Salt Lake

A bit of a killer flight up from NZ. I had some upgrades, but alas, the flight was full, therefore I was back in economy. That so sucked! But I made the most of it, and in the absence of the ability to sleep I watched 3 movies; The Hobbit (which I thought was long and boring I am afraid), Atlas Could (which I need to watch again) and Argo, which despite all the fuss about denigrating NZ (which is BS) I thought was pretty good.

Arrived into LA at 10.30 (the same day), then had a pretty big layover the catch a SouthWest flight to Salt Lake City at 3.45 Yes, a good 5 hr layover. Surprisingly, immigration only took about an hour, which is pretty good for LA, then it was time to check in with SouthWest. You might not know that they are a real upstart in this neck of the woods and have to some extent disrupted the airline model, so I was keen to fly them. The check in was interesting, 3 kiosks to get your boarding pass, Air NZ has obviously a lot more than that (and this was in LA) and then your bag drop. Overall, not nearly as efficient as Air NZ, but it was manageable.

Then a few hours in the departure lounge, made easier with free Wi-Fi, so in reality, the time passed quickly. And then it was time to board the plane. Interesting. There are no seat allocations, but you can pay $10 to board first, which I did. Highly recommended, as otherwise all the window seats go first, and the opportunity to get multiple seats (like for a family) evaporates. So yes, slightly weird boarding a plane a choosing your own seat! But good, especially as they have a 2 bag policy, ideal for skiers. And once on the plane, amazing. $8 Wi-Fi, and free access to see where you are on the Flight tracker (on my iPad), plus you Could watch a TV or movies for $5. Pretty awesome. I even FaceTimed a friend in NZ, from the plane. Amazing!

And then into SLC. Picked up the car, flicked on the GPS, found the hotel. Shot out for a bit of shopping; BestBuy for a kindle, a GoPro 3 Black and Game of Thrones DVDs), the a liquor store for a bottle of wine. As you might know, Utah has unusual liquor laws and to be honest it was hard to find an outlet. But I did, and it was super busy, so I parked somewhat illegally, not expecting that within 10 mins I'd be clamped. Bugger. $75 to get out, but the guy was very nice and told me to appeal given I was a tourist and gad been travelling for 20 hours. And the store, yep, just crazy busy. Ironically however, only warm beer, no cold beer, but cheap. About $1.30 per bottle of (very good) craft beer. And a nice California Zinfandel for $8.99.

Then back to the hotel, a quick night cap, and bed. Forecast good to tomorrow so might break my rule of a day off, and ski instead ...