Here are some of the buildings that we walked past every day. The Martin Luther Kirche was the first Evangelical Lutheran Church built in Sydney, in 1881.
Mark Foy's was once a busy department store which boasted having the first escalator in Australia.
Before we went to the Village Bizarre, we explored some more of the area called The Rocks. The Fortune of War is the oldest pub in Sydney, established in 1828.
Being a social worker at heart, I also wanted to visit the Susannah Place Museum but it was closed. So we walked by and looked around the outside. :) Built in 1844 by Irish immigrants and continuously occupied until 1990, this was home to over 100 different families.
According to the Historic Houses Trust website, "The story of Susannah Place is of shared history of four houses that existed side by side. Neighbours couldn’t help but hear footsteps on the stairs, the arguments between husbands and wives, the conversations in the yards or the back to back toilets being flushed. Escaping their cramped conditions, locals gossiped as they hung their washing in the back lanes. Kids played outdoor games and street sellers, from milkmen to rabbitohs came past shouting and selling their wares. Everyone knew everyone's business." I had to look up "rabbitohs," which refers to an itinerant seller of rabbits, and is also now the name of an Australian rugby league football team.
Still, hey, we rode the monorail!
When we were looking for plane tickets, oh so many months ago, we finally settled on Jet Star because the fare was so much cheaper than Qantas or Hawaii or any other airlines we checked. We needed one way tickets from Sydney to Honolulu so we could get back home (we had round trip tickets from HNL to ANC and on to Unalaska). I'd done some research on Jet Star and read lots of complaints, so at one point, we decided we'd go on Qantas but when I went to their site, the tickets we wanted had a small asterisk beside them, saying the flights were actually on Jet Star, a Qantas subsidiary. So we were pretty much stuck.
I bought the tickets and it was suggested that we pay for our luggage in advance, as well as paying extra to choose our seats and reserving a digi-player for the long (10 hour) flight. At the time, we thought we would just have two suitcases so I paid for 40 kg of luggage. In actuality, we ended up taking three suitcases and we even thought about going back online and paying for more luggage but we blew it off. I remembered the site saying it was "cheaper" to pay in advance, but we thought it would be a few dollars extra at the airport.
So we arrived at the airport a couple of hours before our flight and got into a very long line to check bags and get boarding passes. We were literally in line for an hour, and still had to go through security and customs. When we finally got to the counter, the woman noted that we had paid for 40 kg of luggage and I volunteered that we did have another bag and needed to pay for it. She had weighed our first two and we were at 39 kg. She said, "you know that will cost you quite a bit, right?" We said yes and Rich jokingly said something about it wasn't going to be $5000, was it? She said no but allowed that it would be high. We're thinking, okay, maybe a hundred bucks, which didn't please us but we could deal with it. She then weighs the third bag and says it's 17 kg but she will let us slide and call it 15 kg because the price goes up even more after 15 kg. She then proceeds to tell us it will be $165 and Rich needs to go see another agent and pay for it before she can finish our boarding passes. We were pretty flabbergasted and told her we'd never heard of such a thing, being used to walking into a US airport and plopping down an extra $25 or $50 if we're overweight or have an extra suitcase. She was apologetic but said there was nothing she could do, and yes, it would have been a lot cheaper had we just gone back online and added the suitcase. Ugh.
Poor Rich was held up in the other line forever and I had no idea what was going on. I was finally asked to step aside and let others get checked in since the line was still a mile long. Eventually, the other agent came down and conferred with our agent, which led me to believe that oh, hey, maybe they feel sorry for us and our failure to read the small print and are going to let us slide! I am so naive! But no, she began telling our agent that she'd quoted us the wrong price and that the cost would actually be $375. YES! THREE HUNDRED SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS! Our agent even tried to argue with her and tell her that seemed exorbitant but she said it was the rule and there was nothing that could be done. We were basically told that we could pay it or throw our suitcase away. Believe me, if we'd had time, I would have pulled all three bags back and rearranged the necessary items so I could toss one suitcase and some stuff we could have done without. But we were running out of time and the last suitcase was the one with the things we needed to overnight in Honolulu plus some Christmas gifts. So we sucked it up and pulled out the old credit card. Man, I felt terrible that I had mistakenly assumed it would be no big deal!
Rich said the agent he dealt with was super snotty and told him "This is a discount airline; if you had wanted to bring so many bags, you should have gone on Qantas or another airline." The funny thing is that earlier in the day we'd been talking about how Jet Star was probably just fine and those people who'd been complaining were just whiny babies and we'd post a good review after we had our lovely flight back to Honolulu. LOL
So with a very bad taste in our mouths and a bitter end to a lovely vacation, we made it through security and customs and boarded our Jet Star flight. We could not get over it!! On board, everything was decent except you did have to pay for every little thing, including water. Well, there was a small water fountain near the lavatory so you could get some water in a little paper cup if you were desperate and didn't want to spend any money!
Needless to say, we will never fly Jet Star again. I sent a complaint to their customer service department on their website, which says they will respond within 15 days. This in itself kinda cracks me up, because don't most businesses usually say they will reply in 48 or 72 hours? So our 15 days went by with no response and then I got an email saying they'd had some issues over the holidays so they were issuing me a $50 travel voucher to make up for the delay. Woohoo! As if I will ever be able to use that! I got the feeling that the voucher was just to make up for the fact that they had not responded to the complaint yet, not that it was a response to the complaint. But I could be wrong because I have still not heard anything more.
Here's my advice: Don't fly on Jet Star if you can avoid it! If you do, be sure you read ALL the fine print on their website. I understand that this was largely our own fault, but I was appalled at the way we were treated with NO compassion or understanding by the person making the final decision. AND I also think that these charges are WAY out of line. Seriously, folks, $375 for one suitcase??!! We definitely had to laugh that we could have flown on one of the more expensive airlines after all!
Still, despite the nasty end to the trip, we had a wonderful vacation, loved our cruise, enjoyed our new friends, and had a blast in Australia. I would love to go back and see more of the country and I would not mind taking another long repositioning cruise again. We just need to learn to pack lighter!
