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Published: December 28th 2010
We’ve finally arrived in Sydney after the panic over the weather, Oli’s 38.6 degree fever on Christmas day and 23 hours of flying! We were a bit apprehensive about flying with China Eastern Airlines after reading some rather unsavoury reviews about them, but we were very chuffed with the service, free pillows and blankets and loads of gorgeous Chinese food, including the best prawn curry we’ve ever eaten.
Before we could go through immigration in Shanghai we had to ditch our English food we had brought with us in case China Eastern’s food wasn’t up to scratch. As Oli cannot throw anything away, we sat and scoffed bananas, apples, yoghurts and nuts before going through immigration. Oli dumped our emergency chicken sandwiches which had gone a bit iffy in a bin, and then a security official fished them out and walked off with them! Shanghai airport was massive; we have a 17 hour stopover on the way back so we checked out the bullet train called the Maglev which we are going to ride on the way back and goes at speeds up to 431km!
When we arrived at Australia, we went to collect our luggage, it had been automatically transferred
from Heathrow and we were worried it wouldn’t make it but it turned up without incident.
It was cloudy when we left the airport which was disappointing, although still a nice 20 degrees. We got a taxi for $45 to Meriton Kent Street Apartments and checked in. Our room is lovely, on the 20th floor (out of about 80) all the amenities (including a washing machine!) and the building also has a free pool, gym, sauna and Jacuzzi. We headed out soon after we got there to Coles to get some supplies, food prices were a bit of a shock, most things were double the prices of England, although we did find a Kg of massive raw prawns for £10!
Headed back to the apartment and went a bit downhill from here, as we ended up crashing out and falling asleep for 5 hours. We woke up around 9 and headed out to see the Opera House and bridge, which was a 20 minute walk away from the apartments. The bridge was smaller than we had envisioned but the Opera House was humungous. Took the obligatory photographs then went to a Guylian chocolate cafe with a great view of the
bridge for Belgian waffles with ice cream, hot chocolate for me and a Guylian liquor shake for Oli.
Back at the hotel now, our sleep pattern is a bit off as its 2am and we’re wide awake but hopefully we’ll get some sleep now before a busy day tomorrow.
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Nikki
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Happy Holidays
Looks like your having a wonderful time already, glad to see you arrived ok. Take care of yourselves. See you soon xx