The Great Australian Adventure Part 1 (of what will probably turn out to be far too many...)

In theory, and indeed in past practice, it is possible to get on a flight from our local airport and carry on via two changes all the way to Oz without a stopover. However the local airline has had a lot of bad press recently over 'technical issues' ( for which read 'their planes are too old and they break') and we didn't want to be delayed and missing a connection, so we decided it was safer to fly to London the day before our fight to Sydney. A very comfortable night was had at the Terminal 5  Sofitel,

 

and yes it is quite posh. The next day we went to the British Library to see the Alice n Wonderland exhibition. It being Saturday the place was packed out which made it a bit uncomfortable, but we managed to see most of it. It was mainly lots and lots of different editions which was fine by me. I have a passing interest in children's illustrators, particularly Victorian ones, and was pleased at how many of them  I recognised from their work rather than the descriptive labels. After fighting our way round that, we took ourselves off to the relative quiet of the Treasures of the British Library exhibition which was equally fascinating.

 

Then back to collect our luggage and off to Heathrow for our flight. Unsurprisingly Heathrow looked like this....

 

 

Some 25 hours, three films, one good and one not so good meal later we were here. Sydney!  Surely one of the great cities of the world.

 

 

 

 

I appreciate that looks a bit grey and overcast but it was very early in the morning. The sky blued up remarkably quickly every day, and it was the hottest I have ever known Sydney to be. I suspect moans about the heat will be a bit of a feature in these holiday blog posts.....