Onward!

Today we woke up at 6 am for our flight to......Sydney! With no surprises at the airport (and no more thrown away goodies - hooray!) our flight left pretty much on time around 9:30. On our flight, we just so happened to be surrounded by a number of Americans - a couple from Louisville, another couple from Boston, a couple from Dallas, and a couple from Brooklyn! We were sitting in a three-seater next to the guy from Louisville and having a lovely chat when the couple in front of us turned around and said "Did you guys do the whole quit your jobs to travel the world thing, too?" Turns out they are from Brooklyn and had done the same to travel for 7 months, currently in month 5 of their journey! Such a small world! When we got off the flight we exchanged phone numbers and emails with our new friends, Becca and Joe, and said we'd try to meet up at some point in the next few days since we are all in Sydney til March 2nd! We then proceeded to travel with them in a shared taxi to our AirBnb destination, where they got out to find accommodations for the night, and we went off to meet our hosts!

We were greeted at our AirBnb by Damien and Alicia who welcomed us and gave us a tour of the space where we will be sleeping in........ bunk beds. Oy. Don't worry, we knew it when we booked it. While not ideal, it was also the cheapest place we could find in a nice location in Sydney. So bunk beds it is! Alicia went off to work and we hung out with Damien for a bit before heading out to explore the Redfern area of Sydney where we are staying. We wandered from the apartment to the local bookstore, GlebeBooks, to look for a a guidebook on New Zealand (ya know, since we know nothing about it and don't have a book on it anddddd will be exploring it by camper van in the next few days for two weeks!) After finding a zillion books on New Zealand we finally settled on one and after a quick stop at the apartment, we headed out to visit the world famous Sydney Opera House!

We then took the metro to Circular Quay. The LIRR in New York could take a few notes from their book because....

The metro seats can flip back and forth! So you can change the seat arrangements whenever you want! WHAAAAATTTTTTT? Amazing. That said, the price is roughly the same as the subway in New York ($4 New Zealand dollars (about $3 USD) to $2.75 US for the NYC subway (whereas the LIRR is like $16 one way!)) so no excuses LIRR!

From there we walked outside to a beautiful view of the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House!!

Once at the Opera House we headed down to the Opera Bar which overlooks Sydney Harbor for a few drinks.

 

And while we were looking out over the harbor what did we see?? A Royal Caribbean cruise!

We hung out at the Opera Bar for a while before walking around the area and grabbing dinner at the Quay Bar and then taking the metro back to our apartment for some GLORIOUSLY fast internet and blog updating! Amazing!

Excited about exploring the city tomorrow :)

Jess' highlight of the day: drinks at the Opera Bar
Jon's highlight of the day: going to the harbor