Day 3 in Sydney - part 1

Our body clocks are not yet re-set, so we were up early on Friday morning. We had planned to see several things, and one of them were the Botanic Gardens that opened at 7am, so we decided to head over that way, leaving our hotel before sunrise.

The sun was rising just as we reached the Botanic Gardens.

At the entrance -- the gardens were established in 1873, so they are over 150 years old.

Beautiful plants, and many of them had identification labels

We headed into the succulent garden in honor of our friend from Venture Out, Dan...

Many of the plants in this area looked "otherworldly" to us...

This was the "Alluaudia procera" up close; notice how the leaves grow in measured rows along the stems/trunks of the plant.

This plant reminded us of the Medusa that had snakes for hair or the Hydra that would grow two heads every time one was cut off (why were we thinking of Greek mythology? I can't answer that!).

This plant was so interesting looking...

... here's a close up -- from a distance, it might look like leaves, but it was more like an organ pipe cactus.

This one was so feathery it didn't look real.

Carl surmised that if you trip and fell on this, its black spikes would kill you!

A view of Sydney Tower Eye from the Succulent garden

Another interesting design on a plant

While we were in the Succulent Garden, every few minutes flocks of large, very noisy white birds would fly overhead. They would land high up in trees nearby, and soon take off, again calling out very loudly. At one point when they had landed on the snag of a tree nearby, I thought I could see top-knots on their heads. We asked a worker at the garden, and he confirmed that Cockatiels are native and wild in the area, and they are very noisy -- so we're pretty sure we were seeing a flock of Cockatiels.

In the distance, we could see Sydney Harbour Bridge (with a palm tree seemingly growing up through its middle)...

... and the high-rises of downtown Sydney.

We think that this was an Ibis.

We walked out along the peninsula that extended beyond the Botanic Gardens -- there were 3 Australian Navy ships docked along a base on the other side of the water...

...with the sun behind, it is hard to see the ship well, but we thought this was an amphibious landing ship.

As we got around to the other side of the peninsula, we could see the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge -- with the sun only recently up, they were beautifully lit. There were *lots* of people out running and enjoying the beautiful day, so we were able to get another tourist to take our picture.

Another view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge -- this time nicely framed with tree limbs. There were also a large group of kayakers below us -- it appeared to be maybe a class or a tour group.

By this time, we were getting a bit hungry, so were happy to see a Coffee and Gelato stand -- it was unfortunately closed, but Carl pretended to be getting an ice cream provided to him!

The benefit of jet lag is that we're getting up early and starting our day!

Day 2 in Sydney

After our long trip to Sydney with late arrival on Wednesday, we were glad that we didn't have any specific plans that we needed to do on Thursday. If we counted Wednesday as our first day in Sydney (even though we didn't arrive until after dark), then Thursday would be day 2.

One of the things we wanted to do is to see if it would be walkable from our hotel to the Overseas Cruise Terminal where we would board the ship on 9April. We still have several days to get that figured out, but seeing Sydney Harbour was also on our to-do list, so we decided to start with that.

We had made our hotel booking through the cruise line site. It was called the Tank Stream Hotel -- but we learned that the name was changed to Rydges Australia Square. We had an option of booking a room with breakfast, but it seemed a high price so we opted to get a room without breakfast and planned to find a place for breakfast in the area.

It turns out that Australia Square is an open space just across a small side street from the hotel, and it has a food court on the ground level. We found several places where we could get something for breakfast, and Carl got a feta and egg wrap, and I got a ham and cheese "toastie".

The hotel is right at the square making it very convenient, and there is seating outdoors or inside the food court.

We walked down Pitt Street as it appeared to be a straight path to the Overseas Cruise Terminal.

We had wondered about the former name of our hotel, Tank Stream. It seemed that it was formerly an office building that was converted into a hotel in 2017. (https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/inspiration/the-tank-stream-hotel-sydney-review-centrally-located-at-a-price-that-will-please-20170620-gwumr4.html and https://eatdrinkandbekerry.net/index.php/2018/03/10/uncovering-sydneys-dirty-secrets-from-tank-stream-hotel/) 

As we were walking toward the harbour, we came to a construction area that is refurbishing the Tank Stream Stormwater drain.

Interesting that we would have come across this name again! But I guess it has quite a storied history in Sydney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Stream).

We continued on to the Harbour and saw the Sydney Opera House across Circular Quay. Just to the left you can see the front of a cruise ship that was docked at the Overseas Cruise Terminal when we were there.

We saw a sculpture outside the Museum of Contemporary Art that reminded us of "the bean" in Chicago.

Ovation of the Seas -- a Royal Caribbean ship. The couple that we were talking with had just completed a cruise around New Zealand and disembarked that morning. They live further north in Australia.

A selfie with the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background

Watersedge at Campbell's Stores in The Rocks

The ASN Company building, aka The Castle

A view of a small "tall" ship contrasted with the huge Ovation of the Seas

Sydney Opera house across Circular Quay from The Rocks

Sydney Harbour Bridge

See those people up on the upper structure of the bridge? You can book an "excursion" to walk over the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge -- it costs $192/person -- uhm, maybe not!

"Still Life with Stone and Car" Uhm... okay? (https://www.timeout.com/sydney/art/still-life-with-stone-car)

Buildings along the Harbour in Barangaroo

Mov'in Bed Outdoor Bed Cinema ()https://movinbed.com/sydney/

You can watch a movie on a bed in the sand? A$89 for two (so about US$60). We decided we could give this a pass too!

The small convenience stores are great to pick up a cold drink or snack!

Carl with a sculpture on Australia Square upper plaza

Information about the sculpture

We went back to the Australia Square food court for lunch -- Carl got Vietnamese Pho and I got a Doner Kebab (doner is beef in Australian Greek food I guess).

We headed back to our hotel room and rested for a while. We went out for a little while in the evening, looking for a place that might have music, but everything we found was super busy, so we stopped at one of the small convenience stores and got sandwiches, chips, and a drink and ate in our room! Still working on getting beyond jet lag!

And we're off on a trip!

Carl had mentioned that he wanted us to go on some kind of special trip for our 5th anniversary and I agreed. It is difficult to travel away from the motorhome, but leaving it on our lot in Mesa is a good option, so that would mean traveling before we left Mesa. When I got to looking around, I found a cruise from Sydney, Australia to Honolulu in April for a good price... and we booked it just a few weeks ago. We've been working on getting ready to go... the cruise leaves Sydney on 9April (I'm getting used to writing dates in day-month(-year) format) on Celebrity Solstice. We decided to go into Sydney a few days before to acclimate and visit "down-under". I had intended for us to get in 5 days early, but when I was booking the flights through the Celebrity website and indicated that I wanted to *leave* the US on 4/2 (or, that's what I intended to indicate!), it booked so we would *arrive* in Sydney on 4/2 -- which meant that we would be leaving the US on 3/31. I didn't realize it until I had finished the booking, so there would be a penalty to change it... so we decided to go with 7 days in Sydney instead! (I *think* that since we were booking on the cruise line's website, it applied cruise "intelligence" and figured that we wanted to *be* in Sydney for a cruise on 4/2, so it took care of backing up the date appropriately for us.)

In order to get ready to head out for about 3.5 weeks, we had a number of things to get accomplished...

We needed to arrange for kitty care for Miss Kitty -- thankfully, one of our fellow residents at Venture Out volunteered to provide Miss Kitty care...

Jill took a picture of us with Miss Kitty as we dropped her off on Monday, 31March.

There were good-byes with neighbors -- Barb and Linda (and Don and Laura, not pictured)...

... next door neighbor Barb was driving us to Phoenix Sky Harbor -- she had never driven to Sky Harbor before, but went with a friend to drop the friend's sister off a few days before so she'd know how to get there!

We had to fly from Phoenix to Los Angeles to connect to our flight to Sydney.

The flight from Phoenix to LAX was uneventful. We were a little concerned because we knew we had to change terminals at LAX (to the international terminal) and wanted to ensure, if possible, that we did not have to exit the secure area. We got directions when we arrived at LAX and after a bit of a long walk from our arrival gate in terminal 5, passing through terminal 4, we arrived at the international terminal...

So many duty free shops!

Carl was impressed with the huge advertising LED screens!

We stopped for KFC for supper. The flight schedule showed that we would be getting supper on the flight, but since the flight wasn't leaving until 10:45pm, we thought that getting something at a more reasonable hour was a good idea.

We made it to our gate in plenty of time.

We were at the gate, the airplane was at the gate... everything looked good. We were supposed to start boarding at about 9:45pm for a 10:45pm departure... except we didn't. The gate crew indicated that there needed to be some checks performed on the airplane... uh oh... They delayed the departure time a few times, and finally indicated that it would *not* be going on Monday evening, but rescheduled to noon on Tuesday. The gate agent indicated that we would be getting hotel and meal vouchers via email, and that if we needed other support, to go to the customer service counter back in terminal 4 (which we had walked through on our way from our Phoenix flight arrival terminal). Since we had not received the email, we started walking to customer service, and got there behind about 20 other folks. There was a single customer service person, and we despaired ever getting through -- meanwhile about 50 other folks joined the line. At about that time, we finally got our email and used the links provided to arrange our stay at the Holiday Inn for overnight. We were also issued two $12 meal vouchers. We found our way to the hotel pickup area and pretty quickly got onto the shuttle to the hotel. We got checked in and were in our room by about midnight. 

We thought that this might be actually a good thing -- the flight that was scheduled to leave at 10:45pm on 31 March was scheduled to get into Sydney at 8:20am 2April (meaning that we would miss April Fools Day!). 

Our original flight schedule

By flying out at noon on 1April, we would be getting in to Sydney about 9:30pm on 2April, and be able to go right to bed. In addition, we should be getting a "reasonable" night's sleep in the Holiday Inn on Monday night, being more well rested arriving than via a red-eye... or... so we thought!

One of the messages that American sent us overnight indicated that we would arrive on 3April after a 39 (!!!) hour, 20 minute flight. We got a later message letting us know that we would be arriving on 2April. Maybe the 39 hour flight was an April Fools joke?

Our two $12 meal vouchers did not go far at the hotel breakfast (still $35.38 remaining after $24 in vouchers were applied!).

We caught the hotel shuttle back to the airport, went through security again, and headed to our new gate (whether it was a new airplane or not we don't know).

More LED advertising displays

Our flight scheduled to leave at noon

We boarded as planned and found our seats... wow they seemed tight!

Since the flight was scheduled to be an overnight flight, it was handled as an overnight flight -- we got "dinner" soon after the flight took off, and then breakfast a little before landing. They had the lights dimmed for most of the flight as we were supposed to be on a red eye and getting sleep!

There were displays in the seat backs where we could choose movies or audio programs or TV shows to watch. We could also look at flight information -- this is the display as we were coming in to Sydney...

... in case you could not read the information at the bottom of the display -- 14:02 (14 hours, 2 minutes) since departure, 0:10 to go... it might not have been 39 hours, but it certainly *felt* like it!

And we had traveled over 7700 miles!

We made it through immigration, and were waiting for our bags. All of our bags came off quickly, and we made it through customs and out of the airport.

I was able to use the airport internet to book an Uber to take us to the hotel (while we can turn on TravelPass to have Verizon internet service, but it is $12/day so we're trying to use other public WiFi services where we can). The driver came quickly and took us efficiently to our hotel, Rydges Australia Square, formerly The Tank Stream Hotel. We got checked in and gratefully settled in for a good night's sleep! What a long day, errrh, few days!!!