The Sydney Master Post

In mid-January, we left KL for a week’s vacation in Sydney, Australia.  Both of us have always wanted to go to Australia, and living in KL made it much easier in terms of cost and travel time.  We picked our dates to correspond with Micah’s birthday, this year was a big one and it was so fun to celebrate with a really unique adventure!  I’d call it “once in a lifetime,” but we both really enjoyed Australia and would like to go back.

Sydney skyline, through a gap in the trees at one of the habour parks.

I have a lot of stories to share, so I intend for this post to be a Master Post of sorts.  I have lots of notes and a basic outline of what I want to say, listed below as the Table of Contents, but I reserve the right to change it as I write and edit!  I’ll update this post with links as I publish posts over the next week or so.  I hope that having a list in one place makes it easier for you to find specific posts that sound interesting to you.  For regular readers (Hi Dad!), think of this as a preview of what’s to come.

The Great Sydney Adventure

Table of Contents

• There and Back Again.  Stories from the actual traveling, including our 11 hour layover in Singapore and utilizing a nap room at the airport.
• Exploring Sydney, or, On the Greatness of Walking Tours.  We swear allegiance to the Lonely Planet series, especially great are the self-guided walking tours they suggest.  We did a few and discovered much more of Sydney than we would have otherwise.  Our impressions of the city and what we learned/discovered walking aimlessly around the city.  Also, why Sydney isn’t KL and why coming back to KL was really difficult.
• Natural Sydney.  We explored several of Sydney Harbour’s National Parks, all of which were amazing.  Also included is our excursion to the famous Bondi Beach and the Cliffs Walk.  Any day I can spend on/in/near the ocean is a good day, and we had several of them!
• Blue Mountains.  As a follow up to “Natural Sydney,” we explored the Blue Mountains just west of the city.  It was an incredible experience, and deserves it’s own post.  Primarily because I anticipate a lot of photos with this one.
• When in Sydney…  We participated in a sail race in the harbour, on-board an America’s Cup class sailboat.  While sailing or racing isn’t something exclusive to Sydney, or Australia, it felt like an experience we would be hard pressed to find in a lot of our usual haunts around the world.  Also, we went to a cricket match!  This definitely felt like something uniquely Aussie that we should do (yes, I am aware they play cricket in many of the Commonwealth nations).  And, of course, perhaps the most iconic of Sydney things, we saw our first opera at the Opera House.
• Ranger Duck.  Of course Ranger Duck really enjoyed his Aussie vacation, and he has a photo album to share as well!

They have ibises running around like pigeons! They also have pigeons running around like pigeons.