Catching up with family in Sydney

We have spent the past 3 nights in a suburb of Sydney called West Ryde. We stayed in a fairly cheerless Comfort Inn on a pretty busy road but it was cheap so we made do.

My cousin Sara, her husband Matt and their unbelievably cute 2 year old, Hannah (and I'm not just saying that because I know they'll be reading) met us on the Sunday morning. I'll tell you a little about Sara as I think it's a nice story how she came to be in Aus. A few years ago she decided to do the travelling thing and her first stop was Australia, she had applied for working visas for Australia and NZ with the full intention of working in NZ for a while then continuing on to Fiji then doing the North America thing on the way home. She made it as far as Fiji then returned to Australia as she had met Matt, I believe within the first few weeks of her arrival in Australia. She hasn't lived in the UK since. We visited her and Matt on our last, less budget conscious trip, to Australia (when we stayed in a top notch gaff in the Rocks area of the city) so we had to meet up again, even if it was just for the day. We had a lovely morning at a bay East of Sydney then we spent the afternoon at their house; Sara and I took an hour or so out to head for the shopping mall and enjoy a lovely cup of tea. We hadn't seen Hannah since her christening in the UK over a year ago. Quite strangely, while in the car, she must've asked us where her mum and dad were at least 300 times perhaps her way of saying, 'look you two strange dudes, you may be impinging in my back seat space here, without my consent may I add, but mum and dad are just there in the front and I'll keep reminding you of that fact by persistently asking you where they are, ok, so no funny business and we'll all get along just great…' Seriously though, she was extremely smiley and giggly all day; really lovely.

Yesterday we took the bus into the city. We really loved Sydney last time and have already seen most of the sights which is why there aren't too many photos but we wandered around the Rocks area and took in the iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge again.

We are leaving Australia on the 17th March for Singapore. We had hoped to get flights from Singapore to Delhi to spend 4 or 5 weeks in India before finally heading back to the UK. We found the Indian visa service in Sydney and waited for a good 2 hours before we were seen; it takes 5-14 days to process an Indian visa which is no good for us, obviously, as we're not in Sydney for that long. We were told that the consulate in Melbourne may be quicker, but to cut a long story short, it's turning out to be more hassle than it's worth so unfortunately we're skipping India. We'll have to do that as our next holiday or something. So, we are now looking at options for the final weeks of our trip and are considering returning to Thailand, northern Thailand in particular, then into Laos. Whatever we do it looks as though we'll be home mid-April. Eeeeek!!!

Anyway, this morning we checked out and spent the day just hanging around before we headed into the city again, to Central Station where we caught the 20:40 overnight train to Melbourne.