The Great Southern Hotel Sydney

We arrived in Sydney with our 78 kilo baggage (between us). It was a short 3 hour flight compared to what we're used to flying. Tom desperately tried to cram in two movies, meaning that when nearly everyone was off the plane Tom was still glued to his seat trying to watch the last five minutes of a movie 'The Happening'. We comfortably made our way through immigration and customs and set off for our hotel. We got a good deal on line from wotif.com for hotel deals and decided to splurge out on...

Wow, I have done a lot since I last blogged! I spent 14+ hours traveling from LAX to Sydney, and luckily got a window seat in the emergency aisle so I was very comfortable. I also slept more than anybody else on the plane. The flight attendants were poking fun at how long I was able to sleep! I'm pretty sure I racked in 10 straight hours. hehehehe... I sat next to a couple men who live in the Sydney area on the plane. They were both coming from NYC. Richard sat next to me and after our long f...

Grandad arrived Monday and we went to the Australia Reptile Park on his first day. It was really good, there were kangaroos roaming around that were really tame & we got to touch a blue tongue lizard. They had all the famous deadly spiders too (huntsman, black widow & funnel web) and they were all surprisingly small, but still disgusting! Grandad was still a bit jet lagged so we had an early night after a few drinks in the hotel bar. The next day we chilled out at Bondi & tested the water, wh...

We're up at a decent hour to get some breakfast before making our way to the airport in a shuttle bus from the hostel. It's a short flight from Christchurch to Sydney, but enough time to fit in a meal and a movie, though its on a big screen at the front of the cabin and so I think we both just slept instead.

We arrive in Sydney and find that buses have to be pre-booked to get into the city and so we take the train as there is a station fairly near to where we are staying. It's not too ...

We get up and ready just in time for breakfast at the hotel buffet, which had an interesting selection of hot foods, noodles, a rice dish and bread and butter pudding, along side your normal things like bacon and eggs etc.

We take a mid-morning walk after breakfast towards the Imax cinema to book some discounted tickets to see the new Harry Potter film.
Some advice before we left from Ken and a trip to an information centre has us booking a day trip to the Blue Mountain National Par...

We're up in plenty of time to have a good breakfast before heading over the road to our pick up point outside the YHA for our "organised" trip to the Blue Mountains. We wait about half an hour after the first bus arrives for two more and a seemingly impossible logistical nightmare or organising separate people onto separate vans, which takes an awfully long time.

Eventually, we are on a bus and driving out of Sydney city centre on the western highway. Our first stop is at a remote clea...