Thankfully we slept well our first night in Sydney, had a simple breakfast at the cafe in Australia Square one block from our hotel, then leisurely headed towards the Opera House to check on tours, stopping along the way for photos in daylight this time. Luckily there was a tour starting in ten minutes! It was very interesting about the concept & ( Read more... )

We got up early so we were on the road by 9:15am, stopping for a view of lovely Jervis Bay before we left town, then continuing up Cambewarra Mountain and through Kangaroo Valley, Bowral, stopping at Mt Trafalgar for another lookout view.


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We were out the door of Melaluca Grove by 10am, even seeing its fairy garden, with recommendations for breakfast, some nice views, and hopefully wild koalas. Breakfast was tasty, the view at Bastion Point was gorgeous, and at Double Creek it took the short walk through the forest first to be coming back the other direction before we found the ( Read more... )

Ahh...8 full hours of sleep felt so nice! I woke up at 7am, then rolled over again until about 9, and Amy didn't get up until later! We had asked for our hot breakfast at 10:30am so we could get on the road well before noon. Even after chats with Tom suggesting which roads to take & where to stop for lunch, we were still on the road by 11:30, for ( Read more... )

I must have been paranoid about waking up so early for the hot air balloon ride, since even though it was lights out by 11pm - very early for us - I could not get to sleep until 2:15am...ack! So only one hour later I dragged myself out of bed, and we did get to the meeting spot at Chateau Yering about 10 minutes early for the balloon ride...whew! ( Read more... )

We were out of our Melbourne hotel at the stroke of checkout time, then since we kept missing the tram stops anyway, we walked the several blocks up to the Hertz office. Of course today it was finally bright sunshine, so I was sweating by the time I had my heavy suitcase all the way there! There were several in line ahead of me, then by the time I ( Read more... )

It felt like we slept in forever, but really it was only about 7:30 to us on Perth time when it was 9:30am Melbourne. By the time I paid for 24 hrs of Internet from the front desk & both of us got ready for the day, it was just before noon. Ah well, we both needed the sleep, especially Amy, and we are both on vacation after all ( Read more... )

We had a bit of a comedy of errors to start the day. Poor Amy hadn't gotten back from the lab until after midnight, then stayed up with work email until 4:30, then got up 7:30 with hopes of laundromat, last checkin on campus, then still getting pancakes for breakfast at a certain place she wanted to take me. Well, I got ready, packed, booked our ( Read more... )

*cue song of the same title from Dr Horrible soundtrack ( Read more... )

The unlocked wifi we are "borrowing" gave up Sunday night while I was trying to post the weekend, so I took advantage of my 4:30am wakeups to try uploading more photos then but it still wasn't working. Even when I woke up at 7am it was still dead, and not until 7:30am did it finally work again. It took a bunch of fits & starts to get everything ( Read more... )