Starting from the beginning, we left San Francisco for Sydney very late on Saturday January 22ond 2011. I was thinking this was going to be the longest flight ever (13,5 hours) having never flown for so long before, but ended up sleeping for at least six hours, so it didn’t feel that bad at all. I guess that everything we did in the last 3 weeks before leaving was catching up with me. Packed up and emptied our house in 4 days (while sick as a dog with the worst cold) thank god with a lot of help from our son!! Drove to Raleigh to see our daughter and rest for a day which was great! Then drive like crazy cross country to make it to San Diego in time for one of my best friend’s 50th birthday bash! And then up to Northern California for the last week visiting family and rearranging our storage shed.

We thought we could ship some stuff by boat (ground) from the post office, but learned that they only ship by air now a days! Super expensive!! So home and repack again and leave more stuff behind! We repacked and repacked! Still ended up at the airport with overweight and one bag too many. $400 later, we were on the way.

We arrived in Sydney on an early Monday morning to a very busy airport. Lots and lots of people. Long lines to everything, but mainly the customs. Australia is very particular with what you can bring in. I guess it makes sense since they grow and produce pretty much everything you see and eat and want to make sure you don’t bring anything that can cause any problems. Telling from the amount of families with lots of luggage and boxes and papers in their passports, the immigration to Australia is still very much alive. Our Taxi driver (that was another very long line) told us that this is how every morning is at the airport up till 2pm.

Sydney looked pretty much as I had expected it to . It’s very pretty right up there with Stockholm and San Francisco. We arrived during a heat wave, and also during one of Australia’s biggest celebrations: Australia Day celebrated on January 26. This meant that there were a lot of people in town. We did some serious walking around visiting the sites you have to, the Opera House , Darling Harbor and The Fish Market (my favorite) . Ate some delicious meals and went to bed pretty early changing hours. We were staying at a hotel next to Hyde Park, which kind of turns into Gotham City after dark. Walking home through the park at night these huge bats fly around right above your head. They are called Flying-foxes. They are large bats, weighing up to 1 kg, with a wing span which may exceed one meter!! They sleep during the day and feed on pollen, nectar and fruit at night. Here is the link to flying-foxes. That was pretty scary actually not being used to it.  Turns out they live at the Botanical Garden located right next to the park. Australia Day was also our day to leave Sydney by train making our way to Adelaide. We took a taxi from the hotel to the train station and had a very colorful ride there. Our taxi driver was unhappy with the operator that booked him for this short 10 minute drive from our hotel to the train station and kept on cursing at her, and other drivers the whole way. Anyway arriving at the train station we got the most amazing help and assistants from the people working there on this very very hot and humid Australia Day!