Kyle's recap: Day 1

After the 24 hour period that is required to travel from Nashville to Sydney, we finally arrived at 6:30a. local time (3:30p. Nashville time).

A little bit about the flight: We actually had a good flight (terrible food – think hospital food at 30,000 ft.). Kim slept about 10 hours while I settled with my 6-7 hours. The was one guy across the aisle from me who slept with one eye open and that thing looked at me the entire night. I was able to watch several movies and overall it was as pleasant as a 15 hour flight can be.

Upon arrival to Sydney, we collected our bags and breezed through customs without so much as having our bags checked. This is where things became interesting. We walk up to the rental car counter and get squared away in our Hyundai mini-car (think Dodge Neon). The icing on the cake – they were out of GPS units (Looks like navigation with a good ole-fashioned map was in order).

Surprisingly, driving on the wrong side of the road on the other side of the car wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined. We crawled through Sydney’s terrible rush hour traffic like pros and finally made it to the outskirts of town and onto the freeway. On the freeway we saw the first Kangaroo of the trip – roadkill!

Zipping along the freeway, we made it to the Hunter Valley in about two hours and got checked into our room. Considering it had been close to 36 hours since I had showered, this was the first thing I went for. Feeling refreshed and not too tired yet, we grabbed a quick lunch at the pub next door and headed out to explore.

Our adventure consisted of tasting at 4 wineries and taking in the amazing scenery before the fatigue set in. This area of Australia reminds me a lot of TN, two lane roads with a lot of open fields and cows. Once I started yawning it was game over. Back at the room, I tried to stay awake until 7 (yea right) but only made it till about 5:30.

Kim had fallen asleep at 4:30. Thus far, everything has been great.

Disclaimer: I tried to post this on our actual first day. Internet access wasn't the best in the Hunter Valley.