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Tags: Airport News / Sydney Travel / Customs / Immigration / Technology / Passports / → All Tags

Facial Recognition Technology Will Check You Out At Sydney Airport

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.

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Tags: Food Festivals / Sydney Travel / Australia Travel / Events / Food Travel / → All Tags

Sydney Takes 'Shrimp On A Barbie' Seriously During International Food Fest

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".

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Tags: Weather Hell / Sydney Travel / Weather / Travel News / → All Tags

Sydney Duststorm Gives Preview Of Armageddon

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.

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Tags: Air Traffic Control / Australia Travel / Sydney Airport / Sydney Travel / → All Tags

There'll Be Delays At Sydney Airport If They Don't Find Some Air Traffic People

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.

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Tags: High-Tech Restaurants / Technology Travel / Interactive Menus / Sydney Travel / Food Travel / → All Tags

Australian Restaurant Lets You Order Your Waiter Around By Touchscreen

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.

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Tags: Travel Contests / Twitter / V Australia / Sydney Travel / → All Tags

Tweet Every Minute Of 3 Days In Sydney To Win Round-The-World Tickets

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]

Tags: Events / Sydney Travel / Chicago Travel / Boats / San Francisco / → All Tags

This Weekend In The World: Retro Cars, Shiny Boats and Polynesian Hip Shaking

· Chicago
Now that we've been talking up Chicago all week, we might as well mention that the city is king when it comes to neighborhood festivals. This weekend brings "Retro On Roscoe," an excuse for classic car owners to buff up their beauties and take them for a cruise. There'll be over 50 clasic vehicles, lots of live entertainment, antique vendors, and the Windy City Chili Cook Off happening both days in the Roscoe Village neighborhood. It's free to attend but those chili samples will costs a few bucks, so bring cash.

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Tags: Sydney Travel / Buildings / Australia Travel / Travel News / → All Tags

Sydney's Darling Harbour Gets Construction Work

Any tourist who's visited Sydney has spent time in Darling Harbour, but if you go back again in a couple of years it's going to look a little different. There's some major redevelopment going on along Darling Walk and come 2011, Sydney's hoping it will attract a bunch of extra tourists down to the harbor.

Much of the construction work will take place on the old site of Sega World, the short-lived amusement park that closed down in 2000 (after only four years of not-so-thrilling rides). The redevelopment will cost A$500m ($400m) and includes a huge bank building plus more exciting stuff like retail shops, cafés, a water play area and a children's theater.

According to the local Planning Minister, the new design connects this part of the harbor to the city much better and they hope this will help bring more tourists and locals down to Darling Harbour. We think it's usually too busy as it is, so we're not sure if we're for or against this development, but it's only two years until we'll be able to find out.

Related Stories:
· $500m Project to Transform Sydney Site [The West]
· Sydney Travel Guide [Jaunted]

[Photo: Chewy Chua]

Tags: Sydney Travel / Heritage List / Amusement Parks / → All Tags

Sydney Saves More Sightseeing Spots Forever

Mention Sydney and everybody can think of the Sydney Opera House or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but in fact for those who've spent any time in Australia's largest city, there are dozens of other iconic places that say "Sydney" just as loudly.

Three of these are about to be listed on the city's heritage register, which will mean that they can't be extended or demolished or get "unsympathetic renovations". Our favorite of the three is the Luna Park theme park on the other side of the bridge, but the Queen Victoria Building (cool old building, great place to shop) and the Sydney Town Hall (a handy meeting point) also deserve their new status.

This is all good news for us tourists, we figure, because more of Sydney's high points will definitely be there whether we show up this year or not for a decade. Nice to see a government doing something we actually like.

Related Stories:
· Sydney Icons on Heritage List [The West]
· Sydney Travel Guide [Jaunted]

[Photo: Predrag Bubalo]

Tags: Celeb Travel / Miranda Kerr / Orlando Bloom / Private Planes / Sydney Travel / → All Tags

Life is Good for Miranda Kerr Who Can Fly Private to Sydney

This month’s Rolling Stone cover girl, Miranda Kerr, is in Sydney, Australia today where she rang the bell that kicked off the David Jones Half Yearly Clearance at the David Jones Elizabeth Street Store.

Miranda (who was not wearing an engagement ring despite rumors she is engaged to Orlando Bloom) arrived in Australia via private plane yesterday. It’s not surprising she can afford to board her own personal jet considering Forbes ranked her 8th on its list of the world’s top-earning models.

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Tags: Worlds-Coolest-Pools / Hotels / Sydney Travel / → All Tags

A Teacup With A View Of Sydney Harbor

Last one in's a rotten egg! We're finding the best places in the world to stick our toes in this summer (or next winter) for our World's Coolest Pools map. Know of any pools we must check out? Let us know.

If you want to swim in Sydney, you're better off trying one of its famous beaches than the pool at the Park Hyatt Sydney. We may not own a bathtub bigger than this rooftop pool, but we're fairly sure we've seen a few, and the endless turns would just be murder. But you don't enjoy the Park Hyatt pool because of its actual water, just loll about gazing at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and saying to yourself, I'm in Australia, mate!

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