Merry Christmas to those of you joining us from the United States!

Monday evening (December 18th) we took off from LAX on a direct flight to Sydney with United Airlines. We knew it was going to be a long flight, scheduled at 15.5 hours. Our longest flight had been SFO to Delhi back in 2019 at 16 hours.

We had brought books, downloaded shows, and had a lot of options available through United’s in-flight entertainment. I don’t sleep well on planes, and these seats somehow felt smaller than our last few international flights. This flight was no exception – and it made time crawl by. Throw in a bit of turbulence – and we were even more grateful once we had landed!

We landed around 9:00 AM on Wednesday, December 20th. It had been super warm the days leading up to our arrival, but naturally, once we arrived there had been a cold front and it was raining. We were so excited to have made it to Australia – the rain didn’t bother us much anyway.

We made our way to our hotel and crossed our fingers that we would have the option for early check in. Our prayers were answered, and I laid down to take a quick nap. Unfortunately for Andy, he had some end of year payroll to run and he got to work on that while I slept.

We had booked the Sydney bridge climb months ago – the company takes you to the top of the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge. They go rain or shine – but the last thing we wanted to do was climb in pouring rain. We called and paid a small fee to have it switched over to Friday.

We made our way over to a nearby pub, it was a ton of fun people watching. Lots of people were dressed up in Christmas costumes! We made our way back to the hotel and stopped to take a few pictures.

We were really tired – so we were trying to stay up as late as we could. I think we barely made it until 9:00 PM before we fell asleep.

Accommodations: Four Seasons Sydney – booked with our AMEX hotel credit

Up Next:

• Breakfast at Grounds at Alexandria
• Sydney Opera House tour
• Board our cruise!