I hate cold weather. It is one of my defining characteristics. So you can imagine my delight: when I walked into the airport it was 38 degrees on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of winter. When I walked out of the airport, it was 83 degrees on a Tuesday morning in the middle of summer. Hello, Sydney!
We spent our first few hours after getting settled in our hotel walking around the areas known as Circular Quay and The Rocks. But the jet lag hit us around noon and we needed to spend most of the afternoon chilling out in our room. We didn’t nap; the goal was to stay awake until regular bedtime.
We Ubered out to Roslyn’s cousin’s home for dinner. Roslyn thinks she had met Carol about 50 years ago, but she’s really not sure. Didn’t matter. The welcome could not have been warmer. Lots of food, drink, and cousins from ages 7 months to 72+ years. They were all such good company, I was sorry for the evening to end. But the children had to get to bed, their parents had to go to work today, and I was starting to fade. We were back at our hotel by about 9:30, and I’m pretty sure I was asleep by 10:00 (which explains why I couldn’t write this blog post last night).
Almost every Australian we’ve talked with so far has complained about the heat wave here. Our reply to each and every one of them has been, “We like hot. We came here for the hot.” The worst of the heat wave is occurring in the middle of Australia, and we’re spending all our time here on or very near the coast.