We took a red eye flight from Bali direct to Sydney, Australia. When we landed it was a little bit of a relief. This was the closest feeling to being home that we'd had in a very long time. It's a little ironic considering how far we actually were from home, but nonetheless, it felt very similar to landing in the U.S., but everyone had accents.

We chose to stay at the Wakeup hostel, which turned out to be a great location for getting around the city, and neither of us had ever been so excited to do laundry, which the hostel also had available.

Excited to have some clean clothes!

We were also very excited to see some familiar faces. After we checked in to our hostel, our Aussie friends Rob and Emma picked us up to show us around the city. We had met Rob and Emma during our tour in Ireland back in July, and had all become pretty good mates (as the Australians would say).

With our friends Rob and Emma

Cerveza time!

We love these two!

Unfortunately, our second day in Sydney, the weather was horrible. We decided to explore the city on foot and got blasted by wind and rain. We did however get to see Darling Harbour in the evening after the weather had calmed down a bit.

Scott getting some good use of his rain jacket.

When the hot Australian sun finally decided to come out, we joined a group of people from our hostel for a walk from Coogee beach all the way to Bondi beach. We found that Sydney had a unique vibe that felt kind of like San Francisco and San Diego's love child. Later that evening we met up with our friend Rob and his girlfriend at a local pub to have drinks and play trivia. We weren't so great at some of the Aussie trivia, but nonetheless we won a free pitcher of some pretty terrible beer, but it was all good fun.

Bondi Beach

We also walked down to the Harbour to see the iconic Harbour bridge and the Sydney Opera House. We didn't get to make it out to Manly Beach, which is supposed to be amazing. However, we plan on checking it out when we return to Sydney for a couple days at the end of our journey.

While we were in Sydney we also mapped out the rest of our trip which entails a two week road trip up the coast to the Great Barrier Reef, a trip to Melbourne, a drive down the Great Ocean Road, and sixteen days in New Zealand. So far we love Australia and couldn't be more excited about our trip to New Zealand, and we will be driving a right side drive car…so watch out Australia!

Just some Kanga-Bangas we saw at the grocery store:)

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