Random Ramblings

The Personal Blog of Lori Hogan

What Day Is It??? How Did I Get Halfway Around the World? Where's the Monorail Station?

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](http://www.lorihogan.com/uploaded_images/100_1710-713860.JPG) Here, it is Sunday, 8:30pm. In Newfoundland, it’s about 8:00am Sunday morning. The Easter Bunny hit here first, and said to say hi. :) I’m getting used to the time difference. I think the plane ride is disorienting enough to put you out of whatever time zone you thought you were in. But I digress a bit…

So, we got here in good shape and with no big difficulties. We had about a billion connections (okay, only four… but that’s a lot!!). All our flights were on time and rather straight forward. We got the emergency exit row almost all the way, so that means extra legroom for Brian (and me, but I don’t really use it up). Thought our luggage wasn’t going to make it with us (see comment on number of connections), and we did have a wait in Vancouver on our bags (where we had to pick it up to get through US Customs… the plane was landing in Honolulu, so because our lugggage was on the plane it needed to go through US Customs too), but just when I had given up hope that the bags were with us they rolled up the conveyor belt and onto the luggage carousel. So the moral of the story is that I should have given up hope earlier, then we would have had more time to wait inside Security.

Surprisingly, it was easy for both Brian and I to sleep on the plane, and we even got to step out in Hawaii - the 25 degrees night air was nice (they have an “open air” airport, meaning there are no windows in places, you’re basically outdoors) but the luggage stayed in the plane. We got in here (Sydney) around 6:30 am (so… about 6pm Saturday in Newfoundland), went through Customs and Quarentine no problem (they use beagles to do the searching - they are cute little working dogs!). Got a little shuttle bus with a nice but crazy-a$$ driver, who got us here safe and sound by about 8:30am. Then we waited in the lounge area for 3 hrs while our room was readied. The place we are staying for the next three nights, the Railway Square YHA, is nice - room is very basic but has all that we need and is comfy. There is a large lounge/lobby area, a kitchen for storing and cooking your own food (eating out is expensive here!), a small cafe to buy coffee and toast for a reasonable price, among other things. Part of the hostel is in an old railway building.

We spent our waking hours today touring Darling Harbour and Chinatown, both a very short walk away from the hostel. In the same area is the largest indoor market I have ever seen… tons of stalls with fruits and veggies, clothing, jewellry, makeup, souvenirs, food… just about everything. Over in Darling Harbour we found some acrobats and clowns (which made me think of Nikki, if she reads this :P ), a gorgeous Chinese Garden we have to re-visit, the Maritime Museum which has a submarine you can go on, a monorail (it’s not just for Ogdenville anymore!) that we have to go on, and more. Lots to see and do, and lots of pics will be taken, but not today. After all that we came back to the hostel, napped and grabbed some McD’s (hey, familiarity is good sometyimes, but man does the ketchup suck). Now I’m emailing, blogging and gonna hit the hay (they have nice matresses here, BTW… not made of hay). Later!

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