When we arrived at the Auckland, New Zealand, airport (at the crack of dawn) for our flight to AU, we were met by some unhappy passengers & a frustrated airline representative. The runway lights had been out all night, so we were looking at a 24 hour delay. Oh joy. We rushed back to the closed office of our rental car company. Thank goodness I was able to fit my arm through a gap to retrieve our keys that we had just returned. We went to the car & called our hotel, asking if we could stay another night...they were booked, doh! They let us check back into our room to rest until the check-out time. We spent the majority of the day at Takapuna Beach which was a short walk from our hotel The Spencer on Byron. After we were turned into crispy critters from all of those hours in the sun, we went for a drive around Auckland. We stopped at a park along the water where we had our first and only encounter with a NZ bum. He most likely was drunk or stoned, some of the things that came out of his mouth were crazy.
I have video of it, but blogger isn't letting me upload it. I just recorded it so you could hear his accent. I love the way Kiwis talk! I could listen to them forever... We killed as much time as we could before we headed back to the airport. Yep, we slept in our rental car, heaven help us. Nothing like sleeping partially upright with scratchy airline blankets while a hoard of mid-eastern taxi drivers are parked all along the sidewalk talking as loudly as they could. It was not fun, I was leery of their loud, foreign tongues, and I don't like the idea of strangers watching me sleep. It gives me the heebie jeebies. Thank goodness for morning! We grabbed our stuff & our stinky selves and got on our plane.
According to the weather forecast, we were looking at rain all week in AU. I'm sure you have seen the flooding that has been going on down there. It had already started before we arrived. The weather wasn't too big of a deal because Josh had to work the majority of the week. We stayed at the Cambridge in Sydney. I can't even begin to tell you how crazy small their parking garage is!
Josh is the bomb-diggedy-bomb when it comes to parking! The garage was 6 floors deep & there was only one teeny tiny lane. So if someone was coming up while we were going down, someone had to pull over. It was crazy! You have to remember that Josh is still driving on the right (wrong) side of the car. How is that for confusing? Who knew that something could be right & wrong at the same time?
Josh spent most of the week at the SPUSC 2010. Here is a pic of him working hard. I went to the conference for a day & that was a day enough for me. I loved listening to the Aussies speak, but it was all over my head. I spent my days in the hotel doing digital scrapbooking, editing wedding photos, and watching rugby or cricket on the telly. Exciting, I know. It was hard, knowing that I was in Australia, but stuck inside the hotel while it was pouring rain outside. One night of the conference there was a nice dinner & a dance. Here is a pic of Josh dancing in the background, the two drinking Aussies were a couple of blokes that we were sitting with. Fun people. And here we are chatting with our Aussie friends while eating yummy lamb, prawns, greens, creme brulee... Here are a few words that I noticed many of the Aussies used, "brilliant, massive, cheers, yeah yeah yeah (they never just said yes, it was always yeah yeah yeah). It was a good night. They took a ton of pics of Josh & I dancing, but I haven't been able to find them anywhere. Hopefully they'll turn up somewhere on the internet. Our Aussie friends let us know the things we needed to do while in Sydney. Our last day there Josh didn't have to work, so we set about on our adventure. We walked (you would walk too if you had to drive on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road in an unfamiliar HUGE city) to downtown Sydney. The rain held off for us & we had a sunny day spent ferrying over to Manly Beach. We acted like true tourists & browsed the shops, ate icecream, and walked along the beach (where we saw a little more than we bargained for...I thought we were in Australia, not Europe). The ferry ride was fun & beautiful. The ferries in Sydney Harbor are just down from the Sydney Opera House. Of course, we couldn't leave Sydney without visiting the Opera House. I was pretty bummed when we looked at the events & a ballet was showing the following week. We bought tickets (not cheap) to watch a symphony. It was magical being inside that building...somewhere I had always wanted to visit.
We didn't see any koalas, dingos, or kangaroos (our Aussie friends said that a lot of Aussies have only seen such animals in the zoo & that it's just a tourist attraction), but we saw Sydney, and had a fabulous time.
Short video of the "goings on" around Sydney Harbor
Good day, mates!
Fiji is next...
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