We made it! And Air Canada was great – the food was maybe not so great (although it’s pretty hard for anyone to mess up my special meal of fruit plate).

We caught the 5:45 ferry from Duke Point and then took a taxi to the airport. Check in was smooth – thanks to the travel scale we had bought to check the weight before we got a surprise at the counter! We wandered the terminal for a while as we really didn’t want to sit down before we had too – 15 hours on the flight seemed like enough sitting time. Just before we were to board the plane, the staff announced that they were “light” on passengers and needed to shift some people around to the rear of the plane for take-off or they would not be able to take off – they were asking for 20 people and assured everyone that they would be able to return to their original seats once we were in the air.

It took a bit of time to sort out the temporary seating assignments but we were finally on board – it was definitely worth paying for the extra legroom seats. We probably had a least twice as much legroom as a regular seat so we brought the carryon bag down during the flight and used it as a footstool.

After a meal about an hour into the flight, we dozed for a few hours (the noise cancelling headphones worked well) and then the flight attendants woke us up for a “snack”. Strange! We managed to doze again after that, waking up when we were about 4 hours from Sydney. As I was knitting, one of the flight attendants stopped to ask me about my knitting. We got talking and when she asked where we lived, she mentioned that another one of the flight attendants had just moved to the Duncan area! Shortly after that, the flight attendant from Duncan came and talked to us –she is renting a house in Maple Bay and is loving the difference between living on the island and living in Calgary. Odd to meet someone from home when we are that far away. The flight was delayed by about an hour because of the late departure and wind but clearing customs and quarantine was quick (even though we did mark yes to having food containing grain with us) but a quick search by the canine inspector had us on our way in short order.

We got to the condo about 10:45 a.m., cleaned up and went for a walk to Darling Harbour. Lots of building going on down in the Harbour area but that doesn’t stop people from spending time there – it’s school holidays at the moment and there were lots of childcare groups and families enjoying the sunshine in the park.

There are also lots of displays in honour of Anzac Day (April 25). Poppies are displayed everywhere – we really liked this wall of poppies and so did an Australian White Ibis – who stole one of the flowers from the display (they are artificial flowers) and flew up to his nest where we watched it decide where the flower looked best (and we noticed that he already had a few other poppies in the nest already).

There were 2 young guys who were playing digeridoos and performing tribal dance demonstrations at the Harbour. We stopped to look at the CD’s they were selling and discovered that one of the guys dances in a world-reknown Aboriginal group who come to the Vancouver Folk Festival and also visit Saltspring Island.

We stopped for a light lunch (sharing an order of fish and chips) and a beer (one each – not shared) and then crossed the Pyrmont Bridge to the other side of the harbor and discovered one of Erik’s favourite restaurant chains.

On our way back to the condo, we stopped for some groceries and a bottle of wine and had a nap for 2 hours. Now it’s 9:30 p.m. and it’s starting to feel like bedtime.

Internet is not as expensive as 7 years ago – $5/day here at the resort in Sydney.

We’re thinking of doing a hop on, hop off ferry tomorrow and maybe some geocaching as well.

Temperature today was about 22 C with high cloud.