Sydney - Upside Down & Inside Out

As we are writing this it is 8:30 AM here and 6:30 PM on the east coast. Our flights were 5.5 hours to San Francisco and ~15 to Sydney. 24 hours (ugh!) after departing Dulles we were finally in the line for Australian customs. Customs and car rental was easy but adjusting to the left hand shift on our standard Toyota Corolla took some getting used to…actually shifting wasn’t bad but getting used to the turn signal on the right proved comical to Sarah as Jonathan turned on the windshield wipers rather than the blinker every time we turned. We spent a nice morning on famous Bondi Beach and some of Sydney’s other eastern beaches. We also toured the Royal Botanic Gardens where we saw hundreds of one of the world’s largest species of bat. Seriously, these things were like pterodactyls with wing spans up to 6 feet! They were noisy and seemed very active for nocturnal creatures. We settled in to the very trendy Hilton Sydney, took a walk to the “Rocks” historic area and finally found dinner at a Thai/Continental/pub (fusion?) Dinner was interesting and we spent some time chatting with our Scottish bartender who mistook us for the YouTube wedding dance couple (search: crazy wedding entrance). Our jet lag caught up with us and we retired early (7:30 PM, but 5:30 AM Eastern....total late night!) to Champagne, Strawberries and chocolates in our room – a wedding gift from the Hilton. It was lovely – and much appreciated, as we doubt the campervan company will provide us with the same service : )