Oz Report – Part 3 – Sydney Day 1

The first day:

After 14 hours, the sun caught up with us and we landed in Sydney a few minutes before sunrise. A SE wind meant a NW approach for our 747-400, which afforded us a lovely pre-dawn view of the downtown area.

Arriving at the hotel at about 7.30am, we went straight in to breakfast while waiting for a clean available room. I decided on a full breakfast (egg, sausage, bacon etc.) and supplemented it with a muffin and some vegemite on toast. Vegemite is milder than Marmite and to my taste, not quite as nice, but I could definitely eat it if I lived in Oz (apart from the problem of it being made by Kraft Foods, part of the Altria group).

Sydney, unlike LA, is a real city. We spent some time wandering downtown and through the botanical gardens. After some time looking at the ficuses, bromeliads and cypress trees, I became aware of noises in the treetops. Looking up revealed not birds, but bats – hundreds of flying foxes roosting, stretching and occasionally squabbling over space. That was unexpected! We headed down to the water – remarking that it was strange to be on the west of the Pacific – and towards the Opera House.

The Opera House didn’t disapppoint. We walked all around it, taking plenty of photos, then stopped at the cafe next to the ferry launches where we ate a couple of sandwiches and shared a hot chocolate. The wind was a little cold and it was drizzling, so the hot chocolate was welcome, and nice – although not nice enough to get one each at $4.50 a time.

So we wandered through the CBD and downtown shopping districts before heading back to our hotel via a convenience store to pick up some staples (milk, juice, cereal, tim tams 🙂 Mini-Elbeno, no doubt a bit jet-lagged, slept a long time in the stroller and on arrival back at the hotel, told us “more bed”. We felt the same and forewent dining out in favour of room service and an early night.