Still, we did a good job. First a few pictures from the plane:

I picked hotel by Darling Harbour, so this is where we started from, just next to Chinatown:

it was chinese new year that weekend

We then went to visit Market City, it's huge:

We then went towards the gardens:

From there, we continued to a vista point for seeing the Opera and the bridge, and went through a park where you could feed wild cockatoos. They sure were more fun than pigeons, Australia rocks!

We eventually got to the peak where we could take pictures:

And we headed to the opera house itself via the government house gardens:

circulair quay

We finished the evening at the rocks, before it started pouring rain:

Since the weather had turned to crap, we went to see Sea Life Aquarium by Darling Harbour. Honestly I really expected the place to be kind of a tourist trap, and it was actually quite good, especially considering the constraints of the location. It definitely beats the aquarium by Pier 39 in San Francisco:

nice pincher

the battle of the lobsters

The Australian Dugong sure looks like a Manatee, but it lives in salt water only

By then, it was late, we were exhausted, and it was pouring rain, so we went back to our hotel:

The next day, we had the morning to spend, before having to go to the aiport early afternoon:

view from our hotel

not a bad window view

We went to check out the Darling Harbour zoo, which was also much better than planned:

pretty birdie

wallaby

those remind me of what I've seen in Jurrasic park :)

even their pigeons are colorful

this really is a beautiful bird too

I tyipcally never get the tourist trap pictures in those places, but they so exceeded my expectations, that I gave them the money:

and after that, we headed towards google, to go check it out and have lunch with friends:

nice view from the google patio

You can see more pictures of the Sydney Office.

After lunch and fun at google, we went back to the airport, for Jennifer to enjoy her first class seat, and me my business one. We stopped by the airline lounge on the way there:

business was not bad either, almos tas good as 1st class IMO.

So, Dirk, Linus, Jennifer and I booked a week at Lord Howe Island just after Linux.conf.au 2013 in Canberra where I spent a week (canberra's diving isn't known to be the best :) ).

Picture of diving are on the Diving at Lord Howe Island page.

Our first plane wasn't big, but still decent:

Our 2nd plane to the island, was a Dash 8-200, currently the only plane that can fly that distance and back on full tanks (in case it can't land and has to go back to Sydney).

the runway is just about 3000ft, enough for a small prop plane, but nothing else

We stayed at the Leanda Lei, all in all a nice place with one bedrooms, and the staff was as helpful as they could be. Unfortunately, the internet provider, clearnetworks.com.au, had failing equipment (router kept rebooting due to failing power supply according to my voltmeter) and couldn't be bothered to give a rat's ass and fix it durign the entire week. In the end, I wipped out one of my own wireless routers, and setup a wifi network that we were able to use for the rest of the week.

geeks getting much needed internet :)

Our one bedroom was nice:

the island had big spiders everywhere

Unfortunately, we arrived in the middle of not so good weather. It wasn't pouring rain, but the winds were very high and the better dive sites are in locations that you just can't dive when there is too much wind. The first day, we just didn't dive at all (well, Linus and Dirk did, and saw very little due to stirred up water). Jennifer and I used the opportunity to go hike the island instead.

with surf like that, diving wasn't worth it

got some nice views

Eventually we made it to the top of Malabar Hill:

And from there we hiked down to North Beach. It was filled with mutton birds that weren't very good at walking and flying in high wind :)

Later, we went to the gulch:

Unfortunately the island had a plane crash at night many years ago, it just clipped the top of the hill, and you can still see parts of the wreckage along the trail we took:

While Heron Island had more birds, there were plenty of fun birds to see on Lord Howe too:

Oh, right we were talking about diving. I put this on the Diving at Lord Howe Island page.

Dirk and Linus had to leave 2 days earlier than us, so we had a self-assembled dinner together before they left:

And before we knew it, after 6 days of diving, it was over.
The last night, we signed up for 5 course sunset dinner at Pinetrees:

And the next morning, it was time to go back: