Day 1 - Saturday 11th

We left from Melbourne at 11.30am, waived off by Marilyn, John & Thel.
We managed to land ourselves seats at the very back of the plane,
which sounds bad as they were close to the toilets but the row only
had 2 seats so we didn't have to deal with strangers pushing past
etc so it was pretty good.  Cory wasn't as impressed with the
food as last time he flew United but the vegetarian stuff was ok.  We
slept
a bit
between Sydney & San Fran.  When we landed there as our first stop
into the US we had to go through customs before changing planes to
NY.  We got fingerprinted and had took our photo (perhaps even an eye
scan,
and from the scudge on the fingerprint plate, there'd be plenty of DNA
there) and got asked the
basic questions - apart from that it was the easiest customs check
I've ever been through!

We changed planes to NY for a 5 hour flight - more like 6 as we had
to circle the airport for about 45min due to thunderstorms.  When we
landed and got our bags we caught the airtrain (just a normal train that

runs to the airport - it doesn't fly or anything) to the subway station
and caught the subway to the YMCA where we were staying. It took
about an hour so by the time we checked in it was 11pm.  We ditched
our bags and headed out to get some dinner as we were starving - it
was still about 30 degrees and very humid so by the time we grabbed
a bite and walked to Times Square and back we were very sweaty!