Day 1
Exploring downtown Sydney. WE rode trains, explored the CBD, toured the downtown waterfront and Royal Botanic Gardens. All of this after 14+ hours of flying and getting into the airport at 6AM.
Day 2
More exploration of Sydney mostly featuring a tour of the Sydney Opera House and University of Sydney
Day 3:
We took the train from Sydney to Katoomba, NSW.
Katoomba is a small town in the Blue Mountains above Sydney. It borders Blue Mountains National Park, a huge scenic park with expansive forested canyons. For us, Katoomba was the perfect vacation within a vacation from the hectic pace of touring Sydney while still recovering from jet-lag.
Day 4-5:
After our short mountain stay it was back to Sydney. The rain gave us some trouble over the next day or so, but we did manage to get in a some visits to a few museums, and have a relax and laundry day. We also made use of a short nice-weather break and ventured out to Bondi Beach where I took one photo.
Day 6:
We jetted off to the Northern Part of the Country to Cairns. Our main goal was to go see the Great Barrier Reef and to snorkel, but we wanted to see what else that area had in store. It was also a good chance to not get rained on and escape the weather for which we pretty severely under packed.
Day 7:
SNORKELING!!!Â
This was honestly the whole inspiration behind wanting to come to Australia and it really didn't disappoint. WE took a boat about 90 minutes out to the reef with a very sparse crowd on board (an added bonus) and then snorkeled around in an atoll from a floating platform the company had built around the reef.
I made a little video highlight of some fishes, corals, and sharks that we saw.
Day 8:
Recovery from snorkeling and exploring Cairns some more. Being from the desert I am fascinated by all things tropical so I found myself taking a lot of photo of every plant and insect I saw.
Day 9-10:
Back to Sydney one last time.
Explored the City a bit, but we were somewhat citied-out so we took to ferry over to Manly for some more Beach time and to buy souvenirs for everyone that we were supposed to before but forgot to...
and then back off to the USA. :(
