52 Week Project: Week 25

Week 25: Sydney

I am so, so behind with my weekly post this time. You've probably also noticed that I haven't posted anything at all in almost two weeks. Slack, I know, but I promise I have a good excuse.

If you're following Little Hiccups on Facebook or Instagram you'll now why I've been quiet. If not, here's why...

...we're in Australia!

For the first time in almost four years we're back home visiting family and friends. It's been lovely to catch up with everyone and in many ways it doesn't really feel like we ever left. Right now we're in our home city of Adelaide (which doesn't  feel like it's changed since we left!) but we've also spent time in both Sydney and Brisbane.

For last week's very late 52 Week Project post I'm sharing some of the highlights from our time in Sydney (which fell during last week's time slot). I had hoped to share some pictures with you earlier but our hotel in Sydney charged a gazillion dollars for internet access and well, we've been really busy and oh so tired.

So let's play catch up and have a look at some of the things we got up to during our stay in Sydney...

We arrived in Sydney on the Monday morning after leaving San Francisco on the Saturday. A day magically disappears when you fly from America to Australia thanks to the International Date Line. So that means that Kim didn't get Father's Day this year - which is ok as we always celebrate Australian Father's Day in September anyway (and the girls did give him cards and a present when we arrived). After checking into our hotel and showering etc we headed out to The Rocks for some lunch. Proper fish and chips (no fries, please) and schnitzels were on the menu for our first meal in Australia. Ava, having forgotten many Australian food staples, asked what my schnitzel was and replied with "I thought a schnitzel was a dog"! Best dog name ever!

Walking through The Rocks we came across a couple of rainbow lorikeets eating sugar from sachets on a cafe table. The waiter gave Ava a sugar sachet to hold and one of the birds hopped onto her hand to eat the sugar. The girls were pretty impressed.

Unfortunately Lola was feeling a little under the weather with a stomach bug so our afternoon out in The Rocks was cut short and we headed back to our hotel room where the kids and Kim crashed around 4pm. Mathilde and I went out for a stroll around the city and I was amazed at how quickly the layout of Sydney's street and the familiar locations came back to me. Kim and I lived in Sydney for five years before the kids were born and within no time the city felt like home again. Home, but different as I'd never really seen the city through the eyes of a tourist.

On the Tuesday morning we headed down to Circular Quay and took a stroll through The Rocks again. We checked out the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and strolled through the little streets lined with historic housing.

Ava had a wobbly tooth which happened to fall out as we walked through The Rocks. She had been worried about the exchange rate for the Tooth Fairy seeing as the Australian dollar isn't worth as much as the American dollar and had hoped that she'd lose the tooth before we left home! The Tooth Fairy had to make sure to add in a little extra to make up for the low dollar when she visited later that night!

On this particular morning we'd all woken jet-lagged around 3am and couldn't go back to sleep. We filled our bellies as soon as the hotel breakfast buffet opened at 6:30am but by 11am we were all absolutely starving again. The pubs, cafes and restaurants in The Rocks didn't start serving food until noon so by the time we got yet more fish and chips at one of our favourite Sydney pubs we were famished.

Sydney has seen a lot of development since we lived there and one of the biggest to go ahead in the city is the redevelopment of the Barangaroo shipping yard. Still under development, the site provided entertainment for digger and truck obsessed Mathilde who was content to watch construction work from above on the cliff.
 

From The Rocks we headed to Darling Harbour where we spent a few hours at the Sydney Aquarium. The girls loved checking out the rays, starfish and sharks, but the biggest drawcard was the dugongs.

On the Wednesday we hopped on a ferry and headed across the harbour to Taronga Zoo in Mosman. Ava and Lola enjoyed the ferry ride which afforded us amazing views of the harbour. We took the sky safari ride from the ferry dock up to the entrance of the zoo. Much like the sky safari ride at Oakland Zoo this ride took us over many of the animal enclosures and provided great views of the city and water.

We stayed at Taronga Zoo until closing time and then made our way back to Circular Quay by ferry. We took a little walk around near the Opera House before heading out for a sushi train dinner. It was time for a change from fish and chips!

I'll have many more photos from Australia coming soon but for now this brings me up to the end of week 25.

Stay tuned for Week 26 which is also due today. Oops!