Good morning!

It's bright and early over here in Sydney, 8:30am precisely, and we've been up since about 5:30 (not wanting to take any chances whatsoever with getting on this flight to LA). So I'm sitting here in the international terminal with Mum, which is currently being refurbished and thus has not much in the way of food. So we just shared a pre-packaged egg and bacon roll (FYI…I'm not really sure scrambled egg is the type of thing that should be consumed when it comes pre-packaged…) and I now have a couple of hours to kill so I thought I'd give you a little bit more of a detailed run down of the second half of our Sydney trip!

The first night that we got down we were both so exhausted from the stress of getting the passports/visas/flights organised, that it was a relief to just chillax in the hotel and make our own dinner and do pretty much nothing! The next morning we were woken by a call from Bri…because when I flew up to Brisbane I had left one of my suitcases in her apartment, at which point neither of us had realised that she would be at school til 9 on Thursday then on the set of All Saints (I know, tough life ey!) all day on Friday before flying out at 6am on Saturday. Which was quite the dilemma particularly as World Youth Day was playing havoc with the public transport system. So we raced over to Bri's to try and catch her before she left, and said a fairly rushed goodbye before heading back into the city with my luggage.

We then spent a little time sitting in Circular Quay having a coffee down on the wharf and listening to some buskers in a brass band. It was a beautiful sunny day and with all the people milling around (and many more red and yellow WYD backpacks dotted throughout the crowd) there was a really great atmosphere. There are police everywhere at the moment as well, trying to make their presence known while the Pope is in town, and like us they were sitting enjoying a coffee and listening to the band.

When we got back into Manly that afternoon, Mum went off to meet up with her mother's group friends, and I went for a long walk down Manly beach. I couldn't believe the number of people on the beaches, and the number of people swimming! In July! Although by the time I'd walked to length of the beach and back, I was down to a t-shirt and the sun was warm, so I guess all the foreigners from colder parts of the world would have thought it perfect beach weather. The next morning I went walking again and ran into the girls having coffee down along the beachfront and joined them for a while at the Manly Beach Café.

And that pretty much catches you up in a little more detail to where we were at in my last blog! This morning despite all our preparedness we did manage to nearly miss our Shuttle…but we're now here, sitting near our gate, ready to board and all is well! It's been lovely to here from those of you who've emailed/facebooked so far, and I hope you're all safe and well and having a ball wherever you are in the world! This is my last blog from Aus…because this time tomorrow morning (LA time) I'll be at Disneyland!!! For which I will never ever be too old =D

Love and big Aussie hugs,

LIVxo