I’ve been to Sydney 3 times now but never with kids. I’ve got my own strategies for getting over jet lag and have come to the conclusion that, for adults at least, jet lag really is to a great extent, mind over matter. Setting your watch to destination time the minute you get on the plane and trying to think your body into that time goes a long way to mentally preparing you for your arrival.
When I did finally arrive in Sydney, I made sure that I had an action packed day ahead. Breakfast at coogee beach followed by a trip to the Rocks market. Head started rolling so made my way down to the Sydney Opera house and watched some street performers (definately advise re-visiting sites when your eyes aren’t rolling in your head – quite a different perspective!). The point is that by packing lots of diffenrent things into that first crucial day, you can manage (with relative ease) to keep trucking ’til 9 / 10pm which on every trip has meant that I have woken up at a normal time the next morning and with no jet lag hangover.
And now we find ourselves on the brink of emigrating to Sydney with our children (2 weeks to go). But how do you cope with kids and jet lag? I doubt the same strategy is going to work. We have four kids aged between 10 and 5 and it’s hard to imagine anything more horrific than dragging them all around Sydney’s top 10 ‘must-do’s’ when they are dog tired. We do have a house to go to but is that going to make it more difficult to keep them awake, thus pro-longing the agony of jet-lag into the New Year? There must be someone out there who has got a tried and tested method for coping – and I’m willing to pay good money for it…