Sydney and the Blue Mountains

After the heat of Ayers Rock, it was nice to experience the air conditioned luxury of the Sydney Marriott! Once again we had a room overlooking Hyde Park in central Sydney.
We had almost a week here, and we saw quite a lot. We walked thru the botanical gardens twice, saw Darling Harbour, Rocks, East Sydney, Darlinghurst and Paddington and of course, had our regular dose of gelato to finish off our days (gelato and ice cream shops are everywhere!)
We took a tour of the Sydney Opera House, which has beautiful architecture inside & out, and saw the ballet performance Revolutions in the Opera House itself. The Australian Ballet peformed 3 short classical pieces originally performed by the Russian Ballet. We really liked the short but fast-paced middle piece and the costuming and plot of the third piece Scheherezade - modern day version of an old Russian classic - costumes and dancing were superb and of course the venue was memorable!
One of our most memorable experiences included a ferry to Manly, where we rented bikes to go up to North End park for amazing views of Sydney harbor entrance all the way back to the city. Once back into Sydney, we experienced a nice sunset and amazing night views of the city sky line including the Opera House. We ended our beautiful day dining at Fish Face (yummy gourmet sea food place in Darlinghurst) with a nice glass of Australian wine.

Our time in Sydney was made extra special when we had the opportunity to meet Becky and Brian, 2 very wonderful friends of Sally (our Bay area friend giving serving as our key connection linking us to these lovely people!) Becky and Brian treated us with a yummy home cooked meal and took us to Bondi and Bronte beach (gorgeous!) and the Blue Mountains - it was a blasst! Thanks Becky and Brian...can't wait to see you in SF ;). We also loved meeting their 2 adventurous sons - we had much in common. They both were soon to be married and a pleasure to talk to; hoping we'll see them in SF, perhaps on a future visit as well.

We only wish our time was longer in Sydney...can't wait to share photos!

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!