We started the day with a flurry of activity to finish packing, clean up and get our washing done. We booked our flights on the same day as sister Lynda so we could get a lift with her as well as hang out at the airport.

Niece Jenn had arranged to pick us up at 12 noon. At 11am we were still mucking around sorting ourselves out when I had a panic moment. If Jenn is anything like Lynda she might be early. Then it was a mad panic to get everything done. Thankfully we did as Jenn was 10 mins early. But we were ready!

It was the first day of the airport layout change. They’ve made a larger drop off area, but it also meant a longer walk to departures.

We had tried to check in the night before, but for some reason it wouldn’t allow Mike to. But thankfully it was no problem at the airport kiosk.

We said a brief hello to Jodie and Craig who had arrived from Melbourne, then breezed through security, apart from Mike having his bag drug tested.

We hung out for 4 hours with sister Lynda, watching the planes come and go, many toilet breaks, and a feed of Vietnamese noodles.

When it came time to board, there was and extra security screening for USA flights. Once again Mike got taken aside while they checked him and all the contents of his bag. His boarding card had been marked as super serious special search. If you ever see SSSS on your boarding pass this is not a good thing. It means the TSA have flagged you a person on interest. So maybe there is someone with the same name or something, or it could just be random.

The flight was nice in premium economy, it’s so worth it if you can get tickets when they’re on special. But everyone seemed to be coughing or blowing noses, so I can’t imagine not catching something.

We’d done something a little stupid before we left home. When we found out Cirque de Soleil Beatles Love was playing in our hotel, we booked it, knowing we had only 2 hours to get from Vegas and get checked in. So, it depended on making our connecting flight at LAX (sometimes a two hour wait at US immigration), our connecting flight being on time (not uncommon to be late in US), trafffic from Vegas to hotel being reasonable, and queue to check in ok.

Arriving in lax can sometimes be an intimidating experience. But this time there were hardly any queues. Since they scrapped the Auckland-Chicago route, a lot of people on our flight were transiting to Chicago, so they went to a different queue. and the lady on the desk was very nice. And because we have a b2 visa they didn’t even fingerprint us.

Then came the fun part. Figuring out how to catch our next flight. It really was easy but when you’re jet lagged every thing is difficult.

We walked to terminal 2 then tried to check in. But Mike had the delta app and it seemed we had boarding passes already. But we hadn’t checked in. So we were very confused. It took a while to find someone to confirm they were boarding passes. Weird.

We made it to the gate in plenty of time, and thankfully our plane was on time. Amazing. It’s just a short 45 min flight to Vegas and we were on an A320, jammed packed. It felt a little claustrophobic with the dark interior and cramped seats, and I was thankful for the short flight.

We arrived in Vegas airport, walked past all the slot machines, had to get on a little train to take us to the taxi rank. They have fixed prices for taxis to the strip, so this was nice knowing we wouldn’t be ripped off.

More about our first day in Vegas in the next blog as I’m running out of time and we have to pick up our van this morning.