Left work early. Stu came and picked me up and we came home and finished packing. And fed fish. And watered plants. And cleaned the kitchen. And scrawled down what all the place markers are on all the maps we printed out.
Called for a taxi (since we were completely unorganised and couldn't find anyone to give us a lift.. $55 including tip later.. Oops :/ ). Was a bit stressed when at 45 minutes before final check-in time it still hadn't arrived. But it came shortly after and we got to the airport with heaps of time to spare. Even had time to go into the Qantas club (Stu's a member) and had a free champagne and some nibblies. Saw our plane pull up (Lorikeet) but didn't know it was going to be ours so didn't actually photograph it, and you can't see it from it the terminal so missed out altogether.. Oops.
Sunset from the plane
The flight was about ten minutes late leaving (they couldn't count us - they kept counting 97 on their clicky thing but they knew they had only 87, they did this three time before going back to the old-fashioned way of manual counting ;) ) so went from sunset to dusk and completely impossible to take any photos in quick succession. Could see the Federal Highway and the Hume Highway and the lights of Goulburn before it got too cloudy to see anything.
Shortly after take off they brought round a "light dinner" of chicken rolls (vegetarian roll for Stu) and I had a glass of wine. But just as they finished serving they began the descent and it was time for them to clean up heh. So I was still eating almost up until landing time :)
We came in around western Sydney and around from the north. We were on the wrong side of the plane to see the city but the rest of the lights were very pretty.
Since we were right up the back of the plane we didn't have much to do after landing except watch them unload the bags off the plane. My bag was the first off! Heh. We saw Stu's and Natto's too and we saw them *throw* Natto's bag onto the trolley. But the dude waved at us watching him so I guess that's ok ;)
Last off the plane and meandered all the way down from the furthest terminal. And arrived just as our bags were coming out. Win! So got our bags and walked down to the Formule 1 hotel.
Great Heineken ad at the entrance to Sydney airport
Dumped our bags and walked straight across the parking lot to Krispy Kreme for dessert. Was quite disappointed that the machine wasn't running :( But the donuts were yumm.
Krispy Kreme was just across the carpark from our hotel!
Natto and Andrew at Krispy Kreme
And then finally back up to our room to chat for a while. The hotel is shoe-boxed sized with a double bed and bunks. Andrew's laptop is bigger than the tv! No actual shower recess so the bathroom is going to get messy and no hand towel. But for what we need it for (a few hours sleep) it's fine.
Our shoebox-sized room at the Formule 1 Hotel - probably the most
cramped room of the trip and it was in Australia!
Finally made it to bed around 11:15. Up at stoopid o'clock tomorrow - 5am eeep!!
More photos from Day 0
Photos taken by me: 50
Missy
Well, I guess you showed them! "Can't be shared on a blog." HAH! Well done! ;-)