Operation Fight Jet Lag

We landed in Sydney around 7 am or so Saturday morning.  I didn't quite mention in my previous post what a trooper my husband is.  While I was galavanting around in business class on Qantas, he was flying economy on United.  Sorry honey!  But you know him, he made a bunch of new best friends and got the low down on what to do in Sydney.

Even though we were on different airlines, both of our flights arrived at the same time and luckily both in the same international terminal, so we were able to meet up in baggage claim and head to find our car service.  I have to admit, I was a little disappointed at first.  It was an overcast rainy day, so there wasn't much of a view from the plane and it seemed like our driver was taking the most un-scenic route possible to the apartment.  I don't know what I was expecting but I guess I thought the pilot was going to buzz by the Sydney Opera House just for me.  I'm just sayin'...

We get to the apartment by around 9 am, get checked in and then the wall of tired hits.  Oh boy.
Pam: "We HAVE to stay up as long as possible tonight."
Chris: "Yeah, yeah.  Totally"

10 minutes later...

Pam: "Maybe we can take a quick nap this afternoon?!"

Needless to say we were pretty exhausted.  After the long flight and all of the excitement around getting here, it finally hit us all at once.  To keep us occupied/distracted we went downstairs to the coffee shop and had a bite to eat for breakfast and a shot of caffeine for a pick me up.  With a little more energy we were able to relax for a bit and take in the apartment.

My company helps me with housing so I'm in a 'serviced apartment' for about 4 weeks.  It seems to be a pretty popular thing here as there are constantly people coming and going.

Welcome to my new home for the next few weeks:

It's a great, cute little one bedroom right in the heart of downtown Sydney.  We're walking distance to a train station that can pretty much get us anywhere in Sydney and we're only about a five minute walk to Darling Harbour.

Unfortunately, that is about the extent of the excitement of our first day in Sydney.  We did end up taking a nap in the afternoon.  I set an alarm otherwise, we would have really been in trouble.  And even with the nap we were still asleep by about 8:30 on Saturday.  Pretty glamourous!

With all that rest we were bright eyed and bushy tailed Sunday morning.  Time to explore Sydney!  We got a map of downtown and just headed out the door.

First stop Darling Harbour.

Darling Harbour is one of the many harbor areas in Sydney.  It's of course got plenty of boats (which Chris loves) and a shopping and restaurant area.  Also in Darling Harbour is the Australia National Maritime museum and the Sydney Aquarium.  Chris was able to go to the Maritime Museum later in the week.

We had breakfast.... well, I should say 'brekky' at a delicious pancake place on the water, then walked around and enjoyed the sunshine and the views.

Sydney hosted the Summer Olympics in 2000 so we wanted to go and see the Olympic Park as well.  We had looked online and there happened to be an AFL game at the stadium there as well.  We weren't sure if we wanted to go to the game (or if tickets would be available) but it was a nice day so we figured it was worth the train ride just to see the Olympic Park.

We hopped on the train, followed the jerseys, and went out to the Olympic Park and ANZ Stadium (which they pronounce "A-N-Zed").

AFL is the league for Aussie Rules Football.  Of course, they just call it football, or footy, but they also call Rugby and soccer football, so it can get kind of confusing.  Somehow, just walking up to the box office we were able to get tickets.  They were in the 'end zone' of sorts, but they were really close to the field so we didn't care.  That and the fact that we have no idea what we're actually watching.  We tailgated for a bit with the locals and found out that this is the finals series so it was actually a pretty big game.

Tailgating and enjoying a Bundy & Cola

AFL doesn't allow pictures so of course I snuck one

The game turned out to be a really good one and lucky for us there was a dad explaining the game to his son sitting right behind us so we were able to follow along.  It's a really fast pace game with a lot of scoring and tackling and such so it was really fun to watch even not fully understanding the rules.  When in doubt, just cheer when the people in red are cheering.  Go Swannies!

Operation Fight Jet Lag Day 2 - success.