Arriving in Australia!

Flying to Australia is no quick journey. We flew out of BWI on United Airlines. Our flight left at 6:27pm on Monday, and we landed in Sydney at just before 7:00am on Wednesday. It's not that the flight takes 2 days. We actually just lost Tuesday. Upon crossing the international date line, an entire day literally disappeared. It's a little jarring mentally, but since there's no recovering the day, it just becomes an oddity to accept.

The flight to LAX from BWI was a bit rough. Small, cramped plane. The only food provided was a tiny bag of pretzels. We had individual screens, but I think you had to pay for most of the programming. 

The flight from LAX to SYD wasn't bad. It was much roomier and each seat had TV screens, with the ability to choose from dozens of movies and shows. We watched and slept intermittently. The food wasn't bad, and to be fair, we had three meals. Also, a bonus - I thought it was a 15 hour flight, in the end, it's (only) a 14 hour flight. 

At the Sydney airport, going through customs, picking up our bags, and finding the taxi stand were all easily accomplished tasks. It took about half an hour to get into Sydney city. After we checked into our very lovely B&B in Potts Point, we went and explored. The owner armed us with a map and some recommendations, and we had a great day exploring the city on foot. We walked along the water, saw the opera house, explored the Royal Botanical Gardens (even our untrained eyes recognized there were a lot of new plants here), saw the neighborhood called The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney, and then explored the downtown. We can't wait to come back and see more!

We crashed in the early evening, and basically slept until the following morning.

Then we took a taxi back to the airport to catch a morning flight to Alice Springs! Just three more hours in the air ...!