I love to travel. Whether it’s for vacation, for work, or just to get the heck outta town… It’s fun. Back when I was doing more consulting I used to travel a lot more frequently (and to some very undesirable locations) than I do now. For example… Detroit in January… Minneapolis in 
February… Orlando during the dog days of summer.
So on the one hand, I’m glad that I’m travelling less for business and more for pleasure. But occasionally the stars will align perfectly and I’ll have the rare opportunity to do both at once. Those are the ones you need to jump on.
Recently I got sent down to Sydney for 3 weeks to work out some issues down there – mostly Oracle related, and mostly due to process (not software) problems. 
When I heard I was going down there I told Julie and we frantically tried to line up people to watch the boys while we visited the lower hemisphere. She was able to join me for 1/2 of my trip in Sydney and see all the coolness Sydney has to offer.
Since I was working most of the week while I was there we just got to meet up for meals and pub crawls at night.
We stumbled upon Phillip’s Foote down in the Rocks area of Old Sydney and fell in love with the place. It looks like a run-down pub out front, but when you go through the back there’s a huge grotto area with grills built into the rocks. They have a butcher shop there and you can grab a huge piece of meat and throw it on the “barbie” and cook up your own meal right then and there.
It was awesome.
