We Have Landed

Well we landed in Sydney last Friday morning after an extremely long flight. I never thought flying couldbe so painful, but it was. Anyway, we only have to do that once more. When we got to our hotel there wasn't a bed ready, when we finally got our bed we slept all day.

We had spent two days in New York with my cousin Michelle, which was great. We got so much done in such a short space of time; Empire State Building, Ground Zero, a boat ride around Manhattan; and I loaded up on hot dogs. It's an amazing thing, I never eat hot dogs but when I get to New York I just can't get enough of them.

In Sydney the weather has been a bit weird; it's warm but very windy, they even had snow on the Snowy Mountains the other night - yes despite the name for htis time of year I think it's unusual for it to snow up there. The weather forecast for yesterday was 21 degrees, so I decided to wear shorts - I nearly froze to death with the winds. Of course it didn't help this headcold I managed to pick up from that germ infested plane. The weather's supposed to change tomorrow though - thank God, cos I really didn't pack for this kind of weather.

We've had a bit of a look around Sydney in the last couple of days, it's pretty amazing. We're staying on the North Shore, almost right next to the Harbour Bridge, we can get ferries into town instead of buses or trains and that's lovely. Next week we're planning to climb the Harbour Bridge, another reason we're greatful the winds are going to die down :-)
The area we're in is also great for restaurants and cafes, and we've found a fantastic Thai place.

At the weekend there was a Hunter Valley wine tasting festival in The Rocks and, of course, we took part. And of course we're going to go to Hunter Valley for more of the same.

Sydney is really easy going (I'm sure that's true for all of Australia), what's weird is we've never seen a rush hour. There is really no time of the day where the city is swamped with cars on their way in/out or people rushing home from work. This is an unusual thing for such a large city and it makes a refreshing change from Dublin.