31 Jan 2025
Sleep just isn’t my friend on this trip- I had such high hopes after my first night, but today started shortly after midnight, when some lady started knocking on my door. Turns out, she thought my room was hers and was confused as to why her key wasn’t working. Sleepy me was not very nice to her. And I struggled to fall back to sleep before my 3am alarm.
Ugh.
Cairns airport is pretty dead at 4am, though they did pull my bag for additional screening. Still made it to my gate with plenty of time and despite the fog, there didn’t seem to be any delays yet:
Which is good, because I (again) have a tight connection in Brisbane, especially since I’m having trouble getting checked in for my next flight.
Farewell, Cairns!
So… my American Airlines app said my flight was still on, but wouldn’t let me check in. When I logged in from my laptop, it said I was already checked in, but wouldn’t give me a boarding pass (plus, my seat upgrade was gone). I actually made it over to the international side of the airport in decent time, but when I went to find someone to help fix my flight, I found this:
That top flight is mine and it’s cancelled…
I wandered around to other desks- Quantas, then Emerates (because they took over the check-in station American Airlines is usually at), then finally the SwissPort office, where one of the employees took my information and disappeared to find someone who could help.
While I waited, I scrolled through my emails, trying to figure out what happened and I noticed something. My original flight is on the left, my updated one is on the right:
For some reason, they rebooked my second and third flights, but not the first, giving me a >24 hour layover. If I had noticed that, I would have tried to move that first flight later- no need to be up at o’dark-thirty, but my cancelled flight notification clearly said Feb. 1st:
I have no idea what day it is, so this mistake might be on me, though I still think changing some of my flights, but not all of them, and giving me an excessively long layover isn’t right either.
Regardless, the helpful lady soon came back with a hotel room for me, as well as cab vouchers and a food credit:
Before leaving the airport, I did check other flights and could have booked a Delta flight for like $800 that would get me home just a little bit later than my original flight, but I have a few days before I have to go back to work, and my hotel room is already paid for so…
Welcome to my home for the next day or so:
I did a bit of quick Google-ing- transit here is super cheap (like 50c per ride for bus or water taxi), but I don’t really want to figure out public transportation, so I mostly looked at things to do that were with walking distance and found the Story Bridge:
and discovered you can climb it!
So that’s what I’ll be doing this afternoon!
I’ve got a bit of time to kill before my climb
so I just wandered around downtown
and apparently took no pictures, which is unfortunate, because it was an interesting mix of neat old, stone buildings interspersed amongst the new, modern high rises.
Here’s me, in a stellar jumpsuit, on top of the bridge!
We were a small group- just me and one other guy:
I wish I could have brought my camera up here, because you could see for FOREVER!
It’s a little hard to see, but there are half a dozen climbers (the next group) partway up the bridge:
I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering down the floating bridge:
(which is no longer floating because several years ago the river flooded and took part of the bridge with it)
then headed back to my hotel room and called it an early night.
Not the most productive of days, but I’m not disappointed with my surprise trip extension.