Sydney 2013

It's Sunday morning Sept 8th, and we've been in Sydney one full day now. We haven't been back here in 2½ years and I'd forgotten how long the plane ride feels. We left home and flew to San Francisco where we camped out in the United Club where Janet managed to nap during the 3½ hour wait between planes. At 10 pm we began boarding for the flight to Sydney. Jan & I had exit row seats that at least allowed us to stretch our legs out during the long flight, but trying to sleep was more difficult than I remembered. I had stayed awake on the flight to San Francisco and during the layover in hopes of becoming tired enough to sleep easily on the flight to Sydney, but it didn't help much. Janet's plan to sleep whenever you can seems to be the better one.

We landed in Sydney about 6:30 am and cleared customs and border control. Australia has restrictions on bringing food into the country and we had packed some Isagenix bars and a few other snacks in our bags so we declared that we had food on the customs form. That meant we had to stand in a 2nd line after customs and wait while a dog sniffed our bags. We were cleared without a problem, but we did witness one passenger who was taken from the line for closer inspection of his bags.

At the car rental counter they offered us a free GPS since the car we were getting had a smaller trunk than the one I requested. I usually prefer not to use GPS if I already know the route I need to take, but we turned it on anyway. The GPS took us the long way to the hotel because the previous user had it set to avoid toll roads.

We checked in at the Shangri-la and they already had a room ready for us even though it was still early in the morning. They also had fulfilled our request for a room on the club floor. We love this place.

We had breakfast in the Horizon club. The weather was beautiful so after breakfast we went out for a walk around the Rocks area where a weekend market was going on. We continued around the Quay and over by the Opera House before returning to the hotel for a nap we both needed to help adjust to the time change.