Melbourne / Sydney

While we were waiting for the taxi to take us to the airport the heavens opened and it absolutely poured! The storms forecast for yesterday obviously arrived a day late. When we got to the airport we discovered that our flight to Sydney had been cancelled and we couldn't get another flight until 3.15pm, so we're putting in time at the moment. Rose and Mike are playing cards and Iain is deep in his book - almost at the end, so he can't put it down. I think Mike and Rose's travelling experiences have imbued them with patience and fortitude; hanging around for up to eleven hours, or more, for delayed flights can do that, apparently!

At least the weather has cleared up, which means that there's every chance that our flight won't be delayed. The joys of travel. We've heard that some of the flight delays and cancellations are due to the bad weather in Sydney, which doesn't sound too good. Apparently, there's been an eight-year drought in Melbourne and the rain we've had in the last couple of days is unheard of. Mike's blaming himself! Bush fires on his first visit to Melbourne, torrential rain on his second; he'll be getting a reputation!

We finally arrived in Sydney and into a huge storm. The rain was amazing! The taxi driver was a bad enough driver but visibility was so poor with the rain that it made things even worse! He physically jumped with every roll of thunder and flinched at the lightening; not very confidence-inspiring! But we made it to the apartment block in one piece.

The apartment is quite nice - a bit of a surfeit of beige (walls, carpet, furniture, kitchen units, bedding, etc, etc) - and, if we'd been here before Melbourne, we'd have thought it brilliant. Unfortunately, the Melbourne apartment was so lovely that we couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed with this one. The internet is also a lot more expensive here than in Melbourne and the air conditioning unit is broken, but it's in a very central position, so it's actually pretty good.

We basically dumped our things when we arrived and headed out to find somewhere to eat - the rain had finally stopped. We were sitting outside in the restaurant we'd decided on when it started spitting with rain. Thankfully, we decided to move inside because the storm came back with a vengeance and it poured down again, with more thunder and lightening. We had about a ten-minute walk back to the apartment from the restaurant and we were pretty wet when we got back. At least it was warm! And the food had been delicious. What is it with the portion sizes over here, though? They're huge!