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Our flight to Sydney went really well. We left out of LAX about 15-20 minutes late and ended up arriving in Sydney a few minutes late as a result, around 7:45am. We cleared immigration and customs with no problems and right outside of the arrivals gate was a Vodafone shop where we bought our prepaid SIM cards. The prepaid plans have changed a bit since we left Germany and data is now included since so many people have smart phones. I think my little pink Nokia phone will have to be retired and make room for a Droid after this.

We took the train from the airport to Sydney Central Station, which is only a few blocks walking distance from our hotel. We stayed at The Great Southern Hotel. It's in an older building and seems to be, if not IN Chinatown, then right on the edge of it. It's in the Central Business District so it's right in the middle of everything. By the time we got to the hotel is was about 9:30am and, miracle of miracles, the hotel had our room ready! We had every intention of taking a shower and heading right back out but the second I flopped on the bed it was all over. All I wanted was a nap where I wasn't sitting up or scrunched up in a ball. We napped until about 1:00pm and then showered and headed out.

We walked down George Street, the street that our hotel is on and that runs right into Circular Quay where the Sydney Opera House is. It's a bit of a hike, made even longer by the fact that we kept stopping or veering off onto side streets that looked interesting. Once we got down to the Quay I got some gelato (yes, Sydney is now on the top 10 of my favorite places JUST because of the availability of gelato lol) and we took tons of pictures of the water and the opera house. It was a beautiful day...gorgeous blue skies and it was pretty warm considering that this is barely the beginning of spring down here right now.

My friend Meg lives in Sydney and she came to meet up with us and to find some dinner. Meg was my friend Ali's friend from school and I met her when Ali and I did our trip to Scotland years ago and then Meg came to visit us when we very first moved to Germany but that was in 2007 and I haven't seen her since. She met up with us down by the water and we headed out to find someplace to eat and catch up. We started out at a Bavarian restaurant in the Rocks, which is where the original settlement was in Sydney, run by actual Germans (why do we always end up at German restaurants??) and started out just getting pretzels and something to drink. After eating some truly terrible pretzels and listening to the Germans in lederhosen sing we ended up at the new eatery in the new shopping area nearby and had some gourmet pizza. I have no idea what was on mine besides chicken but it was fantastic :)

I would love to say that after our nap we stayed out and explored longer but by about 8:30 Matt was about done and I was right on his heels so we made plans to meet up with Meg the next day up at the beach and headed back to the hotel for a nice long sleep.

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