Hello from Sydney

Here we are in sunny Sydney! It’s the third day of spring today and already unseasonably warm…. much cooler than it was in Dallas, though. It’s also Father’s Day – so Grant gets to celebrate twice this year!

The flight was actually pretty good. We flew from Dallas to LAX and then got a hotel room for the layover. Managed to catch up with my old roomie Giselle for dinner, which was awesome. (aside from the horrible service at Denny’s and the hyper three year old!) For the record – I STILL HATE LAX. We boarded the flight to Sydney at 11:05 pm and arrived in Sydney two days later at 7:25 am local time. The flight time was something like 14 and a half hours. Jessica – bless her – slept or watched TV most of the flight. I never even opened the bag of toys we brought! For you parents out there…bring the car seat on the plane. It has been so wonderful for her to have something reasonably comfortable to sleep in. The only bad thing is for some reason Jessica doesn’t like to eat on planes. Might be the Gravol, I guess. So she went something like 20 hours on two goldfish crackers. Poor munchkin.

We are staying in the most awesome hotel. The Westin in Sydney. It’s absolutely beautiful. We’re a bit under dressed and it’s wicked expensive, but what the hell. We get a discount on the room and some of the food, but it’s still killing our budget. Worth it though, for the last comfortable beds we’ll be sleeping in for a long while! That’s what took me so long to email anyone. It was $25 for internet access! Sorry kids – you guys aren’t worth it!

Yesterday passed in a haze of jet lag. After our $50 breakfast (and THAT was at half price.) we headed down to the harbor and saw the opera house and the bridge.  Jessica had a blast in the gardens chasing “serious animals” like crocs with a stick she picked up from somewhere. We can’t believe how expensive Sydney is so far. I’m guessing it’s because we haven’t ventured out of the major tourist areas yet, but WOW. We just paid $20 for 15 diapers at a convenience store.This kid had better get potty trained and fast. She’s getting a lot better, but not soon enough for Mommy.

We crashed last night at about 7:30 and Jessica – bless her – was up again at 2:30. Grant played the Father’s Day card and slept in until 5:30. So, Mommy’s pretty tired today. So far Jessica has been a pretty sunny little person. 20-odd hours of travel time and she’s still singing. Amazing!

Today we’re off to find a more reasonably priced breakfast and then on to the aquarium. Then maybe Chinatown. We pick up the campervan tomorrow and say goodbye to our huge hotel room (which is probably more than twice the size of the campervan!)