Let's start at the very beginning .....

Research has shown that holidays not only relieve the stress of everyday life, holidays are also good for our health and well being. 

Being time poor last September when we started to book this holiday, we chose a travel agent to do some of the booking. Airfares were the first to be booked.  We usually like to fly Qantas,  but the specials being offered by Air New Zealand,  were to good to miss.

The problem however, was the additional amount of travelling time - 22 hours 55 minutes!!!

Brisbane Airport

Arrived on time, thanks Dal. Checked in, went through immigration - all without a problem.  Peter found a coffee, we waited 90 minutes for our flight.

Three hours and five minutes later, one movie (Still Alice), and one new episode of Stalker later we are in New Zealand.

Auckland Airport

Walked around a little, found a seat with a view of the planes and waited one hour and forty minutes for the next flight. This next leg was the longest one, twelve hours and fifteen minutes. I saw (The Theory of Everything,  The Book Thief, and another one I can't recall at present. I also watched another 3 episodes of Stalker. I did sleep a little.

LA Airport

We went through Customs and immigration and walked down to the next terminal for the next and last flight of the day. We waited three hours for this flight.  The flight was on a much smaller plane and both Jon and I had a sleep of sorts. The view of the mountains as we flew further north was amazing.

Seattle Airport

Arrived at 5.55pm and headed down to find the shuttle bus. It was a clear evening and we could see Mt Rainier very clearly. 

Seattle Airport is very organised and interesting. Seattle being the 'aeroplane' capital of the world.

As part of my research for Seattle transfers I thought I would share with you here.

Downtown Seattle is about 30 minutes drive from Seattle-Tacoma – Sea-Tac – international airport. One can catch the rail link, shuttle express, taxi, or bus. There is a touch screen to access ‘ground transportation’ near the baggage claim. 

The light rail link wouldn’t take us close to our hotel, as we were staying near the Space Needle. Fares were reasonable at less than $3 from airport to downtown.

Taxi’s cost about $45-$50 from Sea-Tac to downtown, but some add extra charges for extra passengers, bags, collecting from airport, and of course ‘waiting’ time. One will need to check all aspects of the fare component. Trip could cost as much as $80 if traffic is heavy. One cab company does have a flat rate of $50 for downtown hotels. 

Town Car’s are a flat rate, about $45-50 and will meet you at the airport doors. This saves you from walking up over the skybridge to the pick-up point in the garage. 

http://seattleairportlimoandtowncar.com/SeattleAirportShuttle.aspx

Shuttle Express http://shuttleexpress.com/  have a 24 hour service that runs from Sea-Tac to downtown. Fares are $19 per person and leaves hourly. This is what we decided to do. However, once at the airport we couldn't find where their pickup was, so ended up getting a town car for $50.

There are also public buses, but we didn’t look into that, as after a 22 hour plus flight from Australia, we just wanted to get to the hotel as quick as we could. 

One good thing about the long flight was we arrived in the right time zone and we are ready for bed.

Happy Travels
A P & J