and by the way, the above photo shows the “bassinet” we ordered when we booked P’s ticket.  It clips into the wall (in the front row) and has a zip up belt flap thing that has to be closed when a baby is in it.  Also, you can’t have your baby in it if the “fasten seat belt” sign is on.  As you can probably guess, our little guy was in it for 0.00004 seconds before we realized it wasn’t going to work out.  At.  All.  Good try Virgin!  For the record, I can see this being a very useful thing for younger babies, but P is too mobile and curious to stay in it for any length of time.  He also had to be seat belted in to me when there was any kind of turbulence or when we were doing the initial ascent/final descent (no, they wouldn’t let him stay in the ergo).  Instead, they had a special device that attached to my seat belt that then looped him in.  It wasn’t the most practical for take off and landing (because that’s when I was nursing him), but we made do.  He alternated sleeping or playing on one of us for the entire middle of the flight.  I won’t lie, I looked at the map/clock countdown a million times on the way there.  16 hours is looooooong when you have to entertain a baby the whole time!  The way back was a (mere!) 12 hours thanks to wind physics mumbo jumbo.  I even got to watch a movie!  Clearly practice makes perfect because I felt like there was no way in hell I’d be able to put headphones on and actually concentrate on a film after the first flight, but Kyle and I shared duties really well and even managed to get a little rest time.  I watched Gravity and Blackfish – both pretty intense choices! 

Okay, now I’m really signing off. 

If anyone has specific questions related to travel (with a baby or allergies or whatever) feel free to leave it in the comments section because I’m planning on doing a separate post on all that soon. 

Until next time…