[Scott] We’ve arrived in Sydney, Australia! We woke up at 3:00am this morning to get us to the airport in plenty of time for our 6:30am flight from Auckland to Sydney. We had just a short shuttle ride to the airport in Auckland from our Kiwi Motel. We arrived at our gate with plenty of time to spare, converted our remaining NZ cash to AUS cash, and got some breakfast. I slept for most of the three hour flight, while Stef watched the movie “Ladder 49” with John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix. We were both pretty exhausted after only a few hours sleep last night since we were up until midnight doing laundry. At 10am, we arrived at our hotel which is located in downtown Sydney just a few blocks south of Hyde Park. We’ll be staying here three nights before catching a flight to Melbourne, and we’re pleased with the location. They said the room wouldn’t be ready until after 2pm, so we walked through Hyde Park and then rode the subway down to Circular Quay and walked around taking in the views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House – quite a structure that we hope to get a tour of before we leave. It’s definitely much faster paced than Auckland, but compared to US cities it’s a really easy going city for its size. The temperature in the low 80s here is definitely warmer than anything we had in NZ, but it is overcast today. We headed back to the hotel around 2pm to catch up on our rest. Our hotel room is pretty nice – with living room, bedroom, and a kitchen – very spacious for a city hotel room. Stef says it’s like a palace compared to our campervan! We were exhausted so we crashed for two or three hours and caught up on our sleep, and then headed over toward the Surrey Hills neighborhood to hunt down the Thai Restaurant that our travel book claimed was the best in the city. He wasn’t joking! This was by far the best Thai food either of us ever had. If you’re ever in Sydney, go to Apree’s (also known as Prasit’s) and order the Pad Seafood. Fantastic food and great service! Everybody in the restaurant was drinking wine, but they hadn’t given us a wine list. Turned out that it was a BYO restaurant, and you just pay a small corkage fee, which is apparently fairly common here. We did a quick lookup on the tipping practices in our travel book (in the restaurant!), after being in NZ where there is no tipping, and found out that 10% is customary in Australia. On the way back from the restaurant we stopped in a convenience store to pickup something for breakfast. We bought a box of cereal and a half gallon of milk for $16! I don’t think we’ll be shopping there anymore. After recovering from the sticker shock, we called it a night.
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