She says: We had an amazing day in Sydney. We arrived to a sunny, bright, warm winter day. I say "warm" in relative terms. It was warm for their winter, about 10-15 degrees. There was no humidity. It was such a welcome relief.

Sydney feels like so many places we've been in the US and Canada and is super easy to get around. We were lucky and were able to check in our large bags (first time we've had to on the trip, as we've been able to carry them on to our business class flights, but the next one is economy - how the mighty have fallen) and leave our small ones in storage.

We took the train into town and stopped only to pick up a Club Sandwich for Matt and then onto the HOHO. Matt was a happy boy eating "real food" without any strange ingredients thrown in.

The people are friendly and the city feels so familiar it's hard to believe we're half a world away.

This is the third day in a row we're in a third major world city. Tokyo two days ago, Shanghai yesterday, Sydney today. Ye gads. Although we got some rest on the plane, the jet lag and travel was really catching up to us at this point and we were both finding ourself getting hilariously irritated at the smallest things.

One of the best parts of our day was when we found a vacant bench at busy Darling Harbour and lay down. Matt closed his eyes, but in order to keep us both awake, I invented a game. We went through the alphabet, coming up with a hilarious story from the trip for each letter of the alphabet. In only 8 days so far, it was no problem to get through all 26 letters.

By far, the greatest part of the day, though, came shortly after 3:40 p.m. right in front of the Sydney Aquarium. Fifteen years ago, in grade 10, a lovely Aussie gal came to Ottawa and stayed with a classmate for three months. Bronwyn Gasteen and I became fast friends and spent many school nights having sleep overs (it was allowed because she was an exchange student) and my heart was broken when she had to go home. In the days before facebook, we were great pen pals for years. We lost touch until facebook and then checked up on each other now and then. When we started planning the trip, we found that we had the tiniest overlap of time, as her hubby is from France and they are spending time with his family this summer. We literally had only a few hours to spend together.

Fifteen years melted away in moments and we had an amazing catch up. I hope we're not 45 years old the next time we see each other. We even floated the idea of moving to San Fran, as it's a totally amazing city that all four of us (Bronwyn and her hubby, Matt and I) are all interested in!

I was totally overwhelmed with emotion (and, to be honest, exhaustion) after we said goodbye and found myself in tears at the airport. Poor Matt was trying to comfort me and I couldn't quite say what was wrong.

It was SO great to have even a speck of time with an old friend and rekindle such a special friendship.

Then, before we knew it, we were back up in the air.