G’Day Mates!

Hello from beautiful Sydney Australia!  We have embarked on another family adventure and moved to Australia for a “Semester Abroad*”

Made it to the Boxing Day Sydney to Hobart sailing race start… but couldn’t get a non silly picture out of this crew after a massive bike ride to the north head in 85 F sunny weather!

Long story short – we moved to Sydney (Manly…well Queenscliff, steps from Freshwater beach to be specific) for the next 7 months.  We are planning to return to the US before school starts back in the US for our kids next fall. A few weeks into our time in Sydney we are LOVING all that comes with an adventure that involves moving to a new country.

We are super excited to dive into local life here, while exploring Sydney and Australia over the coming months.  We got a killer spot on the beach, have been spending a ton of days with some of our best friends from our time in London (Philippe and Linda) and have been pretty successful at aggressively avoiding sunburns.

Surfs up Dudette’s

A few frequently asked questions we got as we were planning the move:

Why Sydney? We have been planning to move to a new country with our kids for the past five plus years, specifically before the oldest gets to middle school age. We were working on Amsterdam, Lyon or Munich then caught up with our Sydney based friends last January. They “showed” us around their new house, the harbor and their sunset views. On our way to dinner that night we turned to each other at the same time and said “lets do Sydney”.  We have been here a few times (including with kids) and once we looked into the move, the big items (school, housing, visa) were not that complicated and while we don’t have a language adventure, we are traveling to places that are new for our family (been to Tasmania anyone??)

What are the kids doing? They start school in Manly at the end of January.  Until then it is a lot of beach time with a few camps (sailing, climbing, Taronga Zoo…) thrown in during their second summer holiday in the last 6 months.

Are you really coming back to California? Yes, we are. I promise!

How did you find your house? Loooots of online searching, emailing rental agents and a “facetime” tour of our spot from Philippe.

Whats the best part? The beach. The beach is the best part.

Do you surf? Well we are learning… more on this later.

Can we really come and stay? There is room at this inn! DM us for more details and dates as they are filling up fast

How is the ice cream? Its amazing. Especially Messina

Do you call a popsicle a popsicle? Nope, they are called Ice Blocks

Will you and the girls come back with Australian Accents?  Dont you hope so?!!

More posts to come soon including: the intricacies of moving to a new country with 3 kids, a quick trip to Adelaide and the Barossa wine region, Beach Life, New Years and the Holidays in Sydney and our upcoming trip to Melbourne to visit more awesome London friends and check out the Australian Open.

But for now we will leave you with the view from our front porch…

*oh you saw the asterisk? Wondering what it could possibly be alluding to? Is it that our time is technically more then “a semester”? Is it that we may stay longer? hmmm well guess you need to follow the blog to sort it out! 

Wines, Waves, and Wieners (as in the cooked meat kind)

After exploring downtown Melbourne it was time to check out some of the outlying areas.  Our first adventure was into the wine country.  We were very lucky to have our friend Nathan to drive us around the region for the day.  Thanks again Nathan!

The Australian state of Victoria is home to numerous wine regions including the famous Yarra Valley.  We opted to check out the Mornington Peninsula, which is located along the southeastern edge of the bay upon which Melbourne sits. We chose Mornington Peninsula because it is known for its Pinot Noir, and Dennis is on a Pinot streak these days.

We found a great app (Wineries of Victoria) which provided details on all the Mornington Peninsula wineries, including their location, contact information, opening hours, and the ability to create a map and route with your selected wineries (note: I have since checked and found similar apps for other wine regions including Napa Valley, this is a great tool for planning a wine tour anywhere in the world!).   We opted to begin at Ten Minutes by Tractor and then had a rough idea of where we wanted to go from there but planned to ask around along the way to get local advice on where to find the best Pinots.  This was how we toured the Marlborough Region in New Zealand and we found there that the cellar door workers often know the region (and the best rooms) better than anyone else!

Ten Minutes by Tractor, named so because the original three family vineyards joined together to create the winery could be reached by a 10 minute tractor ride, (very tricky naming) was a big hit.

We asked them for recommendations for our next stop, looking for places with great pinot noir, and they suggested Paringa and Stonier.  We enjoyed both, but Paringa especially hurt so good on the old wallet.

Merricks General Wine Store was also an amazing find.  I can’t remember who recommended we stop here, but wow, such a treat.  Not only do they have free tastings of wines from 3 separate wineries, but they also have an amazing restaurant.  We had a lovely time siting out on the vine-covered deck, licking our plates clean.

Back in Melbourne that evening, before heading down to the beaches, we got the chance to meet more of our friend Nathan’s family at his cousin Bret’s family birthday dinner.  It was an authentic Australian BBQ

You can never have enough meat!!!

The next day we headed down the coast with Nathan and Libby to Fairhaven beach, which is just beyond Bells beach (famous for being both a great surf spot (thanks to Point Break!) and home to Quicksilver and Rip Curl surf brands) to spend our last night in Australia.   We had a fun afternoon at the beach pretending we knew how to surf and then had a great final night just hanging out, grilling some dinner and working our way through the wine we collected on the Mornington peninsula the previous day.

Inviting waves in Fairhaven
A kookaburra even came by to wish us farewell on our final night of the trip.

Not sure who was more intrigued with the other: the Kookaburra or the girls

On the way to the airport we stopped at Bells beach to watch the surfers and take in one last sunny Australian morning.

So Long Australia!  It has been a fantastic trip and we are ready to hit the snow in the US for a few final weeks before returning to reality!

Melbourne: the other city by the bay

Melbourne is one of those cities for which we have heard lots of good things.  Some people said it was Australia’s version of San Francisco, some said its more like New York, some even said don’t bother going there, Sydney is the only city worth a visit in Australia! Not surprisingly we arrived not quite knowing what to expect.  By the time we left, Melbourne joint our elite list of top five cities outside the US*

We spent two days to exploring the city of Melbourne and another two exploring the wineries and beaches just outside.  One of the things that got us excited about Melbourne was the Melbourne Bike Share program.  Similar to the programs in London (fondly known as Boris’s bikes) and around most European cities (and now some US cities including DC!) it costs about $2 for 24 hour access to the bikes which are free to use for unlimited 30 minutes intervals.  The catch in Melbourne: Australia has a strick helmet law and all riders, regardless of age, must wear a helmet while cycling at all times.  This is a slight problem in downtown as most people are not carrying helmets in their tourist day pack or in their laptop case.  Melbourne has addressed this by creating a network of places where you can rent a helmet for about $3/day.  Luckily for us we were able to borrow some helmets from local friends and we had no problem finding available and conveniently located bikes all over the CBD (central business district).

Melbourne is relatively flat and has great bike trails all over the city and super wide bike lanes on most of the major roads through the CBD.  Much less stressful then cycling in London!

Our first stop: the Melbourne Tourist Information site on Federation Square.  We haven’t make enough use of the tourist information sites in the Australian cities we visited thus far, instead relying on predominantly on Lonely Planet, but we probably should have.  The Melbourne TI did not disappoint! We found a ton of self guided walking tours, complete with maps and historical information, got information on the best bike paths and even picked up some tips for our future wine country trip.

Surfs up!

Next we were on our bikes and off to The NGV International Art Museum.  The major art museums in Melbourne are free to enter and host a cool collection of Australian and international art.  Well worth an hour or two, and it had just started to rain as we entered, so great timing.

But that is not rain streaming down the window, this is the view out the waterfall wall, which is a giant glass wall with water streaming down.

Walking from the Art museum we headed towards the Lanes, which are the alleys in the CBD filled with characteristic restaurants, cafes and shops.  On our way we stopped at a café in the middle of the Yarra river for lunch.  Very cool spot, great haloumi cheese burgers and a great view.  Not to mention a unique setting!

Riverside seating for everyone!
First stop – Degraves coffee shop.

One sign that Melbourne is serious about coffee: every coffee came with latte Art and a great presentation!

Melbourne is known for a few things amongst Australians: the people are way into sports (especially Australians Rules Football), are connoisseurs of great food and have very high expectations regarding coffee.  Our self-guided Lanes walk took us around the CBD through many of the cities lanes, each with its own set of unique shops, some trendy, others with a lot of class.


Our favorites were Centre Place, Degraves Lane and Hardware Lane.

Now that we were loaded up on coffee and had walked/ biked our way across the city it was time to check out the Melbourne brews scene.  We peddled east towards 222 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy and the Little Creatures beer hall. 
Little Creatures is a brewery based in Palmyra, Western Australia. We had sampled their beer at other Australian stops, but the beer hall is the environment where it was meant to be sampled, and it just tastes better here!

The next day we were back on the bikes and off to see The Melbourne Shrine.

The Shrine of Remembrance is the Victorian memorial for the wars of the past century in which ANZAC troops have served, similar to the Cenotaph and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the UK and US.   As none of the Victorian soldiers who lost their lives in WWI were returned to Australia, the Shrine became the site of remembrance and mourning for their families.  We had a very good free tour of the memorial where we learned about the design of the Shrine, history of the ANZAC service and more facts on the city of Melbourne (which was meant to be the second city in the British Empire, and was the fastest growing city in the world EVER in the late 1900’s during the gold rush).

Keeping honest to our pattern of finishing hot days with beer we then ventured to the Belgian Beer Garden.  Melbourne has many beer gardens (take note San Francisco, this is something we are missing!), but the Belgian beer garden had been highly recommended (a favorite Melbourne spot of our local friend Nathan’s), and lived up to its reputation. 
While it was fairly quiet on Tuesday at 3pm when we stopped in, it was clear that this is an awesome place to spend a hot Saturday in the sun.

Finally we were off to St Kilda.  St Kilda is the “colorful” neighborhood of Melbourne that is full of characteristic coffee shops, eateries and cake shops.  Lots of cake shops.
Of all the cake shops, our friend’s Nathan and Libby swear by Monarch, a St Kilda institution since 1934

After a walk through some of the coolest streets in the area we headed to the St Kilda beach and pier to watch the kite boarders taking advantage of what was becoming a windy day.
.

This guy was showing off for us

Big air!

So far: Melbourne has deserved its reputation as one of the worlds top cities.  Now its on to the wineries and beaches to see if it can keep the title.

*Dennis’ list of top non US cities: London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Amsterdam.  Robyn’s list: Berlin, London, Seville, Istanbul, Melbourne.  And in case you are curious, some of our top US cities include SF, Boston, New Orleans, Washington DC and Denver.

Sydney Wedding Weekend

We are back in Sydney for the weekend to celebrate our friends, Philippe and Linda’s wedding.  (Yes, if your counting, this is our third stop in Sydney on this trip.)  We are also excited because our Melbourne based friends, Nathan and Libby, are flying in for the weekend too and we haven’t seen them since last fall in London.

We started the weekend off with a trip to Fort Denison for lunch.  My colleagues back in London were kind enough to give me a gift certificate to the restaurant as a parting gift, and we were definitely looking forward to this meal!

Fort Denison was once part of the Sydney Harbor fortification and is located on an island in the middle of the harbor, only accessible by ferry.  Luckily it was a beautiful day so the harbor views both on the ferry and on the fort did not disappoint!

Fire the cannons!

Then we finished up the afternoon at the Opera Bar outside the famous Sydney Opera House

And then we walked through the botanical gardens back towards our hotel, with a quick stop at the fattest tree we have ever seen (first visited here.)

The next day, the main event was Philippe and Linda’s wedding, however, this didn’t stop us from having a hearty lunch of famous tiger pies at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels.  Tiger pies are meat pies covered with mashed potatoes, mushy peas, and gravy.  While I can’t say these are what I was craving on a hot summer day…I will admit they were tasty.


Tigerrrrific!

At last it was time for Philippe and Linda’s beautiful wedding.  Check out the view and charm at their reception venue located on Sydney Harbor.

Check out that view! Can you spot the Opera House??

Rustic charm

And we loved the personal touches at the wedding too.

Philippe and Linda wrote personal notes to every guest

Lots of traveling the past few years we had missed out on a number of weddings back in the US.  But this only meant that our dance moves had been all saved up and we’re ready to go!  Unlucky for you (or lucky…) there are no pictures of our dancing, so you will just have to trust us that we were the best dancers out there (well after the bride and groom of course!)

And the evening ended with a grand sendoff for the happy couple.


No my head did not explode! Its just a sparkler silly!

Even the Kookaburra came to say hi!

KOOO KOOO KOOO KAAHH KAAAHH KAAHHH

But for Nathan, Libby, Dennis and I the weekend was not over yet. On Sunday we headed out to Bondi Beach. Turns out the rest of Sydney had the same idea as us. Check out these crowds!


Even the water was crowded!  Surfs up… more like crowds up!

We decided to walk along the beach out to the cliffs at the end of the beach.


And here is a shot from the end of the cliff point, you can almost forget about the crowds from here…

Bondi also had this cool beach side pool. This is actually a feature pretty common at Sydney Beaches, pretty cool. I have never seen anything like this in the US. Does anyone else know of one?  Maybe somewhere in Southern California?

Our verdict on the famous Sydney beaches…. Well we didn’t make it to Coogee which we hear great things about, but Manly definitely beats out Bondi any day.  Great restaurants (Bondi was pretty much all chain restaurants), much cooler transport to get there (ferry on the harbor vs. confusing and gross old train and bus combo), better surf waves and smaller crowds!

After our third visit to Sydney we felt like we had seen it all and we were ready to say goodbye. Melbourne here we come!

Turquoise Water, White Sand, Friendly Kangaroos

This is Jervis Bay in a Nutshell.  Maybe add sleepy towns and no crowds and you have the complete picture.

We headed to Jervis Bay and stayed in Hymas Beach at the recommendation of friends, a decision which was solidified by Lonely Planet’s description that it has the “whitest sand in the world.”   Now, while I can’t say I know how you would measure such a thing as “whitest sand in the world” without several years to dedicate to traveling to every single beach and some expensive lab equipment, but I can say that the sand in Hymas Beach was very white and lovely.



Opening to the bay is between the two heads you can see on the horizon

And we can’t forget our cottage.

We stayed at the Hyams Beach Seaside Cottages, again at the recommendation of some friends, and they couldn’t have been cuter.  There are 7 or 8 cottages in total; all painted a different pastel color. Ours was decorated inside to match the outside (light purple) and I imagine that the others must be as well, with a view across the street and down to the beach, and came with some chirpy neighbors.  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:




The parrots were cute, but a bit loud at 6AM!

Jervis Bay has many other beaches stretching along its shores, many of which sit within the Jervis Bay National Park at the end of its Peninsula.  These are a few that we visited.

Murry Beach – this was a long bay side beach, similar to Hymas, but within the national park so surrounded by lush foliage and an occasional kangaroo visitor.



We had to share the beach with a few other two legged friends too

Cave Beach – Likely named for the large cave in the cliff on one end of the beach, this beach was on the ocean side beach with waves that would have been great for surfing if we had a board.  Luckily they were also great for swimming.  We didn’t take any pictures of this beach while we were down there, but here is shot from the hill above.  We also found a few more friendly kangaroos.

Hole in the Wall Beach – With similar creative naming to Cave Beach, this beach is likely named for the hole in the rock outcropping (aka wall) at one end of the beach.  We weren’t that impressed with this beach compared to the others because it was more your typical bay beach with algae/sea weed/etc. and less pure crystal clear waters, but it still had some nice features.  Again, we slacked on the photo taking, but we found a nice spot to hang out by passing through the “hole in the wall” and walking down the beach a bit further to a nice secluded spot where we had a picnic.

After three weeks of beaches, beaches, and more beaches, now its time to head back to the cities and see more of Australia’s cultural side.   Sydney CBD and Melbourne coming up next!

Beaches, Waves and Friends

Back to Sydney!

We stopped off in Sydney for a few days before heading down south to explore even more beaches.  Summertime is the best time to enjoy two of the things Sydney is famous for: beaches and waves.  We also got to catch up with some friends (from both Sydney and California) while we were here which we had definitely been looking forward to!

We stayed with our Friends Linda and Philippe in Manly again which gave us plenty of opportunities to check out the Manly beach scene. Good timing on our part: this summer Manly was home to the 2012 Australian Surf Open which overlapped with our visit.

These are the stands they erected for the contest, the contest is just in the early stages here which explains the lack of fans in the bleachers…

Here is a look at what is going on in the surf…

Speaking of surfing, Dennis also took this opportunity to practice the new skills picked up in our surf lesson the week before.  I kindly stayed on the beach this time to snap some picks… or maybe I just didn’t feel like getting all sandy…



He looks like a native

We also took at short hop up the coast from Manly to Palm Beach via the area known as the “Northern Beaches.”  Not to be confused with the Palm Beach located in Florida… Palm Beach is pretty cool, its located at the top of a peninsula so there are beaches on two sides, one an ocean beach and one a harbor beach (and the peninsula is only 300 or so meters wide), both are popular but very different as you can see in the two pictures here.

Ocean side

Harbor side

Another highlight of this stop in Manly was that we got to catch up with our friends Johnny and Anna who have been traveling the world since last spring.  The stars aligned and our itineraries overlapped again while we were both in Sydney (the first time was while we were on a weekend getaway to Lake Como from London last fall, Johnny and Anna talk about that here in their blog – scroll to the end for the part about bumping into us, its a very small world indeed!)

We all met up at a cool brewery/pub/restaurant (we are so predictable) and then headed for dinner at a popular Manly pizza spot called Beaches.  The thin crust pizzas were amazing…my mouth is watering just thinking about it again.

Nice work Dennis…sneaking the last of the wine while the rest of us smile for a picture!

Dennis, Robyn, Anna, Johnny, Philippe, Linda, and Simon (Linda’s brother)

A Sydneytastic high five!

Lady Elliot Island

A trip to Australia would not be complete without a visit to the Great Barrier Reef.  The Great Barrier Reef is a big place, stretching over 2600 Kms from the Tropic of Capricorn up to the equator and is composed of over 900 islands so we couldn’t see it all, but we were pretty happy with our decision to spend our reef time at the eco-resort on Lady Elliot Island.

Lady Elliot Island is very small (you can walk around the entire island in about 45 minutes) and only reachable by small planes which land on a tiny runway that runs through the island.

Our three day visit to the island got off to an exciting start when Dennis got to sit in the co-pilot seat on the way over.

We had decided to stay in the eco-cabins (the cheapest option) because it saved us about $300 per night vs the water front cabins with AC, but $300 per night adds up when your traveling for 4 months!!!  We were happy with our choice and concluded that it gave the experience a summer camp feel.

Of course we went top bunk and saved the bottom for the luggage!

A typical day on the island involved several snorkel trips, reef walks, lots of reading, and sunsets.  We also saw a sea turtle come up onto the beach and watched her lay her eggs and attended a shark talk where we learned that more people die from incidents with vending machines each year than incidents with sharks.  That little stat helped us keep our cool when we spotted some small reef sharks snorkeling the next day!

Here are some pictures of the highlights:

Snorkeling ( Note that these pictures don’t begin to do the snorkeling sights justice!  This was hands down the best snorkeling spot we have ever been to which tops Indonesia, Hawaii, the US Virgin Islands, Sicily, Thailand and other areas we visited in Australia):



A school of squids!

Beach time:

Our little spot of shade

Reef Walking at low tide:




I dared Dennis to pick up a sea cucumber after we left the reef walk guide… I didn’t think he would do it

And I definitely didn’t think he would kiss it too!

Sunset picnics:



That is actually the full moon which held us back on star gazing but was a huge help in searching for nesting turtles



Note the snazzy footware!  The resort provided crocs for walking around the island and into the reefs to protect your feet from coral injuries.  Not such a great look, but certainly saved us from coral cuts

Turtle egg laying:

Turtle tracks leading up from the water – one set means they are still up on the beach, two sets = too late.  Luckily there was only one set!

Here she is, digging her hole to prepare for the eggs.  This was after about an hour of hiding on the beach while she dug the first part of the pit and can be easily disturbed.

Here is a close up so you can see the golf ball sized eggs.  This turtle laid over 100 eggs!  The entire thing from walking out of the water, laying the eggs, filling the hole and walking back into the water took about 3 hours.

Other wildlife:


The sea birds were nesting on the island

And at the end of the trip, guess who else got to ride in the co-pilot seat??

Brisvegas

Brisvegas is how they (or maybe just people from Sydney and Melbourne) refer to Brisbane within Australia, I didn’t make that up myself and I don’t completely understand why Brisbane is like Vegas, but its entertaining all the same.

This is a quick little photo summary of our quick stop in Brisbane. The overwhelming sentiment about Brisbane is that it was really HOT there. Maybe that is why its like Vegas? Because Vegas is really hot? There has to be more to it that I am missing…

We took the bus in to central Brisbane from our (extremely HOT) campervan park on the outskirts of town. When we steped back out of the bus at the terminal we were melting and found this spot, The Fox, which looked like it had a nice roof top deck where we could grab a cool drink.

The thumping music we could hear from across the street should have warned us off, but like I said, we were really hot and thirsty. They were even checking IDs and stamping arms on a Sunday afternoon. It was that type of place.

At least it was breezy and had a nice view…

And provided some interesting people watching. Some parts of the fox made me feel like I was back at University again…the beer even tasted like Bud/Miller/Coors light.

Next we walked towards the ferry terminal…on the way we walked through the botanical gardens.

Once on the Ferry we had a wonderful sunset ride along the river…

Now I am confused, is this Brisbane or London?

Now Approaching the CBD!

And then we wrapped up the evening with dinner at The Vietnamese Restaurant (yes that is really the extremely creative name of this place), a BYO Vietnamese restaurant. We brought along our old friend Villa Maria.

Funny we would find a BYO restaurant so soon after our 3.3 wedding anniversary experience, however, I am not sure this meal was worthy of the Mahi, so glad things went the way they did 🙂

Ok, enough of this city business, lets head back to the beach now!

Can anyone explain this Brisvegas thing to me??

3.3 year anniversary

Back to Australia!

After cool summer temperatures in New Zealand we welcomed the Australian summer heat, which greeted us upon arrival in the Brisbane airport.  Our plan was to pick up a new campervan and head to Byron Bay and explore the beaches along that stretch of coast.

We arrived in Byron without a real plan on where to stay (park??) so we headed to the tourist information office for a map and a campervan park recommendation.  Byron has two beach side campervan parks, we had poked our heads into the first, Sun Holiday Park, and it hadn’t impressed us so we took the tourist information guy’s suggestion to head to Clarks Beach Caravan Park.  This park was definitely nice, however, its beach side location sure made it popular.  We secured the second to last site on the property for the night.  Lucky?  We hoped so.

(yes, that is a double rainbow!)

Byron bay proved to be a beautiful mile long white sand beach with a hook at the end creating great surf waves.

However, after having all of the New Zealand’s South Island basically to ourselves, we felt a bit cramped by the crowds so we decided to head down the coast a few miles to Lennox Heads the next day.

Here we found a beautiful 7 mile long beach, white sand, and zero crowds.  Perfect.

While there we had a few exciting adventures including a day of surf lessons and celebrating our 3.3 year anniversary.  Random? Yes, but I’ll explain.

Contrary to stereotypes, Dennis the East Coast Native is the (wish I was a) surfer, and I, the native Californian, have never felt the call of the waves.  What’s wrong with boogie boards!?!?! Ok, I admit, not nearly as cool walking down the beach with a boogie board…  Dennis was anxious to clock some time on a board while we were in Australia but considering I had never tried I decided we needed to take a lesson.  Both of us found the lesson very helpful and learned a few new tricks, even Dennis who supposedly already knew how.  So just like skiing, even if you already know how to get up, you can still learn something new from a lesson!  Despite the waves not being ideal for a beginner (i.e. they were not small) even I got up on the board for a few seconds.

Our next adventure involved celebrating our 3.3 year wedding anniversary.  Why would one celebrate a 3.3 year anniversary you may be asking yourself?  Well… it all started in Marlborough when we picked up a fantastic bottle of Pinot at Mahi which was too good to drink with just any meal.  By this in the trip point we had been carrying the bottle for a few too many legs of the journey and it was burning a hole in our suitcase so to speak.  However, the problem was finding a nice restaurant that would let us bring our own bottle of wine.

We had been trying restaurants along the way in New Zealand to ask if they would allow us to bring our own bottle of wine.  With zero success we changed our tactics.  We called the top two restaurants in Lennox Heads (which we had discovered was a trendy beach town by now with a nice restaurant selection), and asked if we could bring a special bottle of wine.  Initially they both said no, but after I explained that we were planning to celebrate 4^th our anniversary (rounding up just a bit…) and we had bought this special bottle for the occasion one of them eventually said yes.  While Dennis glared at me for my elaboration (he is a rule follower) I made the reservation and decided we had to go all in!

Overall it was a really fun night, better than a normal anniversary because there are no expectations for it to be super special so there is lots of upside.  They gave us a great table, we had a great meal and it felt like a special night as if we really were celebrating a more significant milestone than 3.3, and best yet, they didn’t even charge us corkage!

And one more photo just for fun…

blogging in action

Sun! Sweet glorious sun!

Welcome to Sydney!

We were greeted at Sydney airport with two things we were looking forward to: a sunny day and Bert, our friend Linda’s dad, who picked us up and gave us a scenic tour of Sydney on our way to our friends Philippe and Linda’s flat at Manly Beach.  We have heard a lot of good things about Sydney and the harbor, and the city earns its title as the Harbour City.  There is just soo much waterfront space, and just enough hills for fantastic views all over the city.

View from Philippe and Linda’s flat
When we got to Manly we dropped our thing (took quick showers to clean the airplane smell off) and hit the beach!  Traveling to the opposite hemisphere in the middle of your hometown’s winter never gets old.  There is something pretty fantastic about hopping on a plane and getting off in a completely different season – especially when you are leaving winter greys for long summer days!

The next day we took the ferry into central Sydney to explore some of the sights we viewed on our driving tour the day before on foot. Another thing we really like about Sydney is how friendly the people are!  The guy next to us on the ferry noticed we were tourists (snapping a few too many pictures??) and gave us some fantastic historical information about the city and the sights we passed along our way through the harbor (did you know the second national park in the world was founded in Sydney Harbour, about 10 years after Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming?  Neither did we!)

View of the opera house from the Manly ferry
While in the CBD (central business district area) we spent time walking from the ferry terminal, around the harbor towards the botanical gardens.


We found this guy and made fast friends in the botanical gardens

Then we re-traced our steps and walked away back through the CBD to towards the bridge.

The days with the beard were numbered at this point – sunscreen and beards don’t play well together

We finished our day with the Sydney Bridge climb which is a pretty unique experience.  It is exactly how it sounds, a chance to climb to the top of the Sydney bridge.  I can’t think of any other city in the world where they let tourists do that…but rumor has it that someone is working on it for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco!  We’ll see if they get that past the regulators, ha.

Unfortunately no camera’s are allowed (the only personal item you can bring with you are sunglasses and you wear a flight suit thing over your clothes and they strap all your other gear to you so nothing can fall down onto the cars below) so we couldn’t take any pictures, but Philippe was heading home on the ferry while we were climbing and snapped a few of people walking over the bridge.   If this isn’t us we were following behind shortly.



See us at the front leading the group across the bridge???

The bridge climb was very cool – stepping out onto the bridge with a metal grate between you and 200’ then the harbor.  We got to spend 45 minutes at the peak of the bridge for sunset, a very cool way to end our first of three short trips to Sydney!

See you again in February Sydney!