Scribble World Travel Blog

Day One: Broome, Australia

Our Quantas boeing 747 flight from L.A. to Sydney was actually pretty cool.  We had an interactive selection of various movies to choose from-both U.S. and international ones as well as commercial-free tv.  I watched a couple movies and a funny documentary on penis’s.  It was an interesting transgression from the beginning of the show when no one would talk to the guy, to the end of the show when there’s a whole room full of anonymously donated pictures of penis’s of all different sizes, shapes, colors, etc, and then people would volunteer to go behind a curtain and take a picture of their own to add to the collection.  

The food wasn’t half bad, and i liked the little care packages with socks, eye shade, snacks, bottled water, etc.  We lost a day in flight and so arrived on the 12th instead of the 11th.  Upon arriving, we discovered a missing piece of luggage.  The lady working at the gate in L.A. had stopped Bruce before entering the plane and said he would need to have one of his bags checked due to space limitations.  As it turns out, she never checked the bag-it just sat by the gate the whole time and had to be re-routed the next day.  So we went to our hotel, The Mercure, by taxi, which came to approximately $8.  Then we tipped him and he instantly said, “you’re Americans!”  American’s get so used to tipping 20%-but over here, most people actually make decent wages and aren’t accustomed to the big tips, thus American’s get a reputation as the big tippers.

We walked a short distance to Matso’s Brewery for dinner…where everything on the dinner menu was over $25.  I tried the famous “ginger beer” which was my kind of drink-low alcohol content, light and flavorful-but it came to $8.50 all the same-something about liquor licensing requirements-they can’t charge below a certain price.  The houses own Pindan ale met with Chris’s seal of approval. 

Our room at the Mercure is very nice.  I’ve been taking note of some of the differences between this and U.S. hotels I’ve been to.  There’s a flatscreen tv, a different kind of light switch-that’s more a button, the shower isn’t encased in anything, so the whole bathroom floor gets wet, instead of a coffee pot there is an electric hot water maker for making tea or instant coffee (the coffee is freeze dried in little packets, no need for a filter)-you just put it in the cup and poor hot water over it. The artwork and style of the room are interesting, the lamp is curvy and made of wood. And the A.C. unit gets turned on and off automatically when you put the door key in a slot near the door.  And, of course, the power outlets are different-each one has it’s own on/off button.