Blogs from Darling Harbour, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 25

G'day mates! How ya going? We're going by boat, or wish we were at any rate. We left Cairns yesterday, Saturday, August 18th. We thought our last day there was going to be sunny but then the sun left and we had a sort of rainy day. We packed our swimming gear in our day packs anyway. We spent a good deal of time in the big mall in Cairns. Gramma got a manicure done and Christa got a pedicure done and Ron went for big long walk. As an interesting sideline, the woman who did Christa's pedicure came to Cairns as a toddler with her parents. She was of the Hmong people, apparently they are the country people of Thailand, small in numbers and many of whom have left to live in Australia and the ... read more

We're 2 minutes away from the QVB which is a massive shopping centre s thought we'd check it out but being Sunday it wouldnt open until 10. Oh well back to Darling Harbour to catch a cruise. Its a beautiful day for it. Amelie is already tired, this is gona be fun (or not) Circular Quay is our 1st stop and I am gobsmacked when I see Opera House and Harbour Bridge. It's so massive. HB took 7 years to be built. We have a walk around and climb the stairs up to check out the inside but you have to pay (doh!) It contains five theatres, five rehearsal studios, two main halls, four restaurants, six bars and numerous souvenir shops. The building and its surroundings truly form an iconic Australian image. We then took ... read more

We bid farewell to Byron and another overnight coach later and we are in Sydney - just a quick stopver here to break up the journey down to Melbourne. We get to our hostel and all we want is a proper bed, however no one has checked out of our room yet - muppets, so we have to wait and wait and wait. Eventually 4 hours later we get back to the hostel, after walking the streets of Sydney only to find that only one person has checked out of our dorm - so there aren't even enough beds for us, grrrrrrr!!! One complaint later and we're upgraded to 6 person dorm - at no extra charge to us of course mwhaha and we finally get some proper sleep!! We wake up and go for a ... read more

We had a busy final day in Australia planned, beginning with a ferry ride to Olympic Park. The ride there was pretty scenic, and we must have passed thousands of yachts moored in various little bays along the way. One English gentleman got kicked off for trespassing in a ‘crew only’ zone in order to take a photo, and the 2 staff who reprimanded him had obviously missed the ‘how to diffuse a situation with an angry passenger using diplomacy’ section of their training. Even a quick visit to Olympic Park takes longer than you might think: 40 minutes ferry each way plus 20 minutes each way bus transfer the other end, plus waiting around time. We didn’t have all that long so only had about an hour to look round the venues. The Telstra Olympic ... read more

Gemma’s relatives bought us a climb up Sydney Harbour Bridge for a wedding present, so that’s where we headed this morning. It’s an incredibly well-run trip with a lot of attention paid to safety detail - the private company that had the initial idea of running these climbs had quiet a job to convince the authorities that nothing would get dropped down onto the passing cars far below. So we have to put everything except the clothes we’re wearing into lockers, don a grey boiler suit and attach our harness to a safety wire that we don’t leave for the entire climb. They even make sure sunglasses are clipped on and the most surprising of all was a handkerchief everyone was given with a secure wrist attachment. The main gripe - there’s always at least one ... read more