Think a white, sandy Christmas might be better than a white snowy one? All you northern hemisphere people can be guaranteed a very different experience if you decide to celebrate Christmas in Australia, where temperatures can easily reach over the century mark and a swim at the beach is way more likely than a snowball fight.

The nice thing is that it's not even too late, if you decide skipping the drag of family festivities is what you want. There are still plenty of packages available to get you Down Under for a few days around Christmas time, including heaps of lastminute.com travel packages from LAX to Sydney, including airfare and accommodation for a week for around $2,000 for a five-night stay. ]]> amandak 2009-11-20T14:25:26-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/28/41135/2866

Sydney Airport has just gotten smarter: passengers with modern e-Passports arriving in Sydney now have the option of going through SmartGate, which means they can go through passport control without speaking to a real person.

At the 12 SmartGate kiosks now operating at the airport, travelers can insert their e-Passport to be scanned, then answer the standard declaration questions on a touchscreen. After that they are issued with a ticket, take it to the exit, insert it there and then the camera scans them to check they are the person shown in the passport. ]]> amandak 2009-10-01T17:24:31-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/25/5530/38358

No visitor to Sydney will go hungry next month: October is the Sydney International Food Festival and there will be numerous ways to satisfy your foodie cravings.

What used to be the local newspaper's Good Food Month has now become something grander. But not too grand; being Aussies, they're kicking off the festival with a free barbecue at lunchtime on Saturday, October 3 in Taylor Square and at the same time, a not-quite-free barbecue which they're calling an Opera Beer-b-cue because it takes place near the Sydney Opera House and your A$12 ($10) charge includes a barbecue plate "matched with a beer".]]> amandak 2009-09-25T16:28:49-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/23/54316/1065

With the September equinox upon us, yesterday began talk about the end of the world, and when people in Sydney woke up this morning, a lot of them thought it was true. Massive red dust storms hit the city and made it look like something out of an apocalyptic movie.

Basically, super-strong winds from the west of the country picked up a pile of red dirt from the dry outback in South Australia and western New South Wales and then stormy weather dumped it all on Sydney and surrounding areas; when the sun shone on the dust, everything turned red. Visibility problems stopped the ferries and caused traffic chaos, and many flights were diverted to Brisbane and Melbourne. ]]> amandak 2009-09-23T08:56:31-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/9/14/41720/0129

Want to fly in or out of Australia's biggest city, Sydney? It could be tricky, because apparently there aren't quite enough people there to guide your plane in to a safe landing.

On Sunday night, a number of flights out of Sydney were canceled and many incoming planes had to fly around for ages before being cleared for landing, because of a shortage of air traffic controllers. Three of the controllers who should have been working called in saying they couldn't come to work (we don't if they were sick, or just had a really good party to go to) and Air Services Australia, who run the tower at Sydney Airport, couldn't find any replacements.]]> amandak 2009-09-14T15:18:52-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/8/26/6538/72516

Give us more interactive menus, and give them to us now! No more waiters for us, since we've found a restaurant in Sydney that lets the touchscreen do even more than the average waiter. We're talking about Wagaya in the Haymarket area of town, a Japanese restaurant where you can make your reservation by SMS, which gives you a good hint of the high-tech stuff to come.

Once you're at your table (you might have to wait, it's pretty popular), you'll find a big touchscreen embedded in the wall at your table. It does everything: you can place your order, get bigger pictures and more details about any dish you're interested in, and check how far along the preparation of your order is. When you've finished eating, use the same screen to see the bill and ask the staff to bring it to your table.]]> amandak 2009-08-26T15:19:41-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/8/12/063/68801

Rejoice, fellow Americans! V Australia hasn't forgotten about us and they're actually reversing their 4320 Twitter contest of last month to send some us Yanks down under.

Here's a little background on the contest: Only a month ago, V Australia decided to draw attention to their Sydney to Los Angeles route by running a contest to send some Aussies to LA if they'd promise to Twitter every minute of their time there. The amount of tweets, equal to the amount of minutes spent in LA, was 4320, and a trio of guys successfully completed the mission a little over two weeks ago, winning around-the-world tickets for themselves.

Now it's our turn, with 15 more days to tweet an entry on their website before they choose another group to tweet 4320 times over three days in Sydney. Obviously the opera house will be involved, and probably some shrimp on a barbie, but we'll most enticed by the promise of those around-the-world tickets. Take us along if you win? We're pretty good at twittering already.

Related Stories:
· 4320 Sydney Contest [V Australia]
· V Australia Invites American To Tweet Down Under [Adverblog]
· V Australia Coverage [Jaunted]

[Image: V Australia]]]> JetSetCD 2009-08-12T08:34:33-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/