We arrived about 10/ 10.30 am, the flight was good but I didn't really sleep much on it. Watched Safe Haven and watched a good number of friends episodes. After a thorough check through customs and the cutest sniffer dog we had to kill a bit of time in Sydney airport as we couldn't check in to our hotel until 12 so we logged onto the wifi and grabbed a coffee (a small coffee as prices were ridiculously expensive!). Big shock for us at the Aussie prices after travelling SE Asia! 1 small bottle of water costed 5/6 AUD!
Grabbed a taxi as soon as we could which dropped us to the door of our hotel, the ibis budget. Our first impressions of Sydney were good, nice feel to it and first time everything's been in English! Drove past a nice river and park area, an ikea and Amy spotted Canterbury road, almost felt like home.
The hotel was nice right next to a mcdonalds and KFC which I quite proudly didn't make use of. The bed was very comfortable, just what I needed, I fell asleep for a power nap while Amy grabbed a shower. After a 20 min snooze we headed out in search of cheaper water and to scope out the area in the short time we were stopping in Sydney for. Found our way to the very nice green park area by the river, there were these birds everywhere with very long hooked beaks that looked like they should belong in the zoo or Alice in Wonderland. I went over to ask a group sat by the river if they knew the name of the birds.. They didn't but they invited us to join them for a BBQ lunch! It was the most delicious food and they were lovely people to sit and talk to, they'd moved over to Australia from Morocco. They offered us a number of very big prawns from the barbie, snapper fish which was delicious, and very tasty succulent salmon all in a wrap with salad and a Moroccan dressing. Amy wasn't sure at first especially at the big fish cooking on the BBQ in its entirety but she peeled her first prawn somewhat successfully! They also shared mango juice, charred and salted corn on the cob, and a really nice sweet Moroccan tea. We chatted with the family for near on 3 hours about Morocco, the daughter told us all about school and the differences to school and they were very interested in our travels in Africa. It was a really lovely afternoon, very tasty (free) food under the sunshine of Sydney but with a nice cooling breeze in contrast to SE Asia! On the way back we grabbed water and an Icecream from a service station and again I was offered free tasty food! Could get used to this! The guy at the checkout counter wanted to know all about where we were from and offered us a slice of pizza! We stopped and ate our icecreams on a grass bank on the walk back, I had a long hard scout around for any horrible looking spiders! Again, a cyclist pulled up and sat and chatted to us, this just doesn't happen in the uk! Early to bed that night ready for our 3 o'clock check in the next morning, think I actually crashed out about 7.30.