Sydney - We've arrived!

After a 9 ½ hour flight from Bangkok, and 9 months of waiting in the UK, we finally set foot on Australian soil. Despite the travel fatigue, Nicola and I were both excited to set eyes on Sydney and spot its famous landmarks…especially the one we were due to climb. However, that was not possible from our seats on the double decker sky train from the airport as it was largely underground.

We didn’t let that get us down though, we arrived at Central Station and, after a brief confusion over whether to catch the Suburban line or the intercity line to our hotel (our hotel was 10 minutes from Sydney centre and believe it or not we had to catch the suburban line) we made it to Kings Cross Station at platform 12 ¾ (jokes) and headed to Potts Point – all what we later learned to be Sydney’s Sleaze Quarter.

As we walked along Victoria Street (can you tell it used to be British yet?) to our hotel we managed to get a glimpse of Sydney Harbour Bridge through the trees...it buoyed our spirits and gave us a new energy. Well, at least until we decided to have a 5 minute lie down in our room which we then woke up from 4 hours later.

We wanted to get in contact with our friends already here in Oz so found ourselves wandering the streets of Sydney looking for Wifi, and on the way bought a brand new (probably a second hand unlocked Chinese phone as the message to unlock says “long hold * button”) and headed to Maccy D’s for the free Wifi. Whilst there we saw Australian chavs…apparently a species not confined to the UK. Although, they kind of looked like an 80s version of UK chavs but let’s not split hairs. We thought we’d save money and buy provisions in a local minimart but were completely mugged off by paying $6.95 for a box of cocopops…and it was the tiny 300g box too! We were later told by a lovely local woman who ran a launderette that minimarts are not the way forward here, they are actually more expensive than the supermarkets...live and learn.

After a semi-productive trip to Maccy D’s we headed back to our hotel and went for a wander to the park nearby. We saw quite a few parrots in the trees, which Nicola was particularly excited about, and attempted to watch the sunset…however, the sun just sat in the sky for an hour and failed to actually set, so we left, and then it set without us looking.