sydney!

Well, I've gone and done it again - went radio silent for months at a time without a peep or picture of my daily happenings.  My apologies.

To be fair though, you haven't really missed much.  After starting the new job, the last two months have been a whirlwind of work, sleep, work, and dinner & movie nights at home recuperating from the week - not exactly the makings of exciting blog posts.  

That being said, this past weekend was a tad bit more exciting than most as Stefan and I happened to be in Australia.  

Yes - you read that right.  We flew 15+ hours straight each way to spend 4 days in Australia.

But before you go judge us for being beyond extravagant (because I would say this trip appears to fall into that category), you need the full scoop: 

Since Stefan had to be in Hong Kong one week and then Sydney the next for work, his firm asked if he would stay the weekend in one of the two spots to avoid on a business-class flight home.  Said firm would put him up in the Four Seasons and he'd get a little mini-vaca.  Since Stefan travels a lot for work (we're talking an average of 2 weeks a month, often internationally!), he's amassed quite a tally of miles so we decided to see if we could get me a ticket to come out and join him as well.  Luckily for us, we were able to get me a business class flight (!!) for a mere 40,000 miles.  Seemed like a no brainer.

I hopped onto a plane Thursday night and arrived into Sydney at 7:30am Saturday morning.  Stefan also flew in from Hong Kong that morning, so we headed to our hotel together to drop off our bags.

I was already in heaven when I saw the view from our window:

While the weather wasn't fabulous (it was overcast and rained off and on Saturday to Monday), we made the most of it and had a wonderful time.  Saturday we walked the entire city - seeing all the must-see sites.

We went up the highest tower in the city to get a lay of the land.

And then when the rain started to really pick up, we headed inside to a cozy restaurant to enjoy some ribs + Australian Shiraz for lunch.

at the wine and meat company

love that they gave him a bib :)

One of the best things about our hotel was that they gave us access to their executive club floor which had delicious breakfasts with made-to-order eggs as well as free drinks and canapés each evening. 

We obviously took full advantage.  Every single night.

For dinner, we headed to Monopole - a wine bar with excellent food in a trendy part of town.

from here

We sat at the bar and watched as they prepped their small plates in front of us, allowing us to choose what we wanted based on what looked the best (all of it!).  The staff was super friendly - so much so that when we ordered a bottle of wine that happened to be out of stock, they offered to open both of the bottles we were debating between and let us have whichever we liked best.  Highly, highly recommend it when you're in Sydney next!

Determined to take full advantage of our limited time in the city, we then went out to scope out the bar scene.  

Our fav spot of the night was Eau de Vie, a secret little cocktail bar tucked in a secret room behind the real bar of a trendy Sydney boutique hotel.  Finding the place required special instructions from our waitress:

from here

We stayed out until 3am (!!) before retiring home to get some rest for another day of exploring.  More details to come.

xoxo

KK