Sydney Day One

Twenty-four hours of Sydney and I'm thinking I could make this city a permanent fixture. We stumbled in at 7pm last night after a flight where we encountered an excessively grumpy airhostess and a lot of screaming children. The airhostess disliked us from the start, after Olly mucked up his order for a coke. Then she served us the world's most rancid Bloody Mary's and gin that tasted distinctly of petrol. And the plane was way too hot.

We took ages in Duty Free and then got out to find that Hagen and Hayley had made us the mother-of-all Welcome to Sydney signs. It covered the whole arrival barrier area, and said “Olly, fate bought me to Sydney but love bought you to me. Welcome to Sydney Rosie, Bea and Olly. Will you marry me?” Oh yes, on cardboard, in black spray paint. Hot. And we'd kept them waiting there for a good three quarters of an hour. It was quite the amazing reception.

After braving the might of the Barina, in 'sports mode' no less, we got to the Wharf and checked in, to find that our apartment is actually fantastic. Two floors, two bathrooms, big kitchen, sweet Foxtel, and Klimt prints everywhere. Super. And we have an excellent view of both the Navy frigate and Harry's Café de Wheels. I'm waving pairs of Rosie's of panties out the window to lure the sailors up here. She's quickly running out of smalls.

We chucked our stuff into our rooms- Olly's is a lot more palatial than ours, and headed across to the Tilbury Hotel for VB's. We followed up our beer drinking catch-up with pies at Harry's Café de Wheels, a Sydney landmark that serves pies almost 24 hours a day and is conveniently located about two steps from our apartment. The Harry's speciality is the Tiger. A beef pie, topped with potato mash and mushy peas, making a portal for copious amounts of gravy. Amazingness on a paper plate. And I don't even like pies very much.

Because Olly and I don't know when to call it a day, we followed this up by sampling anything new and different we could find at the superette. We discovered that Macadamia and Mango ice cream bars are great, Peanut Butter Kit Kats are the future and confirmed that Double Cheese Doritos are the kings of corn chips. We didn't strike any dud food actually. Australia is sweet. And we felt slightly sick. Not at all the fault of the Iced Tea, green flavour.

This morning we got up late Auckland time, okay Sydney time. We had a shocker of a breakfast at a bad touristy café by a fountain and spent the rest of the morning waiting for the poison to hit. It never did, Hagen met us and we made it to Oxford Street. We split up and Rosie and I commenced shopping.

We're now in the apartment waiting for Hayley, Jenna and Brad to come over. Foxtel is playing us the top 200 hits of the 90's. In half an hour Home and Away is on, so Rosie and I are refusing to move. According to the paper “Ryan is having trouble adjusting to married life”. Sorry for the spoilers fans. I'm behind anyway; I was too hung over for Omnibus on Sunday.

More to come, watch this space for photos too...