We're here

Traveling is stressful.
I do not think that this is an overstatement.
Consider this:
The day before we left, I discovered that I had booked the wrong starting date for our rental car, so I had to rebook the whole thing at a higher price.
I realized that we still did not have assigned seats on our Delta flight to Sydney, so had to make several calls to remedy that.
I got a letter from our insurance company telling me that I had forgotten to pay my car insurance.
I had to fight with Verizon to renew our internet at a reasonable price.
Note to self: remember that threatening to cancel works much better than being reasonable.
Then, our flight to Oakland was delayed.
And our flight to LAX was delayed.
Which was no big deal,except that I was worried the whole day that we would be so late getting to LAX that we would have trouble making our Sydney flight.
Then I couldn't get the WiFi to work at LAX and I couldn't get through to my nephew, Ben, to see if he was expecting us on Saturday.

One fourteen-hour flight later, we land at Sydney airport.
What a bustling, cosmopolitan place it is.
Check out this gorgeous creature,an employee of Emirates Air.


About fifteen women in these uniforms, all exotic beauties of different nationalities, stood in line next to us at Customs.
Didn't I feel dowdy?
So we finally figure out the pay phones, the currency, and the car rental, got hold of Ben, and we were on our way.
Picture me driving on the wrong side of the road, with a manual transmission, in a bustling city that is completely strange to me.
With Jeff navigating.
Yes, you read that right.
Jeff is refusing to drive.
He is also a hopeless navigator.
Although, to his credit, after an hour or so of wrong turns and backtracking, he got better.
I have only turned into the wrong side of the road about four times so far, and only in small roads.
And it was all worth it.
We are here with Ben and Le'ah and their two boys, Phoenix and Lorenzo.


We took a much-needed shower, had fish and chips for lunch by the lake in a very blustery wind, and visited a Buddhist temple.


These were part of a flock of very aggressive seagulls who stalked us for our chips.



Sydney is recovering from a dust-storm that covered thousands of square miles in red dirt. Apparently it went all the way up the coast to Brisbane and even over to New Zealand.



The wind is still fierce but the sky is blue and clear.


Till tomorrow.