We arrived safely in Sydney at 6:20 am Monday, which would have been about 12:30 pm Sunday to our friends back at home in the US... I think. This date line math is so confusing... but not as confused as our internal clocks. We arrived back in the future to find it a rainy and somewhat cold winter day. Seems like such a short trip from the summer we left on Saturday at 8:00 am in Oak Harbor... or was it Sunday? Whatever...
Bob and Cheryl Andrews (Becky's sister) have a total immersion way of dealing with the jet-lag-time-change-date-line personal "clock" crisis. After about 30 hours of combined travel - with a few hours of semi-restful sleep on the plane - they picked us up at the Sydney airport early in the morning and kept us up and going the rest of the day! Of course, they had to get up pretty early so they saved eating breakfast until retrieving us. Then, it was off to Circular Quay in downtown Sydney and a walk from roughly the Opera House around that particular harbor - with views of the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge - into an area called The Rocks, the location of the original settlement of people - mostly convicts (many poor) and a company of British soldiers sent to oversee them. There we found a quaint coffee shop for a bite of breakfast and a couple of hour's walk through the area learning more of the early history of the establishment of what is now the nation of Australia. Bob is a fount of information about his homeland.
About noon we arrived back at the Opera House. The cold and grey damp skies were yielding to sunshine and a welcome warmth that dried the streets and seats of the outdoor cafes opening for business. Becky and I scored a couple tickets to a Thursday evening performance of a Broadway singer, Idina Menzel, performing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra... box seats with a pretty good view, too! We'll be staying Thursday and Friday night in a nice hotel in nearby Darling Harbor.
But now it is off to Bob and Cheryl's home with a nice lunch and some more local shopping on the way.
Following a delicious dinner of homemade soup we enjoyed a noisy evening of conversation with nieces Becky and Marcie (with husband Geoff arriving late from parent conferences - yes, he's a teacher, too) and adorable and energetic grand-niece, Camilla. You'll have an opportunity to "meet" all these people in the pictures of our adventures, I'm sure.
It was a great first day in country, albeit interspersed with nodding off in the back seat of Bob's car as he was giving commentary on the lovely and interesting countryside on the way to their home. We finally "crashed" about 9:00 pm and slept soundly for the next ten hours!
Becky (the tired looking one), Cheryl and Bob... breakfast at a coffee shop in The Rocks area.
Yes, we are really here, Dor... uh... er... Becky!
No comments:
Post a Comment