G’day Mates Pam & Val

We had a nice dinner with Pam and Val to wrap up our visit on Friday. They suggested a seafood restaurant on Moreton Bay called Morgan’s. We sat out on their covered and heated deck, which was pretty much like sitting inside. I had a local fish called barra. If I weren’t allergic to shell fish, I would have gone for another local catch they call “bugs”. Good food and two bottles of wine later, Val almost had to cart the rest of us out the door.

I’m really happy we had the chance to visit Pam and Val. Not only did we get a side trip to Australia out of it, but I was able to get to know my suegra (mother-in-law) and her husband a lot more. There’s nothing like being face-to-face with someone. We talked a lot. We looked at old photos. We compared notes on Photoshop techniques. It was a really good time.

Train Back to Sydney

We took a 12 hour train back to Sydney from Brisbane on Saturday. I originally booked the trip thinking it would be scenic. And it was. But there really isn’t any other advantage to taking the train than that. Looking back I would have preferred the 1.5 hour flight back down on Qantas. It’s the same cost as the train (if not cheaper). And, since our 14 hour flight to LA was the next morning, it would have been much less sitting.

Sleeping in the Sydney Airport

We got into Sydney around 10pm. Our flight was the next morning at 9:30am, so we decided to camp out in the airport. I’d never done this before, and was a little freaked out at first. I didn’t want a mean security guard waking me up and porting me off somewhere. (I’m pretty sure that would have happened if we were in Bolivia.)

Scott found a website that gives traveler accounts of sleeping in airports though, so we were somewhat prepared. Just as we’d read, all the “sleeping in the airport travelers” were ushered to one section that had bathrooms and a small amount of seating. I whipped out my sleeping bag and mat, and slept for a good 6 hours on the floor. Scott stayed up in an attempt to start fighting off the return jetlag, which was nice because he could watch our stuff too. It was great.

p.s. Sorry for no photos! I’ll post some as soon as I can find my card reader! Things are kind of a mess right now.