But I'm NOT a morning person!

For the second day in a row, Ben and I woke up before dawn. Since I'm not a morning person, I'm chalking this trend up to our internal clocks still being a bit off. But since we woke up at 4:30 am, we decided to walk down to the breakwater (Nobbys Head) to watch the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean (which is new for me, I mean the Pacific is usually west, the sun SETS over the Pacific, not rises!). It was a nice brisk walk, and we were certainly not alone - bikers, joggers, people out waking their dogs. It was a beautiful morning to be out walking along the coast line of Newcastle.

After checking out of our hotel, we got back in the car and drove north some more. Decided to make a stop off in the Port Stephens area, in the town of Nelson Bay. Somehow we managed to NOT take any pictures; there wasn't much there to see anyway - well, other than a gorgeous beach with crystal clear blue water - but those seem to be everywhere around here! ;) We were hoping to get some lunch, but it was only 11:00 - and they didn't start lunch until noon (See, this is why I don't get up early, you have to wait SO long for lunch!!).

Back in the car, we continued our journey north to Port Macquarie. I smile each and every time I see the word Macquarie on an Australian map. A few months ago when Ben off-handedly suggested Australia (who knew?), he recommended I read Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country (published as Down Under in the UK). Since I've enjoyed some of his other books, I took to this one instantly, plus it was nice to have something to read on my bus commutes into Seattle. Anyway, Bryson comedically analyses the over-use of "Macquarie" in Australian geography. Evidently Lachlan Macquire was the governor of New South Wales in the early 1800s (and popularized the use of the name "Australia"- at the time, the entire country was collectively being referred to as Botany Bay - imagine, the whole continent being called "Botany Bay") If you have a moment, seriously, check out the list of things named after this guy!

We didn't see much of Port Macquarie, but we liked our hotel - outdoor hammocks on the 6th floor and a heated pool and spa on floor 1, all of which we visited ;) If that wasn't nice enough, there was a pretty decent mexican restaurant next door ;) The place had ceramic place-mats with common Spanish words and their translations - for example, por favor= please. Nothing unusual or unknown to us, but the "Hola" translation was G'Day Mate. It made us both laugh a little bit ;)

Manly: Not just an adjective

Because we ended up going to sleep at 1 pm on Sunday, neither Ben or I had eaten anything for almost 24 hours. We woke up at 3:30 am, unable to sleep any longer, but doubtful we'd find anything open at such an hour that would serve food. Like any good addicts, Ben and I took the opportunity to watch all our queued TV shows ;)

Finally, it was 6 am, never have I ever so intently watched a clock hoping for 6 am to come! We ventured out, in our summer vacation best, and promptly ran into rain and wind and general coldness! We re-found a french cafe with covered sidewalk seating (which we had eaten a croissant - our only Sunday food- at the previous day). Ben ordered a Big Breakfast and I ordered a crepe. For some reason, my crepe took it's sweet time getting to me, so long in fact, Ben had FINISHED his brekky by the time I got my food. *For the record, there were only 2 of us at the table, NOT 5. ;)

After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and drove wildly around Sydney, and out through some super posh suburbs. We stopped off for a bit in Manly, but it was kinda chilly and overcast. We did have some success, we got lunch and bought Ben a cossie (swimsuit). The sales guy was trying his hardest to teach me how to say "Cairns" while Ben was trying on suits...I never did get it...After walking around a bit more, we returned to the car and started heading north again....

Australia

I'm in the process of updating my blog to reflect the next 33 days I'm spending in the massively gigantic and grossly underpopulated country of Australia. The southern hemisphere, my first crossing of the equator and my third continent.

After just a short (cough) 22-hour flight from London, Ben and I arrived in Sydney, and thanks to the magic of the Earth's rotational axis, currently in the midst of summer. (As miserable as sitting on a plane for 22 hours is, I would gladly sit in any extremely confined, monumentally uncomfortable, restrictive seating arrangement for 22 hours every December if it ushers out 1ºC in favor of 24º temperatures.)

We had initially tried to check into our hotel around 9 am; not-so-fresh-or-rested from our "double sunrise" flight, we were desperately hoping for an early check-in. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, but we were able to check our luggage at the hotel and we were off walking the streets of Sydney.

The day went as expected, both of us being completely disorientated (our internal body clocks have NO clue what time it is), in a foreign country (just because they speak English, does not mean its the same language!), and being completely and totally overwhelmed (33 days in a country with a long itinerary of things to do and see ahead of us). We did as best as we could, got a rental car, got a cell phone, found our hotel (actually, found 2 of our hotels), saw the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, bought my first Australian souvenir, and tried to kill as much time as possible while exerting as little energy as possible.

Finally around 1 pm, we returned to the hotel and were able to check in. While neither of us wanted to nap, or at least not nap very long, soon we were both asleep, and remained so until around 3 am the next morning...oops.

We didn't get to see much of Sydney, but neither of us are too bummed, at the tail end of our journey we'll return to Sydney (in time for New Year's Eve) and will have plenty of days to see as much of it as we can. In the meantime, we're off up the coast. The first leg of our journey has us driving up Australia's Holiday Coast to Brisbane - with stops in Newcastle, Port Macquire, Coffs Harbour, Sufers Paradise and finally Brisbane. More about that to come...