Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

We are into week 2 of our trip. Wrote this as we were relaxing on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. More on that later, but for now will update everyone on what we started.

As we walked around Sydney, our first day, Julie felt it reminded her of beautiful San Francisco but on a larger scale. Julie visited Darling Harbor while I worked away in an internet cafe.
Next we walked around Royal Botanical Gardens. Highlights included the fern house, feeding sunflower seeds to small parrots out of our hand, and sitting in Mrs. McQuarries' chair to get great views of Sydney Harbor, Opera House, and the city.

Dinner was at Longrain, a modern Thai restaurant in Surrey Hill, a neighborhood of renovated brick warehouse buildings.

The next day we flew to tropical Cairns!

The reason for our trip

Why are we creating a blog of our honeymoon?
Julie and I were married in July 2006. We decided to postpone our honeymoon as we had a hard time deciding where to go. We finally decided we were going to do some adventure travelling before we had kids, cuz it would be hard to travel with them!
Well, deciding where to go before we have kids is tough! We had so many places we wanted to go, though, that we couldn't make a decision quickly. Julie came up with the idea that we should just do them all at once, and that idea snowballed into going on a 4-month trip.

Back in MBA school, I used to email friends when I went on trips. But I felt a little awkward sending a mass email, so instead I figured this would be a less intrusive way to stay in touch with everyone! And I can easily link photos to the site too!

Direct from email blogs!

Cool! just figured out how to send my blogs emails! I'm sure this is nothing new to most people tho

getting ready

Julie and I are madly preparing for our trip. It has been an unusually busy year for both of us. In addition to planning our wedding this summer, we planned a ski retreat/fundraiser for Young Life, had 3 wedding receptions, moved Julie in after 6 years in her apt in Noe Valley, helped my brother prepare for and build his art project at Burning Man, get our house ready for sale, and move out!

I'm barely remembering to do the standard "move" stuff with the busyness at work going on. Luckily other people are remembering and reminding me.

Being that we're both consultants, we have planned all our travel on a spreadsheet! But it's great, now that internet cafes are everywhere we can have instant access to our spreadsheet. I've also remembered to put pertinent data in some Google documents so I have quick access to them in case I lose the papers.

And I almost have all my photo gear! Just received a new Nikkor 18-55 DX lens in the mail last week and waiting for the card reader to show up so I can download directly into my iPod or an internet cafe's computer. I have a neoprene camera cover to keep my D100 safe from bumpy rides too! :) However, I am thinking about sacrificing my external flash (SB-50) and trying to make do with the built-in one; hoping I won't be making too many nighttime shots.