Sydney

I got into Sydney a couple of hours before Rebecca, and I was soooo excited to see her. Our holiday there was fantastic - it was awesome to be able to catch up on almost 2 years worth of conversations, and just hang out and have fun. I think Rebecca was also pleased to have holidays when everyone else was working and the kids were in school.

The week was, shall we say, shopping-centric. We didn't get up to much in the evenings - we discovered a great Tapas place down the road from our apartment - it's charm was added to by the adorable waiter, so we went there twice. We also saw Spider-man 3 at the IMAX, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to see a movie with Rebecca. I'm sure our poor neighbours found all our inappropriate snickering and laughter very annoying! We did lots of dedcadent things, like have cherry ripes and coke for breakfast, and stay up until the wee hours of the morning playing music and chatting.

We did squeeze in some touristy stuff too - the Opera House, Cockle Bay, Darling Horbour, Taronga Zoo, the ANZAC memorial, St Mary's Cathedral, and a recital at St Andrews by the Town Hall. And as you can see by the photos, the weather was incredibly sunny and warm.

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It was one of those blissful holidays where everything goes according to plan. We were both struck by the friendliness of the Sydneysiders, and Rebecca was also struck by the less frentic pace of life, compared with Wellington. I thought Sydney was beautiful, and took a zillion photos of the harbour. We were left in a quandry on our last day though. As the apartments we were staying in are privately owned there was no reception where we could leave our luggage. But there was one in the place next door, so I cheekily asked if we could leave it with them for the day. The lovely man behind the counter only wanted a bottle of coke in return, and it turned out that not only was he from Rebecca's hometown of Carterton, but he was the cousin of her Dad's best mate. Ah, small world.