22 hours! Most of us cringe at the thought. But we have discovered that a little planning and scheduling will make it as smooth as possible.
- Go to your doctor and get prescription sleeping pills – 8 hours with no hangover.
- Book your flight really early – looking for the bulkhead seats – loads of leg room. We are on a 777 with Air Canada and row number 18 – very nice.
- Rent lots of movies to play on your laptop in case you don’t like the onflight movie selection
- The best flight for us out of Toronto was AC 033 – direct to Sydney. Actually it stops in Vancouver for fuel, a clean and a crew change but this works well.
So the object of the game going over is to stay awake as long as possible – take the sleeping pills when you are ready to crash and try to get 8 hours. This timing means that you will be sleeping roughly when Sydney is sleeping.
Karen and I left Toronto at 8:30pm - watched one movie and read to get to Vancouver - 1:30am our time. An hour break and back on the plane at about 2:30am. We forced ourselves to watch one flick – and lasted until 6:30am our time! We were bagged but ready to crash. Karen got a full 8 hours – me 6. Once we woke up we still had 3 hours to go – but breakfast was served shortly. The last leg was a snap.
The result – a full night’s sleep leading into our first day in Sydney. Works perfectly.
The return flight works a little differently. Departure is 10:20 am. We were not staying in Sydney at the time so we flew into Sydney the night before and stayed at a hotel the night before (Stamford Plaza – not bad, not great but we just needed a bed. The low price ($150) did include a decent breakfast). The plane took off, we had a second breakfast (and a drink!), took our sleeping pills and fell asleep. I got 6 hours, Karen got 8!). We had to clear customs in Vancouver but that was painless. The only mistake we made was not taking the new JetLag drug before we left. I think coming hoem was tougher on us – we feel like ____ two days later.

Australia, Australia

David & Karen Barrett