Off to Australia!

I left on a Wednesday night red eye to Sydney, a 14 hour direct flight from SFO on United. Surprisingly, I slept about 8 hours on the flight, and after watching one movie, and doing a bit of reading, the time flew. I was ready to get off that plane though....

I am going to Australia to visit my friends Brett and Michelle who relocated to Sydney from SFO about a year ago. Joining us is our friend Lorenzo, who also lives in SF. So, I arrived at their house mid-morning on Friday, which happened to be a fairly dreary and cool day. I spent my first day on vacation finishing up some work, catching up with my friends who both worked from home that day, and fighting to stay awake on Friday night.

We went to a happy hour in Manly with some of their work friends, and I had the opportunity to reconnect with Andy, a former colleague of mine from London who now lives just down the street from Brett & Michelle and is working for the same company again.

Andy and I at Sugar Lounge in Manly

I crashed on Friday night around 10:30pm and after a glorious 10.5 hours of sleep, I spent Saturday in Manly enjoying coffee at a beachfront cafe, the Manly Surf Competition and a lazy afternoon at the apartment before getting ready to head back to SYD airport to fly to Perth.

One of the cool things in the surf competition was the tandem surfing. It's like pairs figure skating but all on a surf board. Here are a few snaps to illustrate....

This is a shot of a really cool sculpture in Manly between Manly beach and Shelly Beach dividing a saltwater pool and the ocean.

Tonight we cooked at the house, ate dinner on the balcony in the sunshine, and now we are headed to the airport to go to Perth for a week exploring Western Australia! More posts to come next week!