Quarantine: Day 0
View above from our room at the Sydney Novotel Darling Harbour
[Sharing content from Jeremy on the process to get into our quarantine hotel]
We flew United out of San Francisco (flight leaving at 11:10PM). We arrived to a nearly empty international terminal, and quickly learned that the plane we were flying, which normally seats >240 passengers, would have less than 30 people on board! (There are quotas on people coming in from abroad.) Despite the the empty terminal, and the fact that we walked up directly to the counter, check-in took well over an hour because in addition to all the normal hoops, they had to confirm our recent (within 72 hours) negative COVID tests, administer health-check questionnaire, and call Australia directly to confirm our eligibility to travel. The flight itself was easier than normal, as each of us had a row to ourselves, which allowed us to stretch out. However, we had to remain masked at all times except when eating or drinking. Sleeping while masked was interesting. Despite photo evidence, below, Miles insists he didn't sleep at all during the 14.5 hour flight.
We arrived to an equally empty international terminal at Sydney, and were instructed we would have to wait, as they do not allow any interaction between other arriving flights. After a short wait, we deplaned and were instructed to follow a woman wearing a full medical apron, gloves, mask and shield (most of the airport crew were similarly attired). We then followed (socially distanced from other passengers) and went through a series of stations where they checked our temperature, asked health questions, etc. Finally, we were allowed to collect our luggage and were then escorted by military and state police onto a charter bus with other passengers from our flight (the bus was about 1/4 full).They took us to a nearby hotel where two families were unloaded (this took about 40 minutes), then the rest of us (3 other families) were taken to another hotel. Unfortunately, when we reached the hotel, there was another bus unloading and they told us we would have a short wait as they don't want to contaminate passengers and would need to sanitize once the other bus was unloaded. (A child on our bus needed to pee and the officer in charge gave him a bottle to use as a urinal.) Finally, after about 35 minutes of waiting, they began to unload us one family at a time. There were more questions and lots of instructions (most importantly, you cannot, for any reason, leave your room), and finally escorted upstairs to our room. The whole process -- from the time we landed until we reached our room -- took about 4 hours.
Our hotel view is amazing looking over Sydney's Darling Harbour. We have adjoining rooms, which is a huge blessing to give us more space to spend the next 2 weeks. We had enough room to rent an exercise bike which was delivered within 2 hours; that should allow us to get some exercise; I also brought a travel yoga mat and resistance bands.
Food: So far, the food has been OK. The accommodate special dietary requirements, including Miles' food allergy. We have a small fridge to storage beverages, but we don't have a microwave (fire risk) but we do have a tea kettle that allows us to boil water for making coffee/tea. We will likely do some type of order from local groceries (Coles or Woolworth's) in the coming days. Baxter has embraced trying new foods, but Miles is still extremely picky and refused a lot of options. We also packed a camping espresso maker which worked well this morning (see Jeremy's demo).
Service: The hotel staff so far has been excellent! We had to call to request a few things, and had a minor fuse issue that knocked out power to our TV and fridge; despite needing to make 2 calls we got power restored. We also can get our linens changed, and can request to get replacements for the hotel shampoo and soap, etc.. They also host some special events (Zumba courses, happy hours, etc.) so those will likely break up the monotony.
COVID-19 procedures: As we noted, we essentially are in a lock-in. The health workers will come and do a nasopharyngeal test for each of us on Days 2, 7, and 12, which will definitely be stressful for the kids. We get a daily phone call to check on symptoms as well as our mental health. I cannot even imagine how shocking this must be for those we did not spend months studying all the steps in this process! I knew what we were in for, and it's still a lot to take in!
