The Trip

Ok, we don't really have time to right a long entry about NY and Sydney but we've uploaded the photos from the last week. They need a little more editing (how many photos of the Opera House can you have?) but they are all commented if you view the full versions.

Enjoy!

The flight from New York took about 20 hours with a 45 min stopover in LA. The first leg was fine because we had the whole row of 4 seats to ourselves. The next leg involved me dropping off to sleep, the guy in front jumping into his seat forcing it to hit my head, I'd wake up, the kids behind me would start kicking my seat and finally I'd get back to sleep only for the whole process to repeat.

The weird thing about flying Qantas is that most of the flight attentants are male. And about 40. It's kinda weird but I think you get better service than from the 20-year old Aer Lingus monsters.

We arrived at our hotel in Sydney at 9 in the morning so it wasn't much surprise that they didn't have a room ready for us. So we killed time and tried to keep ourselves awake til 2 in the afternoon. 1 hours sleep later we met up with Farah. Come 8 we were back at the hotel and promised we'd only have an hours sleep and go for dinner at 9. Unsurprisingly, we both slept solidly til 9 the next day.

So... Sydney is a pretty cool city. It's only spring but we've had bright sunshine and 21degree heat during the day. But come 5 o'clock the sun is setting and it's time to head back home and put on a fleece.

Our hotel is in a perfect location just across the Harbour Bridge on the northside so everywhere we go involves heading across the bridge by train or under it by ferry. Tomorrow we're going to walk across and sometime next week we hope to climb it! We're also lucky to be surrounded by good takeaways and cafes, particularly the superb "Stir Crazy". It's pretty cool to be able to buy a takeaway walk down the road and eat under the bridge looking across at the opera house and central Sydney.

We've pretty much finished all the touristy stuff: Aquarium, Maratime Museum, Bus tour, Opera House, Mrs. Macquaries Point etc. Next on the list is to explore the beaches: Bondi, Manly - here we come.

Oh, and Hilary's written another account of our travels on her own site.

First impressions of New York were not what I was expecting. It was busy, loud and tall but I was underwhelmed - I guess you kinda hype these things too much in your mind. Michelle (Hilary's cousin and native New Yorker) was good enough to take 2 days off work and guide the gormless tourists around. Since we arrived in the evening not much but a spot of drinking and eating got down. But the next day we crammed the Empire State Building, Ground Zero and the Circle Line (a boat all around the island of Manhattan) into the space of a few hours. Add to that the typical NY experiences of taxi's, the subway and excessive tipping and we had a pretty comprehensive day.