Australia

Yay Hooray we've moved onto our next country.  We had a wonderful 4 hour flight where we were served a meal (we both chose fish with couscous, a salad, a roll, and a chocolate mint) with a drink of choice and an ice cream bar. Each of our seats had a TV in the headrest in which we could watch one of 14 movies or a variety of tv shows (including a news segment specifically for the airline).  It was the best four hour flight I've ever taken.

Upon arriving in Sydney we took the train to Central station and walked around the corner to our hostel, which we had booked at the Sydney airport using their free wireless internet. After settling in we headed off to the grocery store where we bought three bananas for $5 and other foods for breakfast, lunches, and a dinner. I was quite shocked to find out how much bananas were and will not be buying them again in Australia if they continue to be this expensive.

The exchange rate is $1AUD = $1.10USD which really stinks.  The actual number price of most things are about the same as NZ or the US, excepting the bananas, but the conversion rate is worse so everything is more expensive. This means we've had to adjust the budget we hastily tossed together to reflect the fact that we will not be able to spend $120USD a day and still wish to leave Sydney and see other parts of the country.  But that's okay because SE asia will be cheaper than we budgeted.
In the morning we bought a multipass ticket for four attractions, the Sydney aquarium, the Sydney wildlife center, the Sydney Tower, and Manly aquarium.

The Sydney aquarium was full of all sorts of wonderful sea creatures such as the platypus

and penguins

and sharks

Next door is the Wildlife center where we encountered a crocodile

koalas

and kangaroos

Then we found a McDonald's with free wifi and had a chocolate milkshake while browsing the internet for a couple hours.  We bought plane tickets to Melbourne on Wednesday morning from Tiger air.  The idea is to stay in Melbourne for several days then fly to Cairns where we will buy a hop on hop off bus ticket back to Sydney and take a little more than a week to make our way back.  We spent a majority of the morning and a couple hours on the internet figuring out this plan, let's hope it sticks.

Dinner was a pre-made refrigerated soup to which we added rice to make it last longer. Tomorrow we head to the tower.