AUSTRALIA!!! Travel and Day 1

WOW! What an incredible vacation for Jared and I! We had sooo much fun and I now have the fun task of remembering it all!

My mom flew in from Washington on Friday and we took off Sunday evening, November 22nd. We left our house at 5:30 and just as we were pulling out of the driveway it started to snow. By the time we were on the freeway it was a full on white out! Thankfully it wasn't sticking to the roads, but the wind was blowing so hard that it was really hard to see and made me: 1 - very nervous, 2 - very grateful I wasn't driving, and 3 - very anxious about my mom driving back in this storm with the kids (not that I don't trust my mom, but the snow was coming down HARD!). Thankfully we made it to the airport just fine, our flight was still scheduled to leave on time, and my mom got lost going home (b/c all the road signs were covered in snow!), but made it back just fine!

Our first flight was to LA. We boarded on time, but then just sat for almost an hour while we waited our turn to de-ice. I don't think I got more than 5 hours of sleep per night for the 4 nights prior to our trip so I really wanted to fall asleep as soon as our plane took off, but I made myself stay awake until we left LA. Once in LA we had about 2 hours before our flight to Sydney, and again I just wanted to sit, but figured I should walk around as much as possible since I'd have 15 HOURS to sit! So Jared and I did "laps" around this small corridor until we finally took off at 11:50 pm.

The flight wasn't too bad, except for my body not agreeing at ALL with the "dinner" they fed us. Was it the airplane food? Was it the fact that I was eating a meal around 3 am? Probably a combo of both, but about an hour after we ate, Jared fell asleep and I spent the next hour in the airplane bathroom. Lovely. So about 5 hours into our flight, I was finally able to get some sleep. About 3 hours probably. After my experience with dinner, I skipped the breakfast they offered and was grateful I had packed some dry cereal :)

So we left Salt Lake on Sunday at 7:40 pm and we arrived in Sydney on Tuesday morning around 9 am. We skipped Monday all together :) When we got there the travel agency/tour guides that Auto-Owners had hired out in Sydney met us at our bus and took us on a slight detour around the city and back to our hotel. We had lunch here, at the Altitude restaurant in the hotel, and then were able to check in to our hotel room.

We stayed at the Shangri-la hotel in downtown Sydney. The hotel and rooms were really nice, but the view from our room was just incredible!!! Straight out our window was the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge!

Not our exact room, but pretty similar and that was our view!

To try and avoid some of the effects of jet-lag, we changed and then took off for a walk around the harbor. We walked around the Opera House and surrounding areas.

Yes, I look absolutely fantastic after traveling for too many hours to keep track of and no shower :) But I had to have at least one picture of me from our first day!

That evening Auto-Owners provided us with a dinner at the hotel. They had tons of "fancy" food, but to be perfectly honest, we weren't all that impressed. Jared did try the kangaroo meat on a skewer though :)