November 20th - Sydney

After an overnight flight of around 8 hours we landed in Sydney, hurrah how excited we were to be reunited with our son and his wife.
The flight arrived early but was not allowed to taxi to the stand as the outgoing flight could not set off - the reason that the pilot gave was that "they had lost a passenger"!
After showering at the apartment, we headed out by ferry to Darling Harbour.  This was all very exciting and new to us, a "pinch me" moment to see where they live and to see Sydney Opera House for the first time. The weather was sunny and warm as it was for the vast majority of our 8 weeks trip. The apartment is well situated - opposite Luna Park - a heritage listed amusement park which opened in 1935. It is a rare surviving amusement park featuring fantasy architecture in the Art Deco style.
 The trip, our first of many, across the harbour seemed magical. Hard to believe that we had left a cold grey England winter to be enjoying the Australian summer. We "lived in" shorts and tee shirts, trainers and definitely no coats required. We wandered around the harbour and grabbed a snack and then caught a ferry to Circular Quay where we sat by the Opera House and met our daughter in law.  Afterwards, we returned to McMahon's Point and ate at their "local" Blues Point Hotel. https://www.bluespointhotel.com
I think that it is perhaps a fair comment to suggest that neither of us suffered too much with jet-lag. This was maybe because we chose to have a 3 day stop over in Singapore and therefore our flights were of 8 hours each.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monday 8th January - time to go home. 😞😢

Image
An overnight thunderstorm and squaking Larakeets meant that we were up early.   The day was very hot, 36 deg at 8am. After packing, we walked around Lavender Bay, through Luna Park and on to North Sydney. Once back in the village we had a cooling drink at The Commodore and lunched at Billy's.  I found it very hot and couldn't manage a last walk to the bottom of Blues Point Rd, instead choosing to sit in the shade.   We returned to the flat, showered and awaited Jon to come home so we could set off for the Airport. As we crossed the Bay to Circular Quay the sky went black and the heavens opened with torrential rain. Quite a sight - something which we had not witnessed on our holiday. The water was bouncing off the surface. I hate Goodbye's and after a farewell drink and photo it was time to be on our way and get ready for our 9.30 flight to Dubai.   We were late leaving our onward flight to Newcastle as a passenger had to be offloaded due to a medic...
Read more

November 30th

Image
When friends knew that we were planning a trip to Australia, we were asked if we could met up with people and maybe deliver a few Christmas presents to them - which we duly obliged - also an opportunity for us to acquaint ourselves with old friends again. Today was the day to meet up with a friend's son and a lady that used to work at a beauty salon here where we live. Feeling somewhat refreshed after the hectic few days, we were up and out early to meet Nikki for breakfast near to the salon where she now works. Then it was on to meet a friend's son, who works around the corner, managing a well known Sydney bar. Amazing that they work so close to one another in this wonderful city.    After the brief meetings we headed to the Museum of Australia, where we had lunch. The museum was established in 1827 and is at the forefront of scientific research, What an enormous site the museum is with 18 million exhibits.  We spoke to a couple of curators who were chipping away at...
Read more

Monday 27th - Wednesday 29th December - Uluru

Image
This morning were were up early to catch the ferry and train to Sydney Airport for our trip to Uluru - a once in a lifetime experience for us. Australia is so vast that Uluru is one and a half hours behind Sydney time. We flew over the Blue Mountains and Broken Hill, a frontier mining town in the far West of NSW in the outback. Apart from these two focal points it was barren earth all the way until the wow factor of Uluru appeared. The journey seemed to reinforce just how vast Australia is. We arrived at Yulara airport at the same time as another aircraft. We were driven to the hotel by a coach, which goes around Yulara picking up and setting down passengers at various designated points. Our home was to be The Desert Gardens Hotel for two nights.  h ttps://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-8589-desert-gardens-a-member-of-novotel-hotels/index.shtml    After a light lunch we walked to the Town Square for a look at Yularu, the resort for Uluru. The square was shaded by s...
Read more