Leaving Sydney...NOT!

November 3rd--We got up at 6:00 a.m. this morning to be ready to leave the apartment by 8:00 a.m. We went downstairs to fit in our free breakfast as well. At 8:00 a.m., we checked out and got in a taxi heading to the airport. We arrived at the airport about 8:30 and went to check in for our Qantas flight. The lady could not locate our tickets. She saw our booking information, but their were no ticket numbers assigned. So, we had to go over to the sales desk to try to figure it out and get our tickets "issued". The lady at the Qantas sales desk was very helpful, but not helpful enough as she put us on the phone with British Airways (who we booked our round-the-world tickets with). Mike was on the phone with British Airways telling them to get us our tickets issued or we were going to miss our flight. The guy finally told Mike that there was nothing he could do and for us to call our travel agent. Mike was like "you guys are my travel agent. We've booked Round-The-World tickets directly through you." Anyway, by this time check-in had closed for the flight so it was obvious that we had missed it. So, at this point British Airways couldn't help us and Qantas couldn't help us. We finally got connected to the British Airways Round-The-World desk in the US and the lady there was very helpful. We still don't really understand, but somehow they had a "system glitch" and the tickets were booked, but not issued...whatever!! The unfortunate thing was that we had missed the one Qantas flight to Alice Springs for the day. The next flight didn't leave until tomorrow. Also, the direct flight that we were originally supposed to be on was full so we had to book an indirect flight for tomorrow. We were now flying out of Sydney at 8:20am to Adelaide and then Adelaide to Alice Springs arriving a little before noon. Of course, we also had to change our RV and hotel reservations for our next 2 stops. Luckily, we had some extra days at the end back in Sydney, so we just pushed everything back a day. By the time this was all taken care of, I believe Mike had been on the phone for over 2 hours, but we had our boarding passes in hand for tomorrow's flight. Luckily, the kids were really good through this whole ordeal. There was actually a television next to the monitors that was playing cartoons. So, around 11:00 a.m., we left the ticket area and made our way downstairs to look into getting a hotel for the evening. The guy at the information desk was excellent. He got us a fairly inexpensive hotel close to the apartment. We hoped in a taxi and went to the Novotel on Brighton Beach. After getting checked in, we found something to eat for lunch and then headed to the swimming pool. It had turned HOT in Sydney today...high of 35 Celsius. We spent the afternoon at the hotel pool before heading to dinner. We walked about 10 minutes along the beach promenade to a restaurant called Sabia which sits right on the beach. The kids were able to play in the sand too. Brighton Beach faces Sydney airport so we watched planes take-off and land while eating our dinner. After dinner, we stopped for some much needed ice cream after the stressful morning we had and headed back to the hotel. It was early to bed for everyone as it was going to be another early morning.