Australia Day 4

Australia day four began with a trip to the Featherdale Wildlife Park. It was WAY better than breakfast with Koalas. And LOOK , no rain!

Here we are with a fuzzy Koala. He is totally into us.

Of course the animals loved Carter and his gentle nature. Oh, and his ice cream cone full of kangaroo/ wallaby goodness.

Oh look, this is how I have felt the last 17 years of my life. I hear ya mama wallaby, I hear ya.

Hanging with the wallabies and kangaroos was awesome until they tried to bite my hand off. I actually saw a couple of them boxing.  Food is serious business.

Megs and I hanging out with our kangaroo friends. This girl brings out the kid in me. Not good.

Isn't this guy cute? Look closely and you can see Carter lurking in the back ground. These guys may look cute and innocent, don't let them fool you, they really want to claw your eyes out, but alas, they are to tired.

Hello lady who I don't know, look at these lovely wallabies.

Carter is proudly holding Gwennies souvenir. By the way, she loved it. Good job Cart.

I had to but the kangaroo pencil topper. Hello, when you squeeze it the joey pops out of the mommas pouch. Priceless. After a fun morning at the wildlife park, we continued on to the Blue mountains.

The tour guide may or may not have made us want to jump out of the moving bus more than once, but the stunning views helped to make up for it.

Here is the boss enjoying some homemade apple pie at one of the famous apple orchards along the way.

Cody and Laura improved our tour greatly. They are entertaining. We love them.

We got to ride the tram into the rain forest, which was so amazing.

This waterfall was called Bridal Veil Falls.

This mountain was called the Three Sisters. Is was so fun to see a different side of Sydney. It was so beautiful. We wrapped up our day with a trip to see the ballet at the Sydney Opera House. I'm going to be honest and say we were all so tired that most of us slept through the whole thing, but hey, now we can all say that we have seen a ballet in the Sydney Opera House. What a fun day in Sydney.

Austrailia Day 3

Day four in Australia started out with a bang. Off we went to eat "Breakfast With the Koalas." Here we are at the entrance posing with a ferocious bird that can kill you in seconds. Super great. Luckily this was the plastic version. Dodged a bullet there.

This is the wax version of a kangaroo. Yes we did see some real animals, wait for it......The zoo happened to share and entrance with Madam Tussaud's, so wax Leo and I decided to reenact the Titanic. Look how into me he is.

We say a Wombat

A pretty bird

and of course some Koalas. They were behind glass. Boring. They sleep 22 hours a day and apparently you are not allowed to touch them in Australia.....Boo!

Here we are eating breakfast with the Koalas, or eating in front of their glass cage. We got to see lots of cool animals and hang our with our friends so all in all it was a good time.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city and shopping, It was fun. Most of the others went sailing. I was so afraid I would be sea sick that we didn't sign up to go (although I strongly encouraged Carter to go without me). Apparently it was the funnest thing ever in the history of super fun things that anyone there had EVER done. Lesson learned. 

Later that evening we attended a fun dinner with these great gals

Every dinner was a fancy as could be. This one was supposed to introduce us to a little bit of the Australian food culture. It was pretty good, even if they did try to sneak some nasty Vegemite into those cute little grilled cheese sandwiches.

Have I mentioned how much I love this guy, and how unbelievably hared he worked to get us here. You are the best Mr. Cluff!

We were treated to some serious traditional aboriginal dancing. Him and I have the same body.

For dessert we tried our very first Baked Alaska.

Was it good you ask? I think Roy's expression says it all.

Australia Day 2

Our first full day in Australia was WET! The heavens opened and pretty much stayed that way the rest of the time we we were in Sydney.But, it certainly didn't stop us from having a great time. On the itinerary for this day was the Deluxe City Tour, and Deluxe it was. We started off with a tour of the most famous landmark in Australia, the Sydney Opera House.

The view was even stunning on a grey day!
Carter and I spent most of the the day huddled together under an umbrella. It really was quite cozy!










Here are some of the gals we always travel with. THIS is the reason the trips with Old American are so much fun!

Look how enthralled we look. It really was quite fascinating to learn the history of this amazing building.

This is the view inside the concert hall. Look at the organ pipes. AMAZING.   The organ is the largest in the world.  It has over 10,000 pipes and took 10 years to build.

After our tour we headed across the harbor, by boat, to the famous Bondi Beach.

We had lunch at a fun beach front restaurant. The fish and chip were deelish.We spent the rest of the afternoon walking the beach and shopping.

Later that evening we had dinner at the Italian Village. Every dinner was super fancy and fun. The food....not so much. Little piece of advice, don't travel to Australia for the food. It was a fun dinner though, They made it feel like you were back to the days when Australia was first settled. Apparently by, convicts, wenches and soldiers. Delightful.

The best part of the dinner was the UGG Boot station they had set up. They let us choose our own Uggs! Yeah! It was dark and I accidentally chose midnight blue which I though were a dark grey....BOO!

You can always count on Lou and Kim to liven up a picture. As You can see day 2 was a huge success!