Sydney - November 14-27, 2017
The Arrival - It seems so long since we planned to go to Australia and the
time finally has come. Wilson and I
travel to the land down under on separate planes, he using miles on American
Airlines and I flying Qantas. Although
we traveled with two different airlines we left and arrived within 15 minutes
of each other. My flight was pretty
uneventful, the things that are minutely worth mentioning are as follows;
flight attendant passed us by with dinner and I had to go fetch her, I had my
middle seat moved to a window seat – not that smart on a long journey and the
others are sleeping and you feel like you can’t get out, I missed snack – which
was some sort of empanada and a Kit Kat bar, which I really wanted 😏, and last but not least, everyone sounds like
Olivia Newton John……
We have two pet/house
sits set up while in Australia. Our
first sit is in Sydney, taking care of two lovely dogs – Jessie and Sasha. We are greeted warmly at the airport by Ann
and Clive, complete with signs with our names on them. As with each time we meet the people whose
pets we will be sitting for I’m a bit nervous.
First impressions are so important and after a 15 hour flight I wasn’t
quite sure what type of impression I would make. Brushing my hair and teeth in the loo at the
airport certainly helped to boost my confidence 😃. It turns out that my
worries were for naught…Ann, Clive, Wilson, and I really hit it off quite
nicely. We spent a couple of days with
them before they headed on their cruise, getting to know each other, going over
the details of the house, playing cards, and really just enjoying each
other. Just to show you how considerate
and nice they are…knowing it was Wilson’s birthday on 11/20 they left him a
card and a present...not only was it thoughtful of them but they got such a
good sense of who he was that, in my opinion, the gift and even the card was
perfect.
Our first taste of Sydney – Ann & Clive go off on their cruise
(11/19-11/26). We took the train into
Sydney with them, not only to see them off but to get our first look at the
city. This decision turns out to be our
first adventure…after a light lunch and our farewells Wilson and I head back
“home”. Upon the recommendation of our
hosts we decide to take the public transportation boat for the first part of
our trip home, picking up the train for the second portion. The day is sunny and warm, the boat is an
express boat, only making one stop before our scheduled stop…. 20 minutes we
get to the first stop only to be told that the boat will not be continuing on
to our stop (I didn’t catch the reason) and that we had the option to get off
where we were docked or go back to where we started from…as this was our first
time on our own within the public transportation system and we weren’t really
in any hurry, we opted to stay with the boat and go back to what was “familiar”. Another 10 minutes goes by and we’re told
that they will be making an unscheduled stop if anyone would like to get off,
informing us that there is a train stop close by...we hop off reinforcing our
status as adventurers….don’t get all excited we picked up a transportation map
while at the harbor and knew that we could pick up the correct train line from
where we were being dropped off. We walk
to the train station, hop on the train, and get off at our stop…now the
adventure really starts…we don’t know how to get home 😅. Wilson
is the one with any kind of sense of direction and although we both were out
and about with Ann and Clive neither of us knew exactly where we were
going. It’s not that Wilson lost his
sense of direction his focus wasn’t on direction it was on driving. For those of you who may not know, driving in
Australia is done on the left side of the road (driver’s side is on the right),
totally opposite of how we drive in the States. With that said the focus of the
driver is to pay attention to driving and staying on the correct side of the
road, leaving the directions to me….bad idea for sure 😊. Of
course we both had a general sense of where we were supposed to be, familiar
landmarks and such, but we weren’t getting to where we needed to go…We spent a
great deal of time going back and forth on the main road with a few side roads
thrown in for good measure…we knew the address and we had my phone but I was
concerned that I wouldn’t have enough data to get the directions without having
to pay an overuse charge (our international plan has enough texts & calls
for our use, but the amount of data associated with it is pretty much
nil). Just when we decided to bite the
bullet we get a call from Ann, wanting to know if we made it back ok…It was
like an angel calling…she talked us through it and we finally made it home. We certainly learned a valuable lesson – have
a map in the car and make sure that one of us writes down the directions….The
whole thing made me feel like I was Charlie on the MTA.
