Sydney Trip (Part One)

So, this will probably take a few posts because we were pretty busy down under!

First of all, the flight was pretty brutal! 14 hours on a plane is just not too fun, but we did manage to sleep a few hours, which helped to pass the time. We arrived in Sydney around 8 AM on Saturday and got the rental car. It was pretty funny because it's backwards, so everytime Jon went to turn on the turn signal, he did the windsheild wipers instead! It was pretty funny!! We checked into the hotel, which is in a great location because you can see the harbor bridge from some rooms and the opera house from other rooms! It was nice and warm in Sydney, so I got to wear my flip-flops! We all got showered and headed over to the Rocks Market, which they have on weekends where they sell all sorts of things like jewelry, art, olive oil, and other miscellaneous souvenirs. It was very cool.



Then, we went to the Pancake House on the Rocks for the famous pancakes with ice cream. They were YUMMY!!! They serve them all with ice cream, you don't even have to request it that way. My brother would be in heaven.

After lunch, Brad and I decided to explore the area around the hotel, so we walked down to the opera house and the surrounding botanical garden, which were both gorgeous! Then, we decided to go have a beer or two. We ended up at the Orient Hotel (an old law in Australia states that any place that serves alcohol must also have a place to sleep, so a lot of the "bars" have hotel in the name.) It was a pretty nice place. The most interesting thing was that a bachelorette party came in, with the bride complete with a veil and t-shirt stating and "Kate's Hen Party." So, that was pretty inresting! I thought the veil was an American tradition, but defintely not because that was not the last Hen party we saw!

For dinner, we headed to Darling Harbour for some yummy Chinese food. Darling Harbour was a nice little area with restaurants, bars, the aquarium and the convention center.

Sunday, we headed out on an adventure to the Blue Mountains, which are directly west of the city. It was so beautiful out there! Lots of great views and waterfalls and walking trails. We kind of went the wrong way around, so we didn't get to the visitors center until we were about 2/3 of the way through, but we got some good information there and went to Govetts Leap, where we took a short hike over to the Bridal Veil Waterfall. The bad part about the trip was the fly epidemic that was going on out there, so every stop we made, we were surrounded by flies, so that was pretty yucky! But it was still a great adventure. We also saw The Three Sisters, which is a stone formation, which legend says is three sisters who were turned to stone by their father.
We were hoping to see some wildlife, but no such luck!!