My feet ache! Headed out to the Sydney Olympic Park today. Started off by doing the stadium tour. Interesting to see how they've shrunk the stadium by 30,000 seats. The running track was relocated and then a few blocks of seats were removed at each end and the corners pulled in with new roofs installed. Some of the lower seats on each side are on rails so they can be moved in and out. This allows them to either have a rectangular or oval shaped pitch.

Now at the Hunter Valley Gardens after a rather achololic[sic] day wine tasting. Now having a very tasty hot chocolate of the sort you can stand your spoon up in. Also bought a few chocolate-coated goodies, so those of you in the secret location should look forward to me getting back (I have checked... They are free from alcohol!)

Random fact: Australia exports 65% of the wine it produces.

Sydney weather is weird. Another day which has started as overcast, rained on and off all morning, and now glorious sunshine!

First morning in Sydney and breakfast has improved... Good old bacon and egg roll, with a coffee, sat by Circular Quay, being watched by the gulls.

Had my first sight of the Opera House. It's so much smaller than you expect. Then again it's probably boy helped by the fact that Cunard's Queen Elizabeth is here. She's huge! The Queen Mary is due in later today. I'm told she's even bigger!

The road to Sydney!

Oh joy! I decide to head over to Fitzroy Gardens today, and within 5 minutes of leaving the hotel it's raining!

Tried finding somewhere to get a bacon toastie for breakfast, but one thing I've noticed about cafes here is the breakfast menu tends to look a little pretentious. I'd expected the Aussie breakfast to be somewhat similar to a good old English breakfast. Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places! Given the time, settled for a cheese and ham toastie at a coffee shop near Flinders Street station. Rain seems to have stopped, so may yet brave the Gardens!

Didn't sleep to well last night, but that's normal in a strange bed. Still surprisingly in sync with local time though!

Just had the traditional first breakfast of a real bacon toastie, so now off to explore!

Update: 1120
Quick wander around Flinders Street. Few photos taken. Unfortunately, the photos won't be up till after I get back to the secret location.

Ok, so most if day 2 was spent sat on a plane. Turns out it's best part of 13.5 hours from the secret stop off point to Melbourne. Arse-numbingly boring; although that probably has a lot to do with the inability of the airline industry to give us comfy chairs. Give us comfy chairs... Then we can sleep and stop bothering you all the time! At least there was a decent selection of TV to watch.

Ok, so I've decided to leave the secret location for a much needed 3 week holiday to Australia. I'm going to do my best to keep a diary of the trip, but since I have no idea what my Internet access will be like updates may be sporadic. At least I can compose on the iPod (so i apologise now for the spelling mistakes and dodgy auto-corrections) and upload as I get the net!

At the moment I have Internet thanks to the free wifi at the secret stopping off point (take note, rest of the world!) Only have the one stop so the next update will be from Oz itself.

So, if you read my last blog entry, ranting about the high costs of mobile roaming in the UK/EU, you'll have noticed I'm in Bahrain. I'm still not going to go into the reasons why - they're still boring! But on the recommendation of a friend, I find myself staying at the Ramee Palace hotel.