Yeah

 So here's the thing. It's now very difficult to terrorise an international flight. Anything more than a trickle of liquid and it is removed from your bag. If you have water in a water bottle, you have to drink the lot before being allowed to proceed. (You're not even made to drink just a bit of explosive) 

But. If you are flying internally, you can be as terrifying as you like. Bottles of water, knives WMD, you name it. I just hope the terrorists never catch on.

As usual, we have arrived at the airport woefully early. We can't help ourselves. We're like kids in a sweet shop. Not that we bought anything. (I'm not going to let on that we bought sushi, it's too embarrassing) Afterwards, we sat down and dug a fruit cake out of the rucksack that we started days ago. It cost $7 and when it was complete, you could hardly lift it. It's a good job we're lightening it further before hoping our rucksack counts as 'hand' luggage. 

But airports are so interesting. Today, Melbourne Airport has laid on extra flights to Sydney because of the big match on Saturday. (I forget what it is) This means there are several men travelling in newly acquired shirts, drinking alcoholic beverages in large clusters. But get this, they are not behaving with the sort if testosterone charged behaviour which you might expect in the UK. Sure, they're loud. They're having a good time. But at no point are they aggressive or intimidating. You feel like you could sit amongst them and they would just say G'day mate and carry on talking. It's also interesting to observe that there are large age ranges amongst the groups. This ties in with the attitude Australians seem to have to older people. (A category we now consider ourselves to be members of.) We have found the service when in shops etc to be respectful and friendly. They even laugh at my jokes - such is their determination to be respectful. I've given up trying to be funny in the UK. Perhaps it's as well that I don't live in Australia....

It's a short hop from Melbourne to Sydney but the flight wasn't without excitement. Kate went to the loo and overheard cabin crew talking about a landing in extreme turbulence. The pilot had already warned us and kept flicking the seat belt sign hoping we all got the message. I don't really know about flying a plane but I thought he did a good job. He came in at full pelt and thrust it into reverse the moment we touched down. 

After picking up our cases (which we're always happy to see) we had to work out how to catch the train to our air bnb. We went underground and along came a double decker train. Believe me, this is about as exciting as it gets for Kate. If Sydney offers no more excitement, this will be enough. 

We found the air bnb which is a bedsit in an apartment block. We then had to follow a set of instructions sent to us by the host to access the place which felt like the opposite of one of those 'escape room' games. Going down to car park basements, collecting keys from a combination lock mail box, using lifts with a fob to activate them and finally reaching the front door of our 'compact' but well equipped room. The whole thing, kitchen, shower room and bedroom is smaller than the patio at our last bnb. But we like it. We're pretending we're students again. We have vivid imaginations.

We needed food. There is a massive array of shops to choose from right outside the door. We're right in the buzz. We're with it...

The type of rain we encountered in this very short walk was such that when we got back, we had to change everything. But we don't care. We're students. We're cool, man.

We only took one photo all day. But what a photo. Come on, it doesn't get any better than this.



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