Today is our last day in Sydney and we were without our wonderful tour guide, Meg, so I hauled out my Lonely Planet Australia to see what it recommended. Darling Harbour sounded like it could be interesting and then we planned on heading back to the the Rocks later in the day to hopefully catch the market that we kept missing. We were still resisting the $20 per person breakfast at the hotel but discovered that the huge hostel across the street had a restaurant on the ground floor and they served a very reasonably priced breakfast so we went there for food. I wish we'd gone sooner! Matt got eggs benedict and I got what resembled a full English breakfast (eggs, toast, tomato, hashbrowns, mushrooms, beans) and we both got juice...for $24 for the two ... read more

Our flight to Sydney went really well. We left out of LAX about 15-20 minutes late and ended up arriving in Sydney a few minutes late as a result, around 7:45am. We cleared immigration and customs with no problems and right outside of the arrivals gate was a Vodafone shop where we bought our prepaid SIM cards. The prepaid plans have changed a bit since we left Germany and data is now included since so many people have smart phones. I think my little pink Nokia phone will have to be retired and make room for a Droid after this. We took the train from the airport to Sydney Central Station, which is only a few blocks walking distance from our hotel. We stayed at The Great Southern Hotel. It's in an older building and seems ... read more

Hillary and I decided to take one last trip together before I moved back to the States. She had never been to Florence, which is pretty amazing considering how much she loves Italy, so we decided to make Florence our final trip. We decided not to spend the entire trip just in Florence and I had heard a lot of great stuff about Siena so we decided on a night there first. We flew into Pisa in the morning on the 17th and took the train directly to Siena. We had booked a room at Agriturismo Marciano which, of course, had fabulous ratings on TripAdvisor, and we certainly weren't disappointed! We found a taxi that knew where it was located (it's a little outside of Siena's city walls) and headed there. It's in a gorgeous location ... read more

Okay, just so you know, most of this entry is going to be about dinner. It was really fantastic! But, before we get to dinner we have to get up in the morning. We didn't have a lot on the agenda for today. We visited some outdoor markets, I got a new leather coat (yay me!!), and we wandered and ate gelato (of course). One thing I did want to do since we had the time was visit a few more museums. I really wanted to go to the Uffizi Gallery but the line was wrapping around the building. I'll just plan on going another time with some friends and make reservations beforehand. We went to the Bargello, which is a museum with pretty much only sculptures in it. It's one of the lesser-known museums so ... read more

After a great night's sleep in our beautiful hotel we decided to check out the free breakfast (I really try not to book a place unless they have free breakfast). Typical breakfast in Italy is bread, meats, cheeses, cereal, yogurt, and hard-boiled eggs along with water, juice, tea and cappuccino. You can get regular coffee at a lot of places in Italy...they call it Caffè Americano (American coffee) :) While down at breakfast Matt noticed that one of the guys there had a Breitling watch. For those of you who don't know what a Breitling is, it's the type of watch that I got Matt for our 10th anniversary. Matt left his at home for our trip (it's not cheap) but this guy didn't and it caught Matt's eye. As it turns out, he and his ... read more