Tuesday
We headed out to Olympic Park for the Royal Easter Show, which is basically a state fair. Sort of felt like home especially with all of the farm animals, but the food wasn't nearly as good as the Wisconsin State Fair. Nothing beats cheese curds and cream puffs. However, we did find some Mexican food, which is hard to find in NZ, so we jumped at the chance to eat that for lunch and a snack. We spent most of the day there looking through all the little shops. We had a dinner cruise booked for that night so we headed into the city to catch that. We booked our tickets on a mystery dinner cruise website, which means we wouldn't know what cruise we would be on until we got there. All we knew is that it included dinner and would be between three and four hours. Without thinking, we went down to the Sydney Harbour. As I was looking for the confirmation paper, I could only remember something about King's Wharf, so Jess quickly asked where that was. Oh we were definitely at the wrong harbour. We were supposed to be down at Darling Harbour, a good ten minutes drive, and we were supposed to be there in ten minutes. Oops. Probably should have looked that up before we left the house. So we grabbed a taxi, and the driver wasn't understanding where he was supposed to take us. I kept saying King's Wharf, but apparently it is King Street Wharf, and he just wasn't getting it. Somehow we got there right on time. We grabbed our tickets and found out we would be on the showboat dinner cruise. We were served a delicious three course dinner. We then had time to go to the outside of the boat to take pictures. We had beautiful views of the city, the bridge, opera house, and the surrounding area. I sat outside for a while thinking about how unreal my life is. Here I am on a boat cruising around the Sydney Harbour staring at the beautifully lit opera house. I couldn't ask for anything more. We then headed inside for the show. It was a singing and dancing show...right up my alley. I loved it. The night was absolutely perfect, expect for Mary not being there. It was quite strange for her not be with us on this trip as she's travelling around the South Island with her parents. Part of booking with the mystery website was getting a discount. We each paid $55 per ticket. We were curious as to what the normal prices were. Jess looked it up and boy were we shocked. Original tickets are priced at $188. All three of our tickets weren't even that much combined.
Wednesday
We headed west to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Of course they're not really blue, but a bluish haze comes from the eucalyptus trees. Here we bought tickets for a hop on hop off bus. You hop on the bus and there are different stops with cool things to see that you hop off at. We did some bush walks (the bush is the forest), got to see some awesome waterfalls and views throughout the mountains including the three sisters which legend says they were turned to stone by their father, and we also got to take some skyway thing across the valley, which let us see an awesome waterfall, took the steepest rail road in the world down to the valley floor where we walked around the rainforest on this cool elevated board, and took a cable car back up.
We then made our way over to The Rocks for the best part of the day, the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. I had been so excited about this. Except by this point in the day my legs and feet hurt so bad I didn't even want to do it anymore. Of course I got over it, and we had some time to sit down before the climb started. It took quite a bit of time to get all of our gear on, and we weren't allowed to take much up there with us. I even had to take my bobby pins out. Everything was strapped or hooked on to us. Of course we weren't allowed to take our cameras up, which really sucks so we bought the package of pictures to share between the three of us, which was definitely worth the money. So we made our way up. Our guide told us a lot of people think the scariest part is at one of the lowest points because you walk along a narrow path with steel mesh under you. Not really that scary. We had to climb up a few ladders to get to the arch and then walked up stairs along the arch. You're chained to a cable the entire time. We went at the perfect time. Night time is the cheapest climb, but I thought it had to be the best one. We started the climb during sunset. The sun was already below the horizon, but the colors were still so vibrant. It was absolutely beautiful, and then of course you get to see the city start lighting up. There was no way you could be bored up there. While yes it was really expensive, it was totally worth it. If you ever get to Sydney, I would recommend it to anyone. Interestingly enough, only sixteen people died during the eight year construction of the bridge, and only one of them died from falling off the bridge. Craziness. We all assumed it would have been quite a few more.
Our guide recommended a few places to eat after the climb one of them being the Australian Hotel where you could get kangaroo, emu, and some other animals on your pizza. So that's where we headed. We decided to try the kangaroo pizza. When in Australia. It was surprisingly delicious, and I'm not much of a meat eater. Nicole couldn't really get past the idea of what she was eating. We were planning on heading to some bars afterwards but were just too exhausted.
We decided to have a nice relaxing day after three busy days. So we headed to Manly Beach for the day, which meant taking the ferry across the harbour. It wasn't the best day in terms of sunny weather, but it didn't matter. It was just nice to lay around in the sand with the sound of the ocean in the background. We headed back home pretty early because Peter was making us a Good Friday dinner, and boy was it delicious. He went and got us fresh prawns, calamari, and snapper along with some other food, which we enjoyed outside with the nice weather. They seem to enjoy shoving food down our throats. I was always stuffed after dinner with them. This was also a night where we went through three or four bottles of wine at dinner. Peter was enlightening us with great stories of traveling. At the Seattle airport, they were watching the luggage coming off the plane on the conveyor belt, and for some reason all the workers were paying attention to one suitcase, but behind it was a cooler that had been duct taped shut. Well it fell over and the duct tape didn't hold, and pounds of olives went rolling out onto the tarmac. What did these guys do? They saw a guy walking past with a dust pan and broom and told him to come clean it up. They put all the olives back in the cooler and acted like nothing happened. Can you believe it? I mean I don't know what else they would have done, but seriously? It was definitely a Good Friday to remember.
Saturday
Peter and Sue's son has a caravan up in some small town along the coast, so that's where we spent the afternoon. Unfortunately it was quite rainy, so we didn't spend the entire day up there as planned, but we had fun anyways. Everyone there was super nice and fun to talk to, and of course there was more drinking involved. A few bottles of wine, some mixed drinks. Apparently we don't get enough. It cleared up enough to walk down to the beach where the water was surprisingly warm. I totally would have gone swimming, but the air was a bit cold. We also got a chance to feed the parrots, which fly around everywhere. I wish we had parrots. They're so pretty. Peter and Sue took us out for pizza when we got home, which sadly didn't have kangaroo on the menu.
Sunday
While I'm used to not being home for Easter, it was a bit strange to be in Australia for it. Peter and Sue drove us back into the Blue Mountains to check out some of the fall color. Now that was strange looking at fall colors on Easter. We stopped at another botanical garden and drove a little further to eat at a cafe nestled in the bush. It was amazing how many people were out and about on Easter. We then headed home and to Peter and Sue's daughter's house. They have three rambunctious boys ages 6,11, and 12. They were hilarious and kept us laughing all night. The boys took us out on this four wheeler like thing. They have a bit of land in their backyard. I think the twelve year old, Bill, was excited to be driving around college girls. He even put some cologne on right after he met us. We had a great dinner of lasagna and you guessed it, more wine. It was a really fun night, and none of us were ready to leave, let alone go home and pack considering all the stuff we bought over the week. Plus we were a bit worried about the weight of our luggage. We did end up having to stuff a bit more in our carry ons at the airport.
Overall, this was by far an amazing trip, and I was so not ready to head back to Wellington, which is strange since I was going back to NZ, but I think it is because Wellington has been my daily life for the past two months. It was said to say good bye to Sue and Peter as we had such a good time with them. I'm really hoping I'm able to stay in touch and will hopefully see them again someday. Until next time...
Kia Ora,
Laura
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