Euuurgghhh...alarm went off at 5.15am! That's 4 hours sleep!

Threw our clothes on, checked out and headed to the subway station for the first train at 6am. We had to make 3 changes to get to the airport, and it was surprisingly quite busy that early in the morning. Still only took us about 45 minutes to get there though.

We arrived to find that our flight had been delayed 30 minutes, which isn't bad considering the chaos in the UK at the moment. We later found out that the delay was because of a delay with the London to Singapore flight.

We checked in and then went to get some breakfast. Nowhere did normal breakfast!!! Aaaarrrgghh! There wasn't even a McDonalds in the Terminal departure area, only before check-in. Therese got this croissant with egg in the middle from Burger King - awful.

Our plane to Sydney was one of the brand new fully double decked airplanes, the A380. It can seat up to 800 people! The flight was part of our round-the-world ticket and was with Qantas. We boarded at about 9.55am and got seated in the nice new cabins. Good legroom and comfortable seats with a huge screen on the back of the seat in front. There was loads of TV programmes and films to choose from which was good for our 8 hour flight. The food was pretty good although Therese wasn't happy with her choice of lamb casserole or chicken curry. I had lamb and it was nice! Therese went for the curry but the chicken was leg meat! We got a mini toblerone with our meal too - must be Christmas. Then a bit later they came around with hot chocolate. Then later we got Ice-creams.
I was so tired but managed to watch Rain Man for the first time. Pretty good film. Therese watched Made in Dagenham which she said was good. I managed to get about an hours sleep in then we both watched Salt, which is a fairly good film. We got more food in the middle of that. Cheese, lettuce and Branston Pickle sandwich!! Oh, first time we've had Branston in a while! Some fruit and a biscuit too, so nicely filled up.

Apart from hitting turbulence a couple of times and announcements over the PA system way too many times, it was a decent flight with Qantas (but not as good as BA), and we finally landed at about 9.30pm. We're now 12 hours ahead of the UK. And we're now in Sydney!

Took a while to get through customs etc, they're VERY keen on no food being brought into the country.

We didn't know how we were actually getting to the hostel or exactly where it was on a map really. We knew the train costs $15 but didn't even really know where to get off. Fortunately, just as we walked out the terminal, there was a guy asking if we wanted to get a mini bus direct to the hostel for $15 (£7.50) each, so we did that. That's an expensive start! It was cold when we walked outside too. We're used to high humidity on a night, but the air was cold. It was still about 20 degrees though.
We had nice views on the drive into the city centre, crossing a couple of bridges and seeing Cockle Bay and lots of lit up office buildings.

We pulled up at our hostel for the next 2 weeks, called Base. We'd already booked this back in March because we knew it would be busy for Christmas and New Year. Cost us £85 a night!!! Absolutely ridiculous, and it wasn't even one of the top rated places to stay!
Anyway we got checked in and got to our room to find no en-suite! We were sure we had booked a double room with en-suite, but didn't have a print out of our booking confirmation. So we went and checked on the Internet...nope, we just booked a private room with shared bathroom! Gutted. We were looking forward to getting to Sydney and having a home for 2 weeks and our own private space! At least the shared bathrooms are actually pretty clean and modern.

It was nearly midnight by the time we got sorted in our room. It's been a very long day.