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I ended up being just really tired during the morning on Wednesday, and never made it to Darlinghurst. I just wandered around some of the area east of the hotel, including Hyde Park, stopped and got some Indian curry chicken and chick peas for lunch, and then changed and hung out in the Executive Lounge reading newspapers until it was time for my shuttle “bus” to the airport. The Airport Connect was an older van that seats 10 if they are very friendly people. But at 1/4 the price of a cab, it was a good deal.

I was surprised at how small the Qantas domestic terminal is at Sydney Airport. It is only 17 gates. To put this into perspective, Southwest Airlines has about 15 gates at Nashville. But it made it easy to navigate. Qantas flies a mix of planes on the Sydney-Melbourne shuttle, so I picked a 767 and got a reasonably comfortable aisle seat. The only problem was that my throat was killing me from a constant thin post-nasal drip.

Once I got to Melbourne, there was a transit express bus that went nonstop to the Southern Cross train station, about seven blocks away from the hotel. Bus then taxi would be in the $27-$30 range. I just didn’t feel up to it, and splurged for the $47 for the cab ride faster to the hotel.

After I get settled in, my second cousin Steven and his wife Betty arrived, and we went out for dinner in an Italian neighborhood. The night flew by, and after a brief driving orienteation of the key central sights, I was deposited back at my hotel room at about 1am.

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