We landed in Sydney yesterday morning and it is SO warm here, love it! Only downfall is that there is so much humidity because we are right on the Ocean, but hey it's the Ocean so I won't complain.
After waiting for our bags FOREVER yesterday in the Airport we hopped on a shuttle to get to our hotel. To my surprise and disappointment our hotel didn't have a shuttle like it said so we had to buy a ticket to one, shoot. I stored some of my luggage at the airport so I wouldn't have to lug it around New Zealand, which I might add was outrageously expensive, but definitely worth it. My suitcase is HUGE.
But, back to Sydney! It took us about 40 minutes to get to our hotel from the Airport just because of traffic and how busy everything is around here. The city is definitely not what I was expecting. It's almost a little run down in a lot of the city which I found odd. There are people EVERYWHERE though, always walking around or riding bikes. I've also noticed that there aren't many older vehicles around, everything is fairly new. They also have a different car company over here which I'm thinking is kind of like Chevy but it's called Holdens ( I think, I don't remember for sure) and they have those cars everywhere.
Once we arrived at our hotel we were definitely missing our American hotels. The hotel is definitely different from my Country Inn & Suites and Holiday Inns. The hotel is called The Aspire Hotel and its in a nice and quiet neighborhood, which made sleeping SO nice last night. We decided to do a hotel instead of a hostel just for the space and comfort, also the private bathroom is wonderful! We were extremely confused with the electric system over here. In order to turn on the lights you have to insert your room key into a sort of power box to turn everything on. There are WAY too many switches for me! The room, however, has a tv and fridge which is so nice. Minor downfall when we got here was that our TV didn't work so the maintenance man brought us a new one, we get a whole 5 channels. Whoop whoop! HA. I did however find a show I really enjoy called The Project, which I would compare to a combination of E!-news and Chelsea Lately- it's informational yet hilarious.
After we showered and got all clean we were ready to adventure Sydney. Before we left I almost was electrocuted by the blowdryer in the bathroom so the hair stayed wet for my safety! We definitely looked like tourists though, we wore t-shirts and athletic shorts which no one wears in the city here. Oops. I'll definitely have to wear something a bit nicer today.
We left the hotel yesterday to walk around and discovered that there are Chinese people EVERYWHERE. There are more chinese people here than there are Mexicans in USA. Everything is written in english and chinese-crazy. There's also a chinese restaurant if not two on every block downtown. YUM. It's currently the Chinese New Year so there's a lot of cool dragon and different dance things going on. Our hotel is about 5 minutes away from China town so I think we're going to go check that out today!
A few other things I noticed in Sydney: a TON of people smoke over here. The buildings are non-smoking but I bet 1 in 4 people smoke so we were always walking through cigarette smoke. Gross. Also, gas is only $1.46! Which converts to about $1.80 US dollars-still cheap! And Thursday is Australia Day so they put their gas on special so everyone can travel! How nice is that? Everyone is talking about Australia day over here, I'm going to go ahead and compare it to VEISHEA almost. Except, VEISHEA x1000. It sounds absolutely insane. Last year, they arrested over 200 people in Sydney. CRAZY.
Everything in Australia is behind in technology. You have to pay for Wifi everywhere and its only in certain places. Its $10 for 24 hours in our hotel but many restaurants offer it for free when you order drinks or food. We went and had a drink in a Pub called Cheers yesterday and used their wifi. My beer was $6 for a schooner(pronounced skooner-about 17 ounces) which I think is just too spendy to drink. We stopped at a bottle shop and bought some Moscato for the hotel though:) Steph is getting sad because no one is carding her over here, she was pretty excited to drink legally haha.
On the way home from downtown we stopped in the mall and went to the grocery store. It's no Hy-Vee but I think Cole's is a suitable replacement. MINUS the fact that Curtis Stone is EVERYWHERE. He's haunting me!
Our last stop yesterday was McDonalds-shocker if you know me! We ordered a McOz meal, figured we should try it out, which came with fries and a coke. Corn Syrup is illegal here so the pop tastes so different, but not terrible. The fries make me a little sad, they are fried in a different oil so they are more healthy and taste just weird. But to the exciting part, a McOz is a cheeseburger with A BEET on it. Ew, I hate beets! But I ate it just because I'm trying everything, but never again. The beet was too much!
We're ready for a new day here! Just getting ready and I think we're going to go hit up the Sydney Aquarium!
Good job on the blog. Can't wait to hear about New Zealand!
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