Flight to Aus

What can I say. 14 hours on a plane is a VERY long time. hehe!! It gets even longer when you are afriad of you seat mate who appeared mentally unstable and kept telling stories about his uncle who killed someone in South Africa. I would need to go to the bathroom and it would take forever (or until my bladder was spasming) before I would get brave enough. But aside from that the flight was great. Quantas (free plug here--the next one will cost them...hehe) is great. Good food. Great snacks (bag of mixed candy and fresh fruit on request). Good service. And the sunrise I saw spectacular!! This is only one of tons of pictures I took as the sun came up in a work of clouds and ocean.

First view of Sydney bridge and Opera house

As we got closer the piolet announced that the weather was no good. Which was a bit consouling as due to my seat I knew I wasn't going to get a good view flying in. But I got a surprise and I did get a sneak peak of the two most famous landmarks in sydney. So I was pretty happy about that.

"My" plane

The airport and customs was pretty much typical. and after long lines with cranky tired jet lagged tourist and locals I was set free onto Australian soil. If I was SO exhausted I would have been stupid excited. hehe!! With a little help from the information ladies and friendly locals I got the right bus and told the driver to please let me know when we got to the Price of Wales Hospital. Unfortunaley he did not understand/forgot about me. So I got dropped off two stops past mine. Which in Sydney is a considerable walk. So I made quite the entrance in to the hospital. Barely walking after lugging my three bags (a backpack, carry on, and a soft suitcase weighing over 25kilos!) I stumbled into the hospital entrance, panting asking how much further I had to go to get to the residence...Unfortunaltey it was a ways SO I asked if the kind woman would watch my 25+kilo bag while I got the rest of my stuff to the Rez. After a bit of shuttling back and forth I crashed on my bed settling my alarm for one hour. I wanted to make sure I would sleep that night.

Coogee Beach

So I think the flight affected my sense of direction as the ten mintue walk to the beach took me over and hour. hehe! But I found it at last and it was beautiful!!! I stayed there for a few hours wandering about just loving being my the sea. you know how sometimes even though you are miles and miles away from home and yet you know you are where you belong. That was me. I was by the sea and the sreaming in my viens to be near salt water quited to a contented purr. The surf was pretty big with I would guess over 1.5 meter waves.

Cliff's at Coogee Beach

The sun was out and the Austrailian sand stone gleamed. I watched crabs scramble and tourist like me take pictures while locals surfed and body boarded. So amazing. But soon my tummy was rumbling and having no food or any clue where to get food I left the beach behind with a promise to return soon!!

Happy on the beach!

Food was pretty easy to locate and soon I was sitting in the common room eating and making new friends. We all went out for a bit that night. Getting to know one another and somehow I managed to stay awake until 10pm at which time I surrendered to sleep with plans to hang out with one of the girls I had met to explore the next day! If this was any indication of my adventures I knew I was in for a GREAT trip!

Random beach sculpture I liked at Coogee