We landed in Sydney on April 1, a Saturday. It's a really long flight from the U.S. (about 14 hours from LAX), and neither of us got much sleep on the plane. First order of business was getting through customs, and since Glenn was traveling under his Australian passport, we got to go through that much shorter line. We collected our mountains of luggage and headed through the Agriculture check, which took longer thanks to the screening of each bag, but finally got outside into a bright sunny day. We struggled over to the cabstand and were passed to the front of the line and ushered into a minivan cab - I guess having too much luggage was a good thing in this case! We were dropped off at the Bayswater Car Rental center in Kings Cross, a not-so-nice area in central Sydney. From there we struggled to find our way across the Harbor Bridge and followed signs out to the posh suburb of Manly, which we'd loved on our last trip to Sydney. We'd planned on staying at a hostel that night, since we were moving into our first housesit the next night, but the place we'd picked from the guidebook was a slovenly pigsty with no attendants at the front desk, and with my exhaustion taking over, I persuaded Glenn to let us find a private room in a hotel. We found one on the 3rd attempt (very busy time of year!), and took a quick trip to find lunch before heading back and crashing for several hours. The next day we got up and headed over to Balgowlah Heights to meet the family whose house and dogs we'd be taking care of for the month of April. (photos above)
Bottom left: Surfers rule Manly Beach.
Above: Baby Rainbow Lorikeet in Balgowlah Heights.