Happy 19th Birthday Castell!
Up early to help Alice sort out breakfast for Castell’s birthday. We had croissant, Alice made pancakes, and the cake Elsie and I had made cake with orange juice and cups of tea. Cards were opened – thank you! Elsie gave him the present that she had wrapped with me last night. Happy birthday was sung but we couldn’t light the candle so he couldn’t blow it out.

  
At about 9 am Castell went off to pack and check out.
Elsie wanted me to take her to school so I took her across to nursery. There was a minor upset when we got there but she let me comfort her and when I left she was happily telling Kyle what she had had for breakfast! When I got back I spent time tidying up the breakfast stuff. Castell returned with his bags and promptly left to spend some of his birthday money. I finished packing and putting extra stuff in his suitcase and he arrived back just in time to help me weight them and check the weights.
Then the company was there to pick us up and take us to the airport. It was about an hour’s journey as there was a drop off on the way. Fortunately, all our bags went through check in and the woman at the counter was very helpful as I got all flustered and nearly left my diary and my carry on case behind. We then had lunch in the airport – a salmon sandwich and cup of tea for me and a Hungry Jacks for Castell. I tried to do some blogging but gave up as I couldn’t concentrate.

The journey was uneventful and we landed in Sydney earlier than expected.
The Cab to the apartments cost $32 dollars which was more than I expected. We checked in and took our stuff to the room – it was really swish. Neither of us could get the wifi working and the staff who came to help couldn’t do it either. We freshened up and took another cab to Sydney opera house – another nearly $30 dollars – charging as soon as we hailed him.
We got to Sydney opera house with about 45 minutes to spare and collected the tickets. Eventually, we found somewhere to get a drink and a sandwich to share that wasn’t too busy. There was about 10 minutes to sit down to eat and drink. Across the water there was a huge ocean liner that decided to leave port while we were there – it was like watching a huge apartment. building do a three point turn (narrowly missing int Sydney harbour bridge) before sailing off.

  
  
The stairs up to our seats crashed my knee – there were about 100 stairs! Wil Anderson from 7:30 – 8:30 after a warm up guy who started at 7. Wil was quite funny but there were a lot of Australian references that neither of us understood. We did laugh at the bits we understood! It was all finished at 8:30 and we had a long walk down the stairs to get out.

We decided to go back by public transport so we strolled (I hobbled) to the station at circular quay. I brought a ticket and Castell topped up his opal card and we went on a double decker train. The station was supposed to be about a 20 minute walk but we walked at least 30 mins. On the way we got some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and an opal card for me for when we came back to Sydney. Cas went back to the flat while I went to Coles for some supper. Fortunately, when we got back the wifi was working and I watched a little tv before going to bed!

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