Thanks for your suggestions and support

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's sent me emails/facebook messages/blog comments in the last 24 hours - your support means a lot to me! I've spent the last 24 hours mulling over my options for getting home. I must admit I didn't sleep well last night... maybe I'm more stressed about this than I thought I was.

In any case, this morning I headed to downtown Sydney to check out the travel deals available from the YHA. The guy there was pretty helpful and found me a couple of different possible routes back to Ottawa, all options for under $2000. That's definitely better than what I'd found yesterday through Travelocity! The I poked my head into Flight Centre and they found me an even better deal. Also, Jen suggested that I put myself on a Jet Star flight to Honolulu and then look at whatever cheap flights I can find out of there. Hmmm... there are lots of possibilities!

I guess the long and the short of it is that I really don't want to spend an extra $1500-odd if I can manage it. So currently my plan is to try for the standby flight on Monday, and if I don't get on, I'll likely buy a real ticket all the way home. In the meantime, I still have some major research to do, to ensure I don't get dinged for the luggage I have, whatever way I decide to head home. If I fly Air Canada I'm fine - but I don't know what the baggage restrictions are for the other possible airlines I might fly.

Craziness!

So, after I'd dealt with all that stuff, I decided some more touring was in order. I was already all the way downtown, so I hopped back on the train and headed for Circular Quay, which I swear has the BEST view of any train station I've ever been through. I mean, really... as the train enters the station, it emerges from a tunnel and the passengers are treated to a fantastic view of Sydney Harbour, with the Bridge on one side and the Opera House on the other. Not bad at all! Unfortunately, when I went to pass my ticket through the gate to exit the station, the damned machine ate my ticket! Turns out I'd purchased the wrong ticket in the morning... I thought I'd bought a city hopper, which would have allowed me to bop all over downtown before heading back out to the suburbs. Not so much. I had to fork out an extra $4.40 to get a ticket back home at the end of the day. Gah.

I spent the rest of the day exploring The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney that's just under the southern side of the Harbour Bridge. There's all sorts of fun little shops and cafes there, and the buildings are really old and beautiful. I also spent a couple of hours at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was excellent. I arrived just in time to participate in a free guided tour, so I joined in, hoping to gain some better understanding of art. (I swear I really don't *get* art... but I do like looking at it.) There were some pretty cool art installations. They had an exhibition of this one artist's work - she likes to fuse aspects of the natural world with the manufactured world, which results in all sorts of odd sculptures, photos and prints. Like bird nests made of shredded dollar bills. Or strange half-creatures made of beads and PVC piping.

I was pretty pooped by the time I'd caught the train back out to Ruth's school, where she'd agreed to wait for me so I could catch a ride back to her house. Ruth wasn't feeling all that well and had a pretty hideous headache by the time we made it home, so I made dinner. I think I made enough pasta to feed me, Ruth and Bill for a week. :-)

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is on tonight, and since this is the first Wednesday in a while that I've been able to actually *watch* TV, I'm going to sign off for now and go enjoy. I can't wait for the new Indiana Jones movie to come out!

More later...