Lounges ... SYD Qantas Club

The last in a multi-part series... at least for a couple months. My traveling for the quarter is now over, thankfully, and so is my evaluation of airline lounges...

The last leg of my month on the road was the Qantas Club in Sydney, Australia.

Perhaps I was just tired of looking at clubs by this point, but honestly, I was underwhelmed. You'd think would be a flagship location (no pun intended against oneworld partner AA...) given that SYD is the largest operation for QF.

The floorspace was a little larger than what QF had at AKL and MEL, but it was quite narrow, being on the upper level of the departures hall. As in the MEL and AKL clubs, they had ample PC's to work from, and free wi-fi for those who wanted to use their own laptops. Fortunately, VPN worked great via the Telstra connection (which was not the case in AKL).

Food choices were still better than an Admirals Club back home -- a cold table with some fruit and pasta salads, ham, bread rolls, and a well stocked self-service bar. They had fountain soda with a choice of six Coke products, and three Aussie beers on draft in addition to several selections in bottles. Fountain and draft are a little more green than having recyclable single containers, but frankly, it didn't leave much of a choice with regard to soft drinks.

Interestingly, no Vegemite to be found anywhere, however I was there during the early afternoon, so perhaps it was already locked away in the safe, being a high value item and all. Too bad -- the Queen was with me, and I was hoping to sneak her a taste of that lovely stuff.

The upside to SYD over the AKL and MEL clubs was clearly the view -- ample windows overlooking the tarmac allow you to watch planes come and go, and have some idea of what time of day it is, but that was about it.