Feb 5-6

On the morning of the 5th, I took a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. From this bridge, you can get great views of the city and the Sydney Opera House. Some of the views are below....

Next, I had lunch at a Spanish restaurant and then headed off to check into my first hostel! I booked myself in an 8 person dorm room and made my way upstairs to meet my roommates. I am new to this hostel thing, so I wasn't sure what to expect. As I approached my door, I heard a girl giggling inside. I thought this was interesting because I had assumed they separated the guys and girls into different rooms. I open the door to find 2 blonde girls staring right back at me....I guess these dorms are co-ed!!! The two girls were Lucy and Claire and they are from Edinburgh, Scotland. Later I met two other roommates.....a guy and girl from France. In total, we had 7 people in the room. 2 of them, I never met.......just happened to wake up the next morning and see 2 random guys sleeping in their underwear. The pic of my room is below. It was messy! My bunk was the top one in the top left corner of the pic.

That night, I went on a pub crawl that was organized by someone staying at the hostel. The plan was to go to 3 different pubs but I only made it to the first 2. I met some really cool people....Vincent from France, Karen from Scotland, and Anka from Germany. We had a great time! I am amazed at how many people are traveling alone like me over here and at how long they are staying. I thought my 4 weeks is a long time but its nothing compared to most people. I talked to several people who had been in Australia for almost a year!!!

Feb 2-4

Because I am changing jobs, I had the opportunity to take 2 months off and do a bit of traveling. This has always been a dream of mine.....to take a good chunk of time off from work and travel some place far and different. Not much of a plan, no itinerary, just living life baby! I picked Australia because of the great weather in February (its summer) and there is so much to do here. I'm planning to spend about 4 weeks in Aussie land. I flew into Sydney and will be working my way north along the east coast. Hopefully, I can make it to Cairns and see the Great Barrier Reef. A lot of my friends and family have expressed interest in following along on this journey so that is the intent of this blog. I hope you enjoy....

Feb 2:

Today, I began the LONG flight to Sydney...New Orleans to Denver (3 hours), Denver to San Francisco (2 hours), and San Francisco to Sydney (14 hours). Since I am traveling by myself and planning to stay in hostels, I have been looking forward to meeting some interesting people. On my first day, I met 2 interesting characters....

On my flight from Denver to San Francisco, I sat next to Alice. Alice is a yoga instructor in the San Fran Bay Area. The first thing you need to know about Alice is that if any of her muscles are tight or sore, she's going to perform some stretches....and it doesn't matter where she is. I saw her roll out a yoga mat in the middle of the airport terminal, lay down and do some stretches. On the flight, she proceeded to stretch in the aisle mid-flight. She really doesn't care....which is cool. Her facebook profile pic shows her doing yoga on a beach. She is leaning back into a position that I didn't know was possible for creatures with a spinal chord. If you saw the picture, you would add her as your facebook friend too!!! I'm glad I met a new friend in the Bay Area!

On my long flight from San Fran to Sydney, I was very curious who I would be sitting next to for 14 hours. This is where I ran into Bruce. How can I explain Bruce......Bruce just retired from a public library in Canada where he was a statistician. And you know, this didn't surprise me at all....If he had asked me to guess what he did, I would have thought about it for a second and then said something like......"I bet you crunch statistics looking for incremental improvements that could be made to the Dewey Decimal System and you focus on the western region of Canada.". It just fits! Bruce was one of those guys who is always fidgeting, looks anxious, and generally nervous.......After 5 minutes of meeting him, I didn't see how this guy was going to stay in a seat for 14 hours and not flip out! But he made it and was a cool guy. He's going to Australia for 5 weeks. He said he has a friend (a lady friend) who he hopes is going to show him around Sydney for a few days. He said this with a glimmer in his eye, the kind of glimmer that let me know.....Oh, he thinks he's getting some booty! Good luck Bruce!

Feb 3:

I have no idea what happend on Feb 3. I took off from San Fran at 10 pm on Feb 2 and I landed in Sydney at 8 am on Feb 4. Feb 3 was completely wiped out due to the 17 hour time difference and 14 hour plane ride.

Feb 4:

I landed in Sydney and took the train to my hotel. Its nice weather here, about 75 F but a little bit more humid than I had anticipated. I walked around Sydney for 2 hours and saw the Sydney Opera House (pic is below). It was cool but not as magnificent as I thought it would be, probably because its not very sunny today. I'll get a better pic before I leave. I also had fish and chips for lunch and learned that Aussies refer to ketchup as "tomato sauce".

Tonight, I'll try and check out some Sydney night life and get some good sleep in my nice hotel....tomorrow night will be my first night in a hostel dorm room!