Sydney Olympic Park - 21st Jan

Today was our last day in Oz and our flight to Singapore was at 4.30pm. To make the most of the day we decided to visit the Sydney 2000 Olympic Park which was on route to the airport.

We left the YHA bright and early and were at the Olympic Park ready for the 11am tour of the ANZ stadium. This was the Olympic stadium, used for the athletics and for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2000 games, but has since been modified with it's running track being removed and the two mamouth stands at both ends modified and reduced in size. In the past it was also called the Telstra stadium and is where Jonny Wilkinson won the 2003 World Cup for England with that famous drop goal in the last minute of extra time.

It made me feel really excited that London's hosting the 2012 games and hopefully we will have a chance to go and watch some of the events. The stadium was already planned before Sydney won the Olympic bid and was ready ahead of schedule (let's hope we can achieve the same). It is now used for Football, rugby, cricket, Australian football and concerts. It was cleverly designed so that they can alter the seating to accommodate the oval shape of a cricket pitch or the rectangular shape for football...all in the space of 8 hours.

After the tour we went for a swim in the Olympic swimming pool. It felt quite exciting swimming some lengths in the same pool used by the likes of Thorpe even if I was somewhat slower and rather less streamlined.

After this it was time to head to the airport. In the end we cut it a little fine as it took longer than expected to drive across town and find a petrol station near to the airport. By the time we checked in and went through security there was just enough time to buy a bottle of water and some sun tan lotion for Vietnam. The latter was twice as expensive airside than at the supermarkets and more like English prices.

The flight was all on time and the only hic-up was at Singapore Airport where our bags didn't show. It turned out they had been checked through to our connecting flight the next day to Vietnam, even though we'd specifically told the check-in assistant in Sydney airport that we needed them. The assistants at Singapore were useless and their walkie talkies even more so. In the end they sent us to the Lost and Found department where we had to queue with a number of other Qantas flyers who'd lost suitcases and wheelchairs. Finally someone had the initiative to get someone to go and get our bags....about 1 hour after landing.

Enjoying a James Squire 

No bags

We then headed to the free shuttle bus to the hotel. At first we were told we'd missed the bus and would have to wait an hour for the next one but when we went to take a look it was still there so we jumped on it and headed to the hotel for our 13 hour stopover in Singapore.

With such a short stop-over in Singapore we'd deliberated whether we should be mad crazy tourists and dash round the city's highlights (although we'd been before)….we even looked into a night at Raffles (way too much!!) but in the end we opted for a nice hotel with a free airport shuttle where we could relax a bit before the Vietnam tour.