Adventures in Sydney

As I write this post, we are safely back in Tucson. We spent the last 4 days of the trip in Sydney and couldn't find a spare moment to look for an internet cafe. I'll try to at least summarize our adventures...

We sadly left Port Douglas and drove down to Cairns to catch our flight to Sydney. We were again on a large 767 and Christina has the luxury of having an entire row to lay out and sleep. After the off-and-on rain up North, we left on a beautifully sunny day!

We arrived down in Sydney and were whisked to the city in a shiny new black Mercedes. The sedan transfers were a bit opulent, but it sure took the stress out of navigating the hectic streets of Sydney! Amazingly there is no freeway from the airport to downtown.

Once we finally got to the city itself, we settled into our room at the Grace Hotel. The hotel is much like the Heathman in Portland and is located right in the central downtown area. It turned out to be an easy walk to the Opera House, Circular Quay, and Darling Harbor. We spent our first evening walking the streets to get our bearings.

The day after we arrived in the city, we embarked on a full-day eco tour of the Blue Mountains about 2 hours outside of Sydney. There were only 9 of us on a goofy looking bus that headed up for a day of sight-seeing. On our way up there, we stopped at a Wildlife Sanctuary before it opened to all the other tourists. We had a nice little breakfast with a koala and spent about an hour wandering around the park. I finally got a good picture of a Tasmanian Devil and a Dingo.
We stopped at many lookouts to take pictures of the landscape and many of the waterfalls. The Blue Mountains are often described as "The Grand Canyon with trees". The real destination was a place called "Scenic World" where there were three different rides rangin from a cable car to the steepest-grade railroad in the world (52 degrees!). Everyone said it was a lot less adventurous to take the train up the hil, so Christina and I decided to ride down instead. Our last stop on the way back to town was at a public park where wild Kangaroos could be seen in their "natural" environment. Overall, the tour was quite fun and certainly informative!

The next day was absolutely gorgeous and sunny, so we decided to have a nice day at the beach. Christina had found an article in the NY Times about a great little beach accessible only by boat. So, we hopped a ferry over to a town called Manly Beach. One side of the town is on the harbor and the other side is on the Pacific. We had a wonderful breakfast at a place literaly overhanging the beach. We then grabbed some sandwiches from the local deli and headed back to the harbor to rent a tandem kayak. We had a general idea of where we were headed, but we ended up overshooting the beach quite a bit without realizing it and ended up nearly in the Pacific! We eventually worked oursleves back to the beach and had a great afternoon reading our books by the surf.

Our final full day in Sydney was spent on a Harbor Cruise. The boat was capable of holding 12 passengers, and we ended up with only four. Much better than the 200+ mega ships that run the other harbor tours! Unfortunately, the tour was not what we thought it would be. Our guide was a former river cop and was more interested in the fancy houses around the harbor than any of the more traditional landmarks. Though we ended up getting some great shots of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge before it started pouring down rain. This was the first official day of winter down there after all.

My last big adventure Down Under was perhaps the most spectacular. For the right price, you can actually climb to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We didn't get off the harbor tour until almost sunset, so I ended up on the last climb of the day. Instead of the normal 12 person group, there were only two of us along with the guide. We spent quite a bit of time getting in harnesses and climbing equipment before heading out on the span. The weather turned absolutely ugly as we got out to the bridge. After about an hour of stairs, ladders, and scaffoldings, we arrived at the top, about 440 feet above the harbor below. The view would have been fantastic save for the lashing rain and wind. It was still quite a thrill though! Christina decided to sit this one out after our rafting adventure though.

After our final night in the Grace, we headed out for some last minute shopping before heading out to the airport for the long trip home. The flight was tolerable, but not nearly as nice as the flight down there. Instead of aisle seats near the exit door, we were wedged into the window and middle seat right in the middle of the plane. The poor guy next to us had to get up whenever we needed to walk around or use the bathroom. In the end, we finally made it back to LAX. From the time we touched down to the time we sat down at the gate for our connecting flight to Tucson, 3 hours had passed. It turned out that our 4-hour layover was timed just right! We made it back to Tucson without a hitch except my new didgeridoo was left behind in LA. It's supposed to get here tomorrow.

All in all, this was a fantastic trip full of great memories! I'm just glad I wrote it all down so I can remember it down the line. I keep telling myself that I'm not jet-lagged, but as I'm writing this my eyes are starting to sag. Perhaps I should give in and let the sleep overcome me...

We came back with nearly 500 pictures of the trip, so I'll work on cutting it down to a Best-Of reel and get them uploaded at some point. Thanks everyone for reading our blog!