Sydney

Sydney was lovely!

We landed in Sydney a bit before noon, and had collected our luggage, taken a train to Town Hall, and registered at the hotel by around one. The hotel was just as nice as I had hoped judging by their website, and we had a nice view of the city and St. Andrew's Cathedral. We dropped our stuff off and headed down to Darling Harbour for the afternoon, where we did a bit of window shopping, had some lunch, and went to the Sydney Aquarium, which we both loved. Chris enjoyed seeing all the fish, while I was captivated by the seals, platypus, and fairy penguins. the Barrier Reef exhibit was marvelous, and it was amazing to go in a glass tunnel in the shark enclosure and have the huge sharks and rays and turtles and things swimming all around and above us.

In fact, our trip to Sydney was all about water. Between us I think there were 7 showers, one bath, a boat tour, a trip to the aquarium, and an evening spent swimming in the hotel pool.

The first night we ate supper at a place called the Blackbird Cafe in Darling Harbour, where we split a vegetarian couscous dish wrapped in phyllo pastry and a lovely spinach ricotta ravioli in a creamy pesto sauce. And nummy chocolate mousse! It was very good, and we went to bed early, very sleepy.

The next day, our only full day in Sydney, we slept late and headed down to Darling Harbour again, this time to catch a boat tour under the Harbour Bridge and over to the Opera House. It was gorgeous and sunny, utterly perfect for taking lots of photos! We then wandered around in The Rocks, Sydney's historical district, and down George Street for some shopping. Utterly exhausted by late afternoon, we lay around in the hotel room for a while before heading down to the hotel pool for an hour or so of horsing around in the water. Fun! By this time we were starving, so back to Darling Harbour again for steak at the Meat and Wine Co. where the food was fabulous and the service, despite the HUGE number of staff, was so so. By this time I was so utterly sick to death of having EVERY thing I ordered come with chips (lasagne and chips?) that I had some nice plain steamed rice with my steak. Perfect!

The next morning we flew down to Melbourne, and were met at the airport by Chris' mum Wendy, sister-in-law Lou, nephew Darian (Dash) uncle Charle, Auntie Edith, cousin Paul, cousin-in-law Neelam and her beautiful five month old son Aaron, who promptly fell asleep on me. I love other people's babies! Charlie and Edith also brought flowers for me, which I have no idea what they were but they're lovely, and a "welcome" sign. I definitely felt welcome! It was lovely to meet most of the rest of Chris' family here.

We have lots of pictures to post but as Chris' mum is on dial-up, I think we are going to wait til we head downtown this week, find an internet cafe, and post them all that way. I tried posting some here but it timed out and didn't work!