First look at Sydney

We survived the 14 hour flight OK. We had a little more legroom because we were sitting in the front row of a section of the plane just behind business class. It was night time the whole length of the flight and we lost a whole day but we felt surprisingly decent when we arrived. We were speaking to a nice man on the flight, an American citizen living in Tasmania who gave us some useful information about Australia like the huge duty on alcohol!! Customs at the airport were fine but we had to queue for a while to have our bags scanned for outside organic material. There was also a lovely wee hound running around the baggage terminal sniffing for things.

Really easy to get to our hostel because it's just beside central station. The rail links seem pretty good here. We'd planned to pay for the airporter bus but it was dead cheap and quick to take the train, another tip from the American man on the flight. The hostel is really nice, great location and clean safe etc. There's a big oscar trophy in the lobby cause they won the best large hostel in the world award! We got in at 8am expecting to have to wait till 12 to check in but they let us go straight up to the room which was really welcome. Had a wee sleep and got up and took the train to the harbour beside the opera house. It was a beautiful as we expected and the weather's fine, warm enough for this time of year – 15 degrees or there abouts (back to celcius now that we’ve left America!)

Pictures from Sydney