The Parkers Down Under: Sydney

 

Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House!

After over a week of exploring some of the more southern and northern parts of Australia, we were ready for our third and final city: Sydney! We had a direct flight (the only one of our whole trip!) which was nice. After riding the train from the airport we walked a few short blocks to our hotel which was right in the Central Business District, just south of the iconic opera house.

I know I'll sound stupid saying this, but we were both surprised but how huge Sydney is. With the noise, traffic, crowds of people on the sidewalks, and skyscrapers surrounding us, it felt very much like New York City. We were transporting all our luggage and Jordan and I joked that as we inevitably bumped into the people hurrying around us, we were the only people murmuring "Whoops... sorry... ope!... excuse me..." over and over. So midwestern.

After checking into our hotel, we were excited to get some snacks and hang out for awhile. There was an apartment building across the street which was wall to wall windows and made for some interesting people-watching- although I'm sure they were watching us too!

Last stop of the trip!

Ahhh... snacks and Star Trek. This is vacation! 

Our friendly neighbors.

The next morning we got up and headed to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") to see the Sydney Opera house and Harbor Bridge. It was about a 15-20 minute walk to get there and it was interesting to see all the people bustling to work, always in a rush. We were also surprised by how many people smoke- it seemed like we were constantly walking through plumes of cigarette smoke. This is something we just don't experience much anymore, though I'm sure it's more common in large cities like this. When we got to the water, suddenly the landscape opened up and the crowds thinned and it was incredibly peaceful. We spent some time walking around the area, enjoying the sunshine and water. The opera house was smaller than I imagined, though I think that's often true when you see things in real life that you've only ever seen in photos and video. It was awesome to examine the architecture from all sides.

Next, we walked over to the Royal Botanical Gardens which is adjacent to the opera house and Harbor bridge, and gives a great view of both landmarks. There is a beautiful walkway just along the water and we enjoyed seeing all the different kinds of plants, flowers, and trees. There were also so many groups of children visiting on field trips! Almost every place we visited in Sydney had several groups of school children there as well and every group was always wearing uniforms. It made me wonder if school uniforms are just part of the norm for public schools in Australia.

After walking around the gardens, we stopped in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There was a great mix of older and more contemporary artwork including a bunch of Aboriginal pieces which I absolutely loved. We probably spent an hour there, then headed back toward our hotel for lunch and time to relax.

You never get to see this view of the building!

Harbor Bridge

Iconic Sydney.

Sitting pretty.

Cheeks together!

One more beautiful view.

Walking in the Royal Botanical Gardens. We could have spent all day here!

The trees were unbelievable!

A whole bunch of cockatoos, just chilling.

Yay! We love art museums.

Look at this amazing detail.

I would love this in my house.

The next day we got up early again to head to the Taronga zoo. We rode the train up to Circular Quay to catch a boat across the bay. We had been so lucky with great weather during our entire trip and this was one of the first days that was pretty dreary and rainy. But we were actually okay with it because it meant the zoo wasn't so crowded! 

After getting off the boat we got to ride the skyway up to the top of the hill to the zoo's entrance. saw so many amazing animals. In fact, I think visiting museums and seeing animals were the two main themes of our entire Australia trip. The layout of the zoo was really confusing because it's all built into the side of a huge hill with lots of pathways that lead in different directions. They actually had an app you could download which had an awesome map that showed you where you were and how to get to the other exhibits. One of my favorite parts of the zoo was watching the seal show. I have to admit it it, I cried a little... it was just too adorable. Yes. I'm a ninny.

After the zoo we rode the train back to the hotel. Both of us were so impressed by the trains in Sydney- they were so quiet, clean, and convenient. And all the cars are two-level which I'd never seen before! We had spent two days walking so many miles that we were both exhausted. Jordan took a nap while I took a long soak in the hot tub. This hotel had a really cool pool that had the ceiling painted navy blue with little twinkle lights set into it so it felt like you were swimming under the sky. It was so relaxing! For dinner we walked to a little place that was nearby called "Lord of the Fries" which was kind of a fast-food place, but all the options were vegan/vegetarian! I really hope this place comes to the US someday.

Another awesome view from the boat on the way to the zoo. 

It was a little blustery but beautiful!

I was a little nervous about the cable car... these things freak me out a bit, being up so high!

But once we were up in the air it was awesome! And rainy. Oh well!

We got to see both a long-beak AND a short-beak echidna during our trip! These things are weird. We got to see so many cool animals that we've never gotten to see before!

My new fave text from Jordan.

Hey, check out these kangaroos!

I'm totally a koala.

More kangaroo friends. It was great to watch them hopping around.

Emus. These things are huge and intimidating! And they lived in the same walking areas as the kangaroos. We were getting rained on quite a bit but getting to see all these cool animal made it okay.

Shopping for Timtams with a cartoon tiger...

I was in love with these Asian elephants.

One of the train stations.

I'm into this.

 In the last couple days of our trip, we were definitely feeling some homesickness (we got to see photos and facetime with Noah daily, and we knew he and my mom were having a great time, but it was still incredibly hard to be away from our favorite little guy for so long) and vacation fatigue. As much fun as it is to explore and see new things, we also wanted to really feel like this was a vacation where we could relax and not constantly feel on-the-go.

On our third day in Sydney we decided to slow down a little and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and morning, then walked to the Australian museum. It's the oldest museum in Australia and has a huge variety of artifacts and natural history in Australia. There was a cool exhibit on Wooly Mammoths that we explored then spent another couple hours wandering around learning. Nerds. In the afternoon we did some shopping and picked up some snacks for the trip home. Did you know that Cadbury is the best chocolate? We are missing out in the US.

Yikes!

Look out, Jordan! 

This picture makes me laugh every time.

One of my favorite things about all our museum visits was learning about Aboriginal culture and history in different parts of the country. There was so much I didn't know and one of the coolest maps I saw on our trip was this one. This is a visual representation of all the different languages and tribal groups of the indigenous people of Australia.

This was one of Jordan's favorite rooms- every wall was lined with hundreds of different species of native birds in Australia. Can you spot Jordan wayyyy down there? He's now an Australian-bird expert!

I was pretty excited about this display! Jordan wasn't quite so impressed.

Our hotel was very near Darling Harbor and Chinatown so we spent our last day exploring those areas, walking around and shopping and people-watching. We got our last-minute souvenirs at Paddy's market and then walked over to the Chinese Garden of Friendship. This was a beautiful oasis in the busy city. Once we were inside, all we could hear were the sounds of falling water and birds, it was peaceful and a perfect way to spend a couple hours together in the afternoon. Then we walked around Darling Harbor enjoying the sunshine. It was supposed to be a rainy day but it ended up being warm with clear skies!

That was another thing we noticed during our time in Sydney- the weather forecasts were almost always wrong! On the day we visited the zoo, it was supposed to by sunny and it rained all day. And when we planned on staying close to home because of a bad weather forecast, it was gorgeous out! What the heck?!

We saw lots of Ibis, these birds are so cool-looking.

This was was so beautiful!

Lots of walking paths and hidden corners to explore.

I could have stayed here all day!

<3 <3 <3

My fave guy.

Perfect afternoon.

We spent the evening packing up our suitcases and preparing for another LOOONNG trip back home. We took the train back to the airport in the morning and after going through tons of security we had nothing left to do but sit and wait. The flight back to the US ended up being better than the one to Sydney- probably partly because we left in the afternoon so we weren't so exhausted by the time we left. Just like before, I watched a lot of movies while Jordan played a lot of video games while listening to podcasts. It was amusing to look over every now and then and see Jordan laughing to himself quietly, I guess those were some funny podcasts! Fun fact: We left Sydney at 12:30pm on June 30th and after 15+ hours in the air (it's a shorter flight back to the US!) we landed in Dallas/Fort Worth just thirty minutes later at 1pm. It was like magic- we got back our missed travel day!

Once again, I couldn't sleep on the plane so after going through even more security moving from international to domestic flights, we found our gate and I curled up on the floor to sleep for a bit. No shame. Our flight to Madison didn't leave until almost 9pm so we had plenty to time to just sit around, playing games on the ipad, chatting, and just soaking up our last hours of no responsibilities. Finally, it was time to get onto our LAST flight. My brother picked us up at the airport at 11:30pm and after gathering our bags, we didn't get home until past midnight. It was so nice to be able to sleep in our own bed, and most importantly, waking up and getting to spend the whole day with Noah.

After 15 hours in the air. So close, yet so far!

The last flight- let's do this!

This is everything.

LOVE.

ALL of our tickets. Holy moly. I think we're doing flying for awhile!

We loved this trip, it was really a once in a lifetime experience, but coming home was pretty sweet too. Next up: some video clips and our top 10 memories!