Sydney and Good bye Australia

Firstly just to let you know that all photos of Adelaide and Sydney can be found on sophiehenry.com - Sophie has put lots of my stuff up in a folder called Steph's photos. There is also a separate Sydney folder, although some of the pictures of Guy, Ann and Thomas are in my folder too. Enjoy!

Now back to Sydney. As I left off Guy and Thomas had come to pick me and Sophie up at the airport. It was amazing to see my Big Brother after all this time. Can't believe that it has been 10 years, and we have all promised each other that it won't be another 10 years before we see each other again.

It was great to catch up and go back to Guy & Ann's for a spot of lunch and a good catch up. Both Sophie & I felt at home straight away. After lunch we went to Manly beach and looked at the market (so many pretty things! hard to resist), wandered down to the beach and had a lovely dinner (yummy mussels). After that, being a Sunday night, it was back home with Thomas off to bed past his bedtime and us chatting away until late (actually that is a general theme for our 3 nights at the Congertons, lots of talking untl far too late for the poor Guy who had to work the next day).

Monday, Sophie & I headed in to town. Felt weird to be on a bus heading in to a city but we recovered. We had great fun going round the shops (ok I admit it, I did spend a little money, I couldn't help myself) before going to Doyles for a lovely seafood lunch overlooking the harbour. Sophie & I managed to track down some pressies for Guy, Ann and Thomas, and felt like we had accomplished something when we found ourselves sat on a bus in rush hour for what felt like hours. These are the things that I do not miss about cities!

That evening we had a lovely meal of steak and salad, with the good wine flowing and a lot of chatting (as I said that was the theme for our trip). I can't explain how great it was to have so much time to catch up with Guy & Ann.

Tuesday was much the same with a later start but a bit of a potter in town, a catch up on the old e-mails before going back for spaghetti bolognaise and more lovely wine at Casa Congerton. Can't believe that it was our last night! I was going to be saying goodbye to Guy, Ann and Sophie in the morning (with Sophie heading to Thailand while i headed to the Cook Islands).

Guy, bless him, was up at 5.30am to make sure I was awake. A quick shower, some last minute packing and a mug of tea later and it was time to head to the airport. I said goodbye to Ann & Sophie at the house (as Sophie's flight wasn't until late afternoon), hoped in the car and Guy drove me all the way to the airport (good thing about a really early flight, he could do that before work, was still above and beyond the call of duty though). Trying not to get too emotional and promising that I would be back before too long, I headed off for my first flight to Auckland before getting connecting flight to Rarotonga.

So the 3rd May I left Australia, briefly dipped in to New Zealand before flying to a small Polynesian island called Rarotonga, only 32 km round and in the middle of the Pacific. I crossed the date line and arrived in Rarotonga on the evening of 2nd May (weird to think that at that time on the 2nd May the first time round, I was eating spaghetti at Guy & Ann's house).