Checking out of our hotel at 11:00 am, we called an Uber for the trip to the airport to catch our 3:20 pm flight back to Los Angeles. Love Uber!

We were booked on American Airlines AA82 direct to Los Angeles. We had even managed to book the same seats we had on our flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. We were very comfortable on that flight so we were looking forward to this ride home. But our bubble burst when we checked in at the American Airlines counter. We were told our flight had been cancelled and American Airlines had gone ahead and booked us on the next flight out with United Airlines. Bit of a problem though. The flight they put us on was going to San Francisco! No problem though, they had managed to get us a United connecting flight from SFO to LAX. So, instead of a direct 12-hour 10-minute flight we now had a 17-hour trip with a stopover. And we were now with a different airline. Not too happy at this point.

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To be fair though, it all turned out to be not too bad. United Airlines UA916 was scheduled to leave 10 minutes later than our American Airlines flight. We left on time at 3:30 pm. The plane we were on was a Boeing 777-200 (772) with 3-4-3 seating and United put us into Economy Plus in a row of 3 with an empty seat between us. The service turned out to be superb and we really enjoyed the seats and the seating arrangement.

Arriving in San Francisco on time at 6:30 am, we had a 3-hour layover before our flight left for LAX. Easily clearing customs, we had time to find breakfast in the terminal before we had to be at our departure gate. United Airlines UA653 departed San Francisco at 9:30 am for the 1-hour 45-minute flight to arrive at Los Angeles by 11:15 am. Collecting our luggage, we found the FlyAway Shuttle pick up location and caught the first shuttle to pick up our car in Van Nuys. Shortly after noon we were in our car and on the road back to Needles CA.

We were now 5 hours past our original arrival time and this was a problem for us. It was a 5-hour drive back to Desert View and we had to have Star picked up from the kennel by 12:30. Otherwise, she was stuck there for another week as the kennel was shutting down through Christmas. However, we solved our dilemma by calling one of our neighbours at the RV Resort and asked if they could help us out and pick up Star. They said they could, they did and we were reunited with our little girl when we arrived at 5:30.

All of our travel arrangements were about as good as it gets, accommodations were great, and hats off to Holland America for a perfect cruise. Our itinerary was a bit hectic at times but we experienced a tremendous amount in a very short time. To do justice to Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand in 26 days was a stretch. All-in-all though, we had a great trip.