On the way back

Sunday 28th February

We're back in Kuala Lumpur spending the day lazing in a room at an airport hotel after arriving at 5am from Sydney, due to set off to Dubai and home at 01.10 tomorrow morning. It's just started with a forked lightning across the sky thunderstorm - hope it doesn't last long.

The Air Asia X flight was on time, baggage efficient and cabin crew pleasant, but it's tough sitting in the same kind of seat as you fly to Spain in for over 8 hours. Especially when the fasten seat belt sign was on for most of the flight because of turbulence. Next time I think we'll spend a bit more for a normal flight. It's Emirates for the final two legs.

We spent most of our final day in Sydney doing what a lot of Aussies seem to do, get the ferry to Watson's Bay and wander around a bit. We looked at a Pelican on the beach, admired the queue building up for Fish and Chips at Doyles and climbed up to look over the cliffs at The Gap. We walked along the cliff top for a while but didn't go all the way to the South Head, so missed out on the gay nudist beach which you reach from the appropriately named Camp Cove. We'd started out with a walk along the shore to Circular Quay all the way round Mrs Maquarie's Point (where the Governor's wife used to go to look at the harbour) and Bennelong Point where the Opera House is. There were lots of preparations going on for Mardi Gras next weekend.

Final view of the icons

Modern Sydney, looks like most other big cities worldwide

We decided not to walk over the top of the bridge

... or try another expensive way of looking at the harbour

We'd have missed this parrot in someone's back garden in Watson's Bay

... and this pelican on the beach, he was looking for scraps from the chippy 

The view from the cliffs at The Gap

Looking back to the city.

First decent shot of an Aussie spider, this one was about 4in across the legs

Watson's Bay is pretty, with ferries arriving about every 10 minutes

Posting a card to Linda and Ross in an 1856 Sydney post box