Back Again

Six weeks on from our first flight from London. We are again back in Australia. Back in the capital of Sydney. Actually we are back in the Olympic Park. In fact we are even back in the Formule 1 Hotel. Six weeks on and the only thing that is different is that we are in room 425 rather than 426. At least the view from the window shows us the stadium from a slightly different angle.

We didn’t make it to bed until around 11:30pm last night after our meal with the gang from 1 Bluebell Lane. This meant that when the alarm sounded at 3am (robbing us of at least 4 hours sleep) we were a little tired. Mustn’t grumble though as we are onto the next exciting stage of our trip. The flight was fairly uneventful apart from an annoying tax we had to pay at Christchurch airport so that we may access the departure lounge - who doesn’t need to access the departure lounge!!. The total sum amounted to about £25 for both of us, not much, but I wish flight companies would just include these charges in their initial prices. On the flight we did try to sleep but after our ankle swelling incident, on the way to Australia six weeks ago, I set my alarm to sound every 20 minutes to remind us to move our feet about.

We arrived in Sydney, picked up the rental car and then did a big shop for supplies. We arrived in the hotel had some lunch and then literally crashed for three hours. We had both felt pretty ropey up until this point and unsurprisingly felt a lot better after.

In the evening Andrea went out for an 80min steady run around the Olympic Park, while I went for a walk. I decided to have a bit of an explore and walked around some of the main venues while also managing to see some of the scenic bush land, which circles the stadium complex and is a nice change to some of the built up areas. Overall it works really well and I managed to see loads of wildlife and interesting landmarks along the way. Also being a massive athletics fan, staying in the Olympic Park is fantastic. It invokes some strong emotions in me. Seeing the Olympic village, where the athletes would have stayed and imagining competing in one of the greatest spectacles on the planet. It gets the hairs on my neck every time.