Arrived in Sydney yesterday afternoon and decided to take the airport shuttle to Kings Cross, the area in Sydney where Laura lives, and who is kindly sharing her flat with us for the next week. Firstly, taking the shuttle was a bad idea but as we landed at 5 pm we were told that a taxi would get caught up in rush hour and take much longer than usual. The shuttle bus took over two hours! However, we did see a lot of Sydney on the way as ours was the last drop off....
Laura is a good friend of Tom's from Sittingbourne who we have known for about 12 years. She lives on the 13th floor of a 27 storey block with lovely views over the city.
Today we did the whole tourist bit and walked through the beautiful botanical gardens ( where I have never seen so many joggers, it exhausted me just trying to avoid getting mown down) to view the Opera house and Harbour bridge. Watched groups of people doing the bridge walk and decided against it! It looks a long way up and hard work. Circular Quay, the embarkation point between the bridge and the opera house for ferries and harbour cruise boats is constantly busy and the boats all move across and around the harbour at great speeds. We negotiated the train system fairly successfully to return to Kings Cross to quickly change before heading back to the Opera House bar to meet a former work colleague of David's who moved to Australia some 40 years ago! John and his Australian wife, Yvonne ( who is a direct descendant of transported convicts) both met us and we had a good evening getting to know each other over an Italian meal.