SFO-SYD via BNE

After a brief stop in San Francisco, we got on QF74 Wednesday night for the hop to Sydney. A mostly uneventful flight until about an hour out of Sydney when we made turn towards Brisbane. The pilot announced that due to fog in Sydney and our fuel situation, they wanted to refuel at Brisbane before trying to land in Sydney. By the time we landed in Sydney (about 9:00 a.m. AST) the fog had cleared.

This is the first time I've encountered this situation (after maybe ten transpac flights to Sydney since 1999). One upside: because we arrived in Sydney after all the other transpac flights, there was no line at customs and immigration.

We spent most of the day decompressing after the 18 hours on the plane. We walked around Circular Quay and The Rocks for a bit before heading back to the hotel. On the way we stopped in a Virgin Mobile store to get my SIM card replaced. I'd bought two cards earlier, while Lisa's worked fine my phone number was allegedly assigned to another card. Since that won't do, they just gave me a new number. I'll send the number to the few Aussies who need it, otherwise I'll forward my US number to this temporary number once Skype gets its act together.

We did get a chance to drop in on the restaurant I'm throwing my bash at, Level 41. Here's some photos from the room:

Now continuing the jet lag decompression by watching a mix of Sydney TV sprinkled with blogs.