He says: After a ten hour flight on Air China, we arrived in Sydney. Flying into the airport we had an awesome birdseye view of Sydney harbour and the Opera House. With no language barrier, this country has been a breeze so far. I half expected to see statues of Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin everywhere, but so far I've been out of luck.
We did a hoho (hop-on, hop-off bus tour for the uninitiated) today and we both remarked how Sydney could really be any number of Canadian or US cities. Not that it doesn't have it's own unique flare, but the level of comfort is definitely noticeable when compared to how different Tokyo and Shanghai were.
We went to lunch at Darling Harbour, which is sort of like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, but without the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Jet lag has definitely been an issue on the trip and after lunch I fell asleep on a park bench. It was remarkably comfortable. After running on almost no sleep for three days, the bench felt like a Simmons pillow-top mattress.
After walking around the harbour for a few hours, we met up with an old friend of Shauna's named Bronwyn who she hadn't seen in 15 years. It was amazing to see that despite how much time had passed since they last saw each other (she's from Australia and did an exchange in Ottawa during high school), how easily they picked up where they left off. Bronwyn took us to a trendy suburb area of Sydney that had some cool shops and we all shared some laughs on a rooftop patio before heading to the airport to catch our flight to Perth.