Blogs from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 9

Left Morisset on the 1pm train bound for Sydney airport. Took about 2 hours to get to Central and then another half and hour to the airport. A really nice lady at the Emirates counter has changed my seat to a long legroom seat with no one in front of me. That is just to Dubai. The last leg, I have a whole row to myself. I found a chemist to replace my earrings and bought some sushi for lunch. I've been working on my Forest Schools Portfolio for the last couple of hours. I hope I've downloaded enough 'stuff' to do work without the internet on the long flight. To my dismay, I realised that the 'Kids' were packed in our stuff from Melbourne. Nuggie went out this morning and bought some new 'Cousins of ... read more

In the morning, we went for a walk (we didn’t have our car anymore!) with Douwe. We walked through Darling Harbour and the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Opera House. It was a very nice walk, with people having photo shoots in from of the river. We thought the Opera House looked nicer and more impressive at night from the viewpoint we had been to the night before. It turns out the Opera House is three different buildings! The number of tiles covering the roofs, 1 million, is quite impressive. The building of the Opera House was expected to take about 4 years and ended up taking 14 years - and involved 10,000 workers. We had lunch in the food court at Chinatown again, trying some delicious Vietnamese spring rolls. In the afternoon, I had a ... read more

Up early again, breakfast and then a short walk to the boat that would take us out to the Great Barrier Reef. I took my trusty Bonine before we left and didn't have any problems with the boat ride. The boat took us out about 35 miles, stopping at an island to let some people off. Then it was over to the reef. They have a huge floating platform anchored at the edge of the reef. They have a semi submersible sub and glass bottomed boats for those who didn't want to go into the shark infested waters. Stacy was one of them. I though donned my Lycra suit, got my snorkeling gear and headed into the water. I did always make sure there was someone farther away from the boat than me. I forgot to ... read more

The Last Leg & (1/2) The Return to Sydney and Karen's arrival. Left Canberra around 9:00- I intentionally didn’t gas up because I need to turn my bike in with just a small amount of fuel for the transport back home. Rain was threatening and it did indeed spit on me a little but not enough to make me don my rain gear. Note: Of my eight major rides this trip was my longest (# days), yet is the only trip that I didn’t have to don my rain gear at anytime during the entire trip! While a little chilly it wasn’t very windy on the trip up to Sydney. The terrain was hilly with lots of sheep and cattle farms. I had to stop for gas about 100 miles from Sydney and had to guesstimate ... read more

Picked up tickets from Sue on Saturday. Now its packing time. 1 week work to go.... read more