Sydney, Day 1

Land, finally! We arrived at our final cruise destination at the ungodly hour of 6am. They parked the cruise ship right next to the famous Opera House and it was a pretty spectacular sight. We both decided that although the cruise was nice, we don’t plan on doing another one anytime soon. A British gentleman put it nicely – you’ve either been just fed, you’re a newlywed, or you’re nearly dead. The former and the latter were more appropriate for our particular cruise. :/ We exited off the monstrous ship and caught a taxi to the hotel - kind of scary-looking from the outside, and left our bags at the front desk…along with our camera, so there will be no pictures in today’s entry. The receptionist was not terribly friendly and didn’t seem pleased to have to house our luggage for a few hours. We walked to Darling Harbour, through Chinatown, stopped by the visitor information center, around the convention center to Queen Victoria Building (a large, posh, mall) and over to the Sydney Fish Market for a lunch of fresh salmon and lobster. We did a decent amount of sitting as Steven got little sleep last night again. Hopefully, being off the boat will help him. We also picked up some fresh fruit at the market for breakfast for the next few mornings. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a bar which also doubles as a satellite wagering facility where they had chariot (yes, chariot) and greyhound races in the background. Interesting. Had some nice cold Toohey brew to help re-hydrate, then we walked back to the hotel. Fortunately, the lady was nicer this time, and we finally checked in. The room has two separate beds, couldn’t get anything else, but was a nice change from our small cabin on the boat. There is a great traveler area by the hotel with quite a few hostels, cheap internet, and cafes, so we are happier now as we started to see what is really around us. And now we can finally download this blog. We downloaded part of the blog as the computer was taking forever, sorry to all that got a partial story. While we were doing this, the weather changed from warm and humid to torrential downpour. The news said Sydney received a month of rain in 30 minutes - Stephanie thought it was trucks going by but it was actually thunder and lightening. After the internet café, we picked up some take-away Thai food that turned out to be some pretty good Pad Thai, or maybe it was just that we were tired and hungry. Went back to the room to crash for the night.