Ok, here’s my first post on our travel related blog, travelnbug.com. As we’re working on building out the livecreateconnect.com network, we thought we’d kick things off with our travel blog. Teresa and I thought it would be great to start with our Christmas trip to Australia, our first foray “down under”. To start things off, we needed to take the NEX (Narita Express) train from Yokohama to Narita International Airport.

We had booked out flights months ago. We used miles and booked through American Airlines. They put us on a Qantas flight to Sydney (connecting through Brisbane).

Then on to Melbourne on Qantas after a couple of nights, Melbourne to Perth after a little over a week, also on Qantas, then back to Tokyo after another week, this time Perth to Sydney on Qantas, then JAL from Sydney to Tokyo Narita. So on the train I’m thinking, if we’re flying non-stop from Sydney to Tokyo on the return, they must have a non stop from Narita to Sydney. I wonder if there is any way we can get on that flight? I tried calling AA from the train, but it sounded like (over the noise), that there were no award seats and we had passed the cutoff time. Oh well, maybe next time.

Then when we got to the airport I decided to stop by the JAL counter to see if there was any way to change the flight. Lots of smiles, polite speaking and bowing later… no luck. She did say that maybe Qantas or AA could do something. We decided to go check the AA counter, a unbelievably they were able to get us switched to the direct flight!

No three hour layover in Brisbane, no extra take off and landing. And we arrive at 7:15 instead of 11:00, fantastic! I’m thinking that if the trip starts this well, maybe there is a lot more goodness in store. The adventure begins!