Off to the USA - the journey begins

In the interest of honesty, we actually left Australia on the 10th, but with one thing and another I haven't gotten around to posting - so just pretend that these next few posts are happenin' in real time LOL

Dave and I packed up at the last minute as Dora really doesn't like it when she suspects we are going to leave her. She's got the poor, pathetic me thing down pretty well

This is the first trip Dave and I have taken together since Tilly joined our family and she erroneously believed there was a chance she was coming with us and so remained happy and goofy through the whole packing and loading the car process. Dora knew better but Til didn't pick up any clues from her

We had a stupid long layover in Perth thanks to Skywest canceling their early flight on the day our international leg was scheduled for. We had to get into Perth the day before and pretty much just waste 24 hours. We stayed at the Perth Ambassador Hotel on Adelaide Tce

It was just OK and we were able to get a "good" rate via my friend Amber.

Perth hotels are way overpriced and this one is no exception. Our "good" rate made it less galling, but there's no way this property is worth what they charge. Tiny room, eensy tv with marginal reception, uninviting bed that was good enough for one night but I wouldn't want to sleep on it more nights. They did have extra pillows in the room, so points for that, and their bath towels were big. We were meant to have internet access in the room but neither Dave or I could get it to work on either of our laptops and the front desk was completely disinterested and unhelpful in resolving the issue. Our flight wasn't until late afternoon and we asked if we could have a late check-out - they offered us 1130 instead of 1030. Whoopeee.

We spent our Perth day doing not much of anything really. We did a little shopping for a few bits we needed to make travel more comfortable, ate a surprisingly good lunch at the Carillon Food Court off Hay St, looked at the Christmas decorations that were already up, had a pint at the Moon & Sixpence and generally wandered around until it was time to head to the airport.

I know you're looking at the first and last picture and thinking "what?" - well the first one is the very cool bark of some tree that for some reason I believed I needed to take some photos of and the last one is of a sign in the food court. I'm pretty sure "Mexican" and "pasta" shouldn't be together, really. It just struck me...remember, we were kinda bored and struggling to find the humor in wasting one of our holiday days!

The Grosvenor Hotel was very close to our hotel so we had dinner and a pint there the day we landed. They are remodeling and it's really shaping up nicely - it's going to be a lovely place to grab a drink when it's done. Hopefully they will also revamp their waitstaff - dismal service. Although several servers kept walking around the tables, not once did any of them stop to ask clients if more drinks were wanted or remove empties from tables. You'd think that wait staff at a bar would be good about trying to move another pint before patrons left, but that didn't seem to be a priority.

We both had the Harvey Beef for dinner and both pieces were not good - tough, overcooked, tasteless. We did let our waiter know and when I went to the bar to get another pint, one of the owners comped the pint since the meal was so disappointing. He was very friendly and seemed to appreciate knowing that the meat was subpar. I don't know that I'd eat dinner there again, but I would stop in for a drink.

In fact, we did stop in for a quick pint before getting on the second plane of our journey...off to Auckland we go!