For those who didn't know, we just returned from a week-long trip to Sydney. It was a great trip, but really tiring. This was my first time travelling by air with Noah, and it was about what I expected. The 14-hour plane rides each way really sucked (more on that below). Also, the jetlag was tough because Noah wanted to run around in the middle of the night (and is now doing that all over again here). Finally, he missed a lot of naps because we were out running around the city. Still, Noah was very patient and pretty nice overall. Here are two pictures taken around the Opera House/waterfront area. I'll try to post more about the trip in the Hobie blog (which I never use), but I'll just say that the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, and the entire Sydney Harbor is as beautiful a city sight as there is -- and that's from someone in the Bay Area.
Ok, enough positives. Now, more about the sucky plane ride. Since Noah was born, I've, of course, become quite sensitive to the many aspects of daily life that are family (or kid) unfriendly. I would put airline travel right up there at the top. Here's the story: for some reason, we could not reserve seats on this flight. I don't know if that's an international rule or something, but we just couldn't. We couldn't two months before our flight, we couldn't a month before, we couldn't the week before we left. I kept emphasizing to the airline that we are travelling with an infant and need to sit together. So what happens on our way back? Mariam and I are booked into row 32. Noah is sitting in row 51. Nice. Of course, one of us could've switched with Noah, but we wanted to sit together to share the burden of handling him. I pointed out to the woman at the desk how obsurd this was, and she basically had no response other than telling us to try to get someone near us to move. Well, of course neither of the two jerks sitting by us wanted to move because we had a bulkhead seat with a few more inches that a normal seat. Come on people! It's not like I just want to trade your minimally comfy seat for my horrendous space. Obviously, we have a child with us. Well, finally, one person was willing to trade, albeit begrudginly. And as for the person in 32G: you're an asshole. I know you'll never read this, but you're an asshole. This guy wouldn't even look at me as I asked him to trade. He just said "No", then went back to reading his book. No explanation, no "Sorry, but my knees hurt" or something. Just "NO". Dickhead.
The airline workers were horrible also. They didn't really even try to help convince the other passengers to move. Nor were they helpful at all with Noah. Note to all stewards/stewardesses: when you see a family coming down the aisle with a carseat, two baby bags, a baby food cooler, a stroller, a backpack, and a child on the hip, give them a fucking hand. Don't just stand two feet away smiling and watch as they try to put stuff in the overhead bin. Oh, and United is officially the worst airline in my book. just to put that out there.
