Son of a Gun!

Wednesday 7th December 2016 - Cairns to Sydney.

A pleasantly early start to get to Cairns airport.  Our flight was at 10am so we were waking before 7am to always be 'on the safe side'.

The girl on the Tigerair checkout upgraded us to have extra leg room at no extra cost.  It's my lucky day.  Our previous internal flight was just over 2 hours long and the circulation in my legs had almost stopped by the time of our arrival....and that's without the person in front reclining.

Sorry about the knees (I get them from my Dad).  Yes, I was flying in shorts....I haven't worn trousers since we have been in Oz  and it was still in the high 20's when we left Cairns.  We anticipate a rather cool 25 C in Sydney, I better wrap up warm when we arrive.

This was our view as we came in to land.  You can just see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

We caught a train into the Centre and walked to our apartment which is probably best described as South Central, near Moore Park and close to Sydney Cricket Ground.

The apartment is spacious to say the least, lounge/kitchen, separate office room (I don't know how we managed without an office!) bedroom and bathroom overlooking Moore Park Golf Course.

View from the balcony.  The general area looks pretty good with a few restaurants and shops.  We had great excitement when we saw an Aldi about 200 yards away so quickly did some food shopping.

The next bit is a quite a story....

Just after we set off on this holiday I got a Facebook notification from a friend called Iain Hodgeon.  He was a friend when I grew up in Simonstone.  We have had a bit of contact about 10 years ago but nothing since.  Anyway as a result of making him a Facebook friend I was contacted by another friend from my Simonstone days called Paul Gunson who I haven't seen since the age of 18ish.  By a complete coincidence Paul Gunson has lived in Sydney for the last 30 years.  We have arranged to meet tonight!!  Isn't it amazing how somethings work, especially the algorithms of Facebook.  Arguably it's perhaps one of the only good things to come from Facebook.

Paul came over and picked us up at 6pm and took us to Bondi Beach.  Not a bad start to our visit ehh!  I even put on trousers for the occasion.

We had a lot to catch up on.  A lot has happened since school, scouts, playing cricket for Read (near Simonstone) and since being chased around Turf Moor (Burnley FC if you weren't aware) by away fan hooligans in the late 70's.  Paul was very much as I remember him....I have to say so as he will read the blog......I mean it.  

We had a meal at this restaurant with a view (rather an understatement).  It was the Bondi Iceberg Club and we had to sign in.  This was later evening time and their were lots of surfers still in the sea till it went dark.  Our meal was lovely and we had a really pleasant time.  Paul was really chatty and gave us lots of good tourist advice too.

To cap it all, he gave us a driving tour around the city centre at night.

Not a bad photo of the Harbour Bridge from Lunar Park. 

I'm sure you know where this is!  Lots to explore in the next few days. What a great start to our visit.