We've been in Sydney for four days now, but only yesterday did we venture into downtown. It's a massive city, especially when compared to the major cities in New Zealand. Sydney has about double the entire population of New Zealand living in the city and the surrounding suburbs. Downtown Sydney reminds me a lot of San Francisco, especially because it sits on the edge of the water. It is far cleaner than SF, but just as diverse.

We wandered around and did a few touristy things, including heading over to the Opera House for some photos. Tomorrow we are planning to spend the entire day bouncing around the city on their public transportation system, which includes water taxis, to see as much as we can. I'll probably post some photos from that!

We have made a major change to our overall Australia plans. We cancelled our flight to Tasmania and are heading west straight from Canberra. We decided we wanted to leave ourselves more time to see the west coast, and may need to buy and sell a car along the way which may add a few days at each end of the trip. We'll see.

We had a package of books waiting here for us from the States (thanks Vera!!!) and so we are just now starting to look at details of what to do and see while we're here. The package also included the books for SE Asia, so we will start looking into that as well. The next 1/3 of the trip (we are officially starting the 2nd 3rd of the trip as of yesterday) is relatively unplanned so we'll just see where fate takes us.

Stay tuned for more ...

Eric & Val