First day in Sydney, Australia

Good thing we happened to arrive at the Bali airport last night about four hours before our flight departed for Sydney, since we were in for a surprise. When we tried to check in we hit a snag. It didn't occur to us that we would need visas in advance to enter the country, but it turns out all foreigners need them. It was a team effort though to solve the problem. John and Elizabeth helped search for a WIFI site and outlets to get our devices charged, and we scrambled over the next couple of hours to get our visas issued on-line. What a pain but we made our flight!

We then took the red eye flight overnight to Sydney. John and Elizabeth were both looking forward to pulling an all-nighter to get in some quality movie watching time on the plane. Catheleen and I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep but the kids did manage to stay up for the most part. But everything has a cost, and they did end up crashing later in the day in Sydney.

We're staying downtown near the Sydney harbour. Again we're staying at a apartment we rented from the AirBnB web site. We're finding we're getting better value using this method than booking regular hotels, since he AirBnB places are usually more spacious and better priced.

Today we didn't venture too far from home. Just by walking around I felt more at home than I have in a while, more relaxed. The weather was cool today, a nice change from the previous three months. Coming from Indonesia, I appreciated everything we've been missing lately - wide sidewalks, sandwich shops, good coffee to go, grocery stores, an English speaking population. I think my favourite difference today was just being another person on the street making my way around town. Very nice.

In the afternoon John and I went down the street to see what we could see. John was thrilled to spot the three-story Apple Store, and he was happy to show me the new features on the latest iPhone. We also found a really good three member band playing on the street called CuzN - two guitarists and one violinist. They were selling their CDs between songs, and somehow I felt compelled to buy one too. I don't think I've ever bought music from a street performer, but there's a first time for everything.

Later Catheleen, Elizabeth and I took a walk to the harbour to see the iconic Sydney Opera House and harbour bridge. It was great to see the opera house from different angles as we walked along the harbour and under the bridge. The opera house with its overlapping shells looked good from all angles. We went again at dusk, and it was interesting to see how the building lit up as night fell. The harbour bridge was beautiful to see as well, and we could see people walking the top of the bridge.

Here's Elizabeth and I at the harbour front. It's just water in Elizabeth's Starbucks cup by the way, in case you're wondering if she's picked up a venti coffee habit lately.