Back from vacation… errr.. Holiday and part 1 of the journey…

Well we are back from our last vacation of our working lives.  We booked a cruise on Royal Caribbean International Cruises on the Rhapsody of the Seas Cruises. We left Texas on 10/27/2010 and headed for Sydney Australia for our 12 night cruise which would be preceded by a few days stay in Sydney.  The worst part of this trip would be the 14 hour flight from Los Angeles California and the time difference of plus 16 hours – so our 8am is their 12pm… this took some getting used to.

Saturday - 10/23/10 – We left our town for the two hour drive to Austin, Texas for our first leg of our journey.  We first flew to Houston, Texas and changed plans for Las Angeles (LAX). With a three hour layover in LAX we finally boarded our 10:30 pm flight for Sydney (SYD).

Sunday - 10/24/2010 – POOF!!!! With the time change and the length of this flight we lost this day while in travel as we crossed the International Date Line.

Monday 10/25/10 We landed in Sydney Australia at 7:10 AM after the 14h 38 min flight and boy were we ready to get off the plane… We caught the airport shuttle for the 30 minute “free tour” to our hotel where we checked into the Darling Harbor Holiday Inn.  I booked this on Priceline ($125.00 per night) and got lucky as it was centrally located near everything we wanted to see while we were in Sydney.  First lesson of the trip was that everything is expensive in Sydney especially since our dollar was depressed as much as it was so the free wifi from McDonalds right across the road was appreciated since the hotel charges 20.00 Australian per day (about 20 US $).

We arrived at hotel at about 8:30 am and amazingly there was a room available. We were told the best thing to do was stay up until at least 9-10 pm and then go to sleep and we would be nearly normal on Sydney time. So to combat jetlag we got into the room, unpacked, packed up a day pack and hit the road to explore Sydney’s Darling Harbor…