I Come From a Land Down Under!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Today we woke up at 6:30 am to see the sunrise at Bronte Beach which was quite the effort seeing as we didn’t actually make it to bed until 4:30am (yes....only 2 hours earlier). We got our a little later than we had hoped, so an not to miss all the sunrise, we ran to the beach. When we got there it was gorgeous! The kind of thing that makes you very grateful you are in a position that you get to experience it. Really, I am so lucky to get to be here, even if it is costing a fortune!

Wen we made it back we were all exhausted and fell back asleep till 12, which was definitely not planned because we had quite the day planned before we went to the airport. To no surprise, we were barely able to fit any of it into our day. We did make French Toast and then we just packed and made our way to the airport, stopping along the way to try some gozleme at Kings Cross. (Gozleme is a turkish crepe-like things with cheese and spinach that we had heard all about and hadn’t gotten a chance to try until now).

We took the train to the airport and when we got off and swiped through our passes we discovered that the airport link is privately owned, so although our passes worked to get on the train, as long as you got off on one of the airport stops, you were required to have an additional $10 ticket. This put a damper on things because had we known we would’ve taken a bus that would’ve been free with our tickets.

It was pretty crazy going though security here in Australia because it is a lot more lax than what we were expecting. We had paid for a discount ticket that didn’t allow for any checked luggage, which made things interesting as we had to pack for a 10 day adventure in two places, one with a warmer climate, and the other colder. So we decided to split the cost and share an extra duffle bag to check.

When we went to check it, it ended up costing more than they had quoted on the phone, and because it wasn’t very large the attendant told us to just nonchalantly carry it through and we should have no problem. I don’t think she realized that we all had big carry-ons and big purses as well so, adding an extra bag was quite the stretch. While we were in the security line we realized that we had all of our liquid beauty products that we’d probably have to throw out because we didn’t check a bag, but to our surprise we were never even questioned about it. No one even ever tried to check our ID’s to see if we were the correct person boarding the plane. So there we were with our discount travel tickets, and like 6 pretty good sized bags, really it was pretty humorous.

We made it on the plane with only a slight glance from one of the attendants acknowledging she noticed all of our hand luggage, and the flight was only a little under 2 hours, so not bad for sure. Things would have run smoothly from there, except about 20 minutes before we landed my ears started killing me. It was literally so painful, one point I really thought something was seriously wrong, luckily we landed and my ears were still attached, and I just spent the night with very limited hearing. We picked up our rental car and were slightly nervous to embark on the challenge of driving on the wrong side of the road. Don’t worry though, Jayne took charge and performed valiantly.

Our first car! We were so happy to have a car and not have to deal with public transport for a while!

We, after only getting off course a few times, found the house thanks to our mad map reading skills. It was a very beautiful house owned by Gary and Pauline Scallan, who were related to Jayne’s soccer coach from high school and they were great! We didn’t do much that night, just introduced ourselves and tried to pln out our next days adventures, and then made our way to bed.