We flew United Airlines and Air New Zealand to get us to our main destination: Australia.
The flight path wasn't anything spectacular. We flew direct from St. Louis to Houston with an 8 hour layover. Thankfully we had friends in Houston so we left the airport and had dinner and burned a few hours before the long haul flight.
We flew Air New Zealand to Auckland and had a couch! We were in premium economy and purchase the laydown option. Basically, the leg rests folded up and wedged between the seat we were in and the one in front of us. It requires you to purchase 3 seats (to fold out to a bed). They provide full sized pillows and blankets. Annicakes, who was 8 at the time, and I were set! Lex and Ed too of course.
The aircraft was HUGE. 10 seats across in a 3-4-3 configuration. Very thankful we bought the couch so we had an extra seat between us each. Air New Zealand offers in-seat texting. It was fun to chat with my family and a few random chats with strangers.
They fed us dinner and Annicakes and I slept a solid 8 hours. Ed has a hard time sleeping on a plane. Lex has no issues. They opted to not fold out their seats into the couch configuration.
The total flight time is 13 1/2 hours so even with the 8 hours of sleep we still had awake time to burn. We watched a few movies. Still more time to burn. After breakfast it was only a short distance to Auckland. The airport was very nice, very easy to navigate, and the customs/border control process ran a little long but we had plenty of time before our final leg.
The flight to Brisbane, Australia was an additional 3 1/2 hours.
A little about Brisbane. It's located on the east coast of Australia in an area known as the Gold Coast. A very touristy area with beaches and amusement parks. The weather will be 78/65 so we can handle that.
I'm sure you have read before that they drive on the left side of the road. When it came time to hail a taxi, Ed attempted to get in on the WRONG SIDE (driver's side) and freaked out the taxi driver. We all had a good laugh!
One thing to note thus far...toilets do not flush in the opposite direction like Bart Simpson would have us believe. Everyone is super nice here and we're looking forward to our long stay exploring the land down under.
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