January 13-16, Sydney

From our window on the Sunset dinner cruise,
we got some great views of Sydney's Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

After the Le Grand Cirque show at the Opera House,
we stopped to take some more shots.

What a change from the quiet northern coast of Queensland!  Sydney is beautiful, but a very busy, happening place!

Our flights from Mackay to Brisbane, and Brisbane to Sydney, went very well...and all our luggage made it with us one more time :)  We couldn't get a late check out at our Mackay hotel, so we were at the Mackay airport about 4 hours early, but thanks to free WiFi access, we relaxed on one of the couches with Brittany's laptop and enjoyed a movie.

Once we landed in Sydney, we grabbed a cab and checked into the Holiday Inn Darling Harbour which is located right in the heart of the city and on the outskirts of Chinatown.  It really is a lovely place and we have been able to walk everywhere.

Friday we spent the morning getting organized and we had a Skype chat with my parents, Joe & Courtney and then with my sister Lina.  We then left the hotel and started our journey into Chinatown where we ate our breakfast/lunch at a Malaysian restaurant called 'Mamak' right around the corner.  What an amazingly loud & busy atmosphere with amazing food!!!  We were thrilled.  We then headed towards the harbour, but kept getting distracted by all the amazing shopping outlets & boutiques along the way.  The Queen Victoria Building, built in 1893...beautiful building with stained glass, copper clad domes, cornices and pillars and interior colonnades and balconies with exquisite stores.  Castlereagh Street's Tiffany's, Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton (including security guards at their doors)...you name it, it is here...in just 2 blocks, 600 shoppes. We headed for the Sydney Tower and found it was built into the Westfield Sydney mall with over 100 shoppes & incredibly fresh food restaurants.  Once we took in the views from the tower, we walked through the Royal Botanical Gardens, past the Government House to the Sydney Opera House, along the Sydney Cove, past more shoppes, hundreds of restaurants, bars/pubs & cafes.  On the way back to the hotel, we stepped into The Strand...another historical beautiful building full of boutique shoppes, but we decided we would try to return to check it out some more.  We took in the 7:15 showing of the movie 'Unstoppable' at the huge theatre that has 16 theatres in it and seats over 4000 in total.  By the time we got back to our room, we were 'done'...somewhat over-stimulated, but thrilled with everything we did and saw.

Today, Saturday, we started our day with some hotcakes & a chicken wrap at the McDonald's across the street, and headed to the Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife World.  Interesting, but not as exciting as actually swimming with the fish while snorkelling in the Whitsunday's, nor as up close and personal as petting the kangaroos & koalas in Kuranda.  We had a great lunch at one of the harbour restaurants and we walked back to the room, napped & freshened up for our 5pm sunset dinner cruise on the Sydney harbour and our 7pm Le Grand Cirque 'Adrenaline' show in the Concert hall at the Sydney Opera House.  Another great day!!!

Tomorrow, Sunday, we plan to take in the Hillsong Church service here in the City and head to the Bondi Beach area.  If we're up to it, we may want to take a surfing lesson?  We'll decide once we see just how hard it is :)

We check out Monday morning, pick up our next rental car and head out to Baulkham Hills to get Brittany registered into school and move her into her new place!  We received an email Friday afternoon confirming that she will be living in the same house as Ali, a second year student from Uxbridge.  Brittany was alright heading into a living situation with all strangers, but you should have seen how excited she was when she heard!  She couldn't be happier!!!

We hope to be able to get some time to go through all the new Sydney pictures we've taken and get them posted asap, but it may have to wait until Brittany is settled in...we don't want to pay the daily $27.95 charge for broadband internet in our room, so we are making due with a slower, but free WiFi connection from McDonald's across the street, but it makes for some pretty slow uploading.

The flood waters continue to rise in the lower parts of Australia in the province of Victoria, but Rockhampton and the Brisbane areas are starting to clean up.  Today was dubbed 'Salvation Saturday' in Brisbane because of all the volunteers that were going in to help out...so many in fact, that they were turning many away and they are pre-registered to help tomorrow.  It is wonderful to see, but the sad news is that 16 are confirmed dead and quite a few more are still missing including a couple of complete families from a small community that was hit without any warning.

We may not be hand-gliding in Byron Bay, or sleeping at a lighthouse like we had originally planned, but as you can tell, we are doing very well and we are really enjoying spending this time in Sydney.  We may not be city girls, but Sydney is a very clean and safe city to be in (except maybe for the way the taxi drivers drive!).  The only problem is that even if we stayed in the city a few more days, we'd still never have a chance to see and do everything there is to see and do.  It's an amazing city and we are just so glad to have been able to spend at least 3 full days here.

Until next time,
Kim (and Brittany)