First Day in Sydney

Promptly at 5 AM, we both woke up to check out of the hotel and leave the airport. We lugged our massive bags down the stairs and into the shuttle, and made it to Nadi International Airport right as the skies turned pink. We stopped at a café before entering security to grab some breakfast, and Maria purchased a bottle of water.

I purchased the biggest bottle that they had because I was thirsty.  As we walked through the airport a wave of horror swept over me--we hadn't gone through security yet.  So, while standing in front of the security officer, I chugged an entire liter of water and threw the bottle away.  I went up to her and she said "Any liquids?"  Was she joking!?  When I went to reply "no" I suddenly felt sick.  Very, very sick.  It was all I could do to get through security without throwing up on someone--I've heard that they don't take kindly to that.

Even though we had requested seats in the back of the plane, like the time before, they decided to give us the first seats in one of the sections, which meant that we had no televisions and no space under our seats for the 5-hour flight. Hooray. Our bags were taken from us and put in the overhead compartments several rows behind us, which meant that we had to wait until practically the entire plane had unloaded before we could go get our bags.

Upon landing in Sydney, we went through customs, which was surprisingly quick, and grabbed lunch at “Mackers” before dragging (literally dragging) our bags to the train station. We had a brief moment of “stupid Americans” when I put a bag on the escalator, but because it didn’t fit like I thought it would I had to stay with it, leaving Maria with the other large bag and two roller bags. Thankfully, a nice older couple helped her down with the other bags while I waited uselessly at the bottom.

When we got to Downtown Sydney, we took a cab the 1 block to our hotel because our bags were too heavy to carry. The room we had reserved wasn’t ready for us, so they upgraded us to a Harbor View room. What a shame.

We lounged around the room for a while, until the sun started to set. We mistakenly thought it was around 7 PM, and went out to grab dinner. But first, we looked at the Opera House.

"Ahhhhhhh"

We found a small sandwich shop at the harbor, and the cashier noticed pretty much immediately that we were Americans. Bank of America, in all of its glory, knew that I would be abroad and was kindly allowing me to use my debit card. And by allowing me to use debit card, I mean the card refused to work whenever anything was being charged on it, and work only when I was at an ATM. Convenient.