Arriving Down Under

We can now check a few things off our list:
       - Being in the Southern Hemisphere

       - Visiting Australia

       - Our longest flight yet - 13.5 hrs from LA to Sydney

       - Sitting in the new United Business Class on the Upper Deck, facing backwards (for me, anyway.. Jason has already had that privilege)

        - My 100th Blog Post!

We arrived in Brisbane, Australia yesterday morning - Tuesday morning for us, Monday even for all of you reading it in the US.  We completely skipped Monday on our journey here.  Sunday evening we had a 4 hour flight from Chicago to LA and then just enough time to get to the gate to board the flight straight to Sydney.  Thirteen and a half hours later, we landed and had about 2 hours to hang out in the airport until our 1.5 hr flight to Brisbane.  The top picture is of Sydney as we were taking off to Brisbane.  It was right at 6am when we landed in Sydney from LA and was still dark, therefore not allowing me to take pictures.  Although we would love to explore Sydney on our way out, I doubt we get that opportunity as they want us in Chile directly after.  Darn the bad luck....

 

Yesterday we walked around a lot so Jason could see some the of city and for us to try and stay awake.  We slept a lot on the plane and were all ready to go until later in the afternoon.  It was all we could do to stay awake through dinner.  We gave in about 7:30 knowing that we'd probably be up in the middle of the night, but we were wrong.  The 5am alarm clock woke us up.  We went to breakfast, Jason went to work and here I am updating you on our visit so far.  I know, rough life.  We are directly above the Executive Lounge which has wireless and can get a good signal in our room - and better yet, it's free, thanks to our long stays in Marriott and Jason being a Platinum Member.  I have no clue what we'll do when we have to travel without all these perks, ha!  We're getting spoiled, may as well take advantage of it now while we have it.

Okay, so back to walking around.  We saw plenty of old buildings and one was even turned into a Casino.  Awesome.  There's a ferry that travels up and down the river but we took it directly across yesterday to a beach and park.  The beach was small and looked man made.  I think maybe they pump the river water into it?  Basically it just looked like a dirty pool with sand on the sides.  Sixty-five degrees is considered their winter here, so only 2 people were in the water.  I have plenty of things on my agenda while here, but I plan on not doing much today.  Jason went in for safety training and to meet the people at the refinery.  If he has a partial day off, it'll probably be today.  I'll get out for a bit, but come back in case Jason does get the afternoon off.  I didn't have too much on Australia to update you about, but once I get out more, I will have plenty to blog about.  Stay tuned, mate.