My visit to Sydney, Australia & Fiji

In September of 2016 I took a trip to Sydney, Australia and Fiji.  It was my first time going out of the country and it was an amazing trip.  I went with my sister Brooke and her husband Jay. 

We started with a quick jump from Phoenix to LAX. We had a morning flight and made it over to Matt's Big Breakfast in Sky Harbor Airport prior to boarding our first flight.  Their Bloody Mary's are excellent...I highly recommend them. Once in LA we had several hours before we could check in for our flight so we rented a car and headed over to Venice Beach.  This was my first time going there and it did not disappoint.

After getting some food and having a couple of beers it was time to head back to the airport. Having never flown internationally before this was also a new experience for me...checking into a flight like this that is. I never thought about some of the things I take for granted, like suit cases and duffle bags.  Some people were checking in plastic bins wrapped with duct tape to keep them secure.  I don't know if that was their preference, or it was all they had, but it was an interesting sight nonetheless.

The first leg of that flight wasn't bad.  I was excited because over the weeks leading up to the flight I had been checking to see if the seat next to me had been taken and it had not been, at least not up to just before our departure from Phoenix.  However, as boarding was taking place I noticed this rather large island man walking towards me and sat in what I was thinking could be an empty seat.  It was a row of 2 seats and I had the window.

He seemed nice enough and appeared to be a man of few words.  His family was sitting in the row across the aisle from us. Everything was fine as we took off and hit our cruising altitude.  I had planned on sleeping most of the flight (a few beers and an Advil PM helped), which I did for the most part.  However, so did he.  And as he did he started to encroach on my space.  Fortunately for me I never had to get up to use the restroom.  If I had I'm not sure I would have been able to as he was in a very deep sleep and I was honestly kind of scared to wake him.  He had hands the size of baseball mits. 

Anyway, that was just the very beginning of our amazing voyage.  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.