Sydney Australia:: Manly Beach

One day we took a ferry to Manly Beach for lunch and afternoon beach play. We loved it so much we stayed well past sunset. If you are in Sydney you must go to Manly and you must eat at Jah Bar, this place blew us away!!

Sydney, Australia:: Part 2

One of the days we were in Australia we booked a day tour. There are tons of fun tours to choose from in Sydney but we decided that this one would be best for our family. A bus came and picked us up at the hotel at 7am and we were off for the day to visit Featherdale Wildlife Park and The Blue Mountains. Our tour guide also took us to a cute town on the way home to grab a drink and do a little shopping. It was neat to have a tour guide to give us the inside scoop on everything. 

First up Featherdale Wildlife Park. We got there before the park opened and this allowed us to have a one on one encounter with the Kangaroos, Wallaby's, and Kola's. There were lots of indigenous Australia animals at this park.

It took Reagan a few minutes to warm up to the Kola. He was really sweet and sure loved his bamboo leaves.

Feeding the Kangaroo's and Wallaby's was a huge hit with the girls. I think because we got to the Park so early the animals were ready for breakfast!

Next up The Blue Mountains! They did not disappoint. The air was incredible, so crisp and clean. The air gives off this blue mist and color because of the plethora of eucalyptus in the mountains.

They call the three mountains below the "Three Sisters". This is a picture of a postcard I got.

I felt like the air made me healthier! It was amazing.

We hiked around to a few different lookouts and had gorgeous views!

Then we took a huge cable car thru and up the mountains. We saw some cool waterfalls on cable car ride. I spy the three sisters behind us!

I got this picture from here. I took several pictures but none of my waterfall pictures turned out with the glass reflection in the cable car. This is one of the beautiful waterfalls we saw though.

Then we hiked down the mountains on a winding wooden trail that led to the worlds steepest trolley ! The trolley took you back up the mountain (or you could ride it down again) to get on another cable car. It was really fun!

This doesn't look steep but oh my gosh, this thing was crazy. It got my adrenaline pumping!!

The bus dropped us off at a Ferry in Olympic Park for a sunset river cruise back to our hotel.

The sky was on fire!

We even got to see the city all light up from the Ferry. It was a perfect day that I will always cherish.

Sydney, Australia:: Part 1

I have been meaning to post a blog entry on our amazing trip to Australia but as soon as we got home Uncle Ben came to visit us in Japan for two weeks and I just didn't have time to sort thru the 3,000 (yes 3,000!) pictures I took. So here I am very late on this post, so lets just jump into it. The girls and I met Nate in Sydney Australia for 6 days. Right now it's Sydney's off season (winter, but the temps were still in the upper 70's the entire time) so it ended up being the perfect time to go because there wasn't tons of tourist to compete with.

Our hotel was in a fantastic location (The Rocks) so lots of the great sights were within walking distance, and we had an amazing view of the river and the Opera House from our hotel window.  The first night we celebrated our anniversary with tickets to a performance at the Opera House. We had great seats and really enjoyed the show-- it wasn't "opera" but a ball room performance with lots of incredible dancing, so fun! The Opera House has a really cool outdoor bar/resturant next to it called Opera Bar its a great place to grab drinks and food before and after the show with great views of the city.

The next day we took a double decker bus tour of the city. You can jump on and off and it lasts for 24 hrs so we toured the downtown late that afternoon and then the next morning we rode the bus to Bondi Beach.

Getting our earphones all set up for the tour!

It was hard to take pictures from the top of the bus so I don't have many but here is one I got!

The hotel gave the girls kangaroo stuffed animals when we checked in and they went everywhere with us!

Bondi Beach was one of my favorite things we did. The tour taught us Bondi means "water crashing on rocks", the waves were huge! It wasn't swimming weather but the girls loved running in the sand.

Then we took the beach trail around the cliffs from Bondi to Bronte Beach. The views from the cliffs were incredible.  I could have spent all day hiking the trails, it goes much further than what we walked with the girls.

At the start of the walk there is this saltwater pool at the Bondi Iceburg club. The waves crashing into the pool was incredible to watch as the people swam.

The churning water made so much white foam.

Reagan crashed at the restaurant after the hike. Beach air wears a girl out!

We played all afternoon at Bondi until we almost missed the last tour bus headed back!

I think she might turn into a mermaid. We had to drag her from the waves to the bus.

On the way home we watched the sunset and saw more of beautiful Sydney from the top of the bus.