Even though our big adventure destination for break was New Zealand, we were taking a cruise that went in and out of Sydney, and the easiest way to get there was with a direct flight on AirAsia from KL to Sydney. The only options were overnight flights, so we splurged on AirAsia's "flat bed" seats (they're not quite flat), so that we could sleep on the way there. It worked out well, and we were able to enjoy our first day in Sydney.
We almost didn't make the flight though. It turns out that, post pandemic, all travelers to Australia need to either get a visa or a visa exemption. We knew we didn't need a visa, but we didn't know about the visa exemption. Thank goodness Australia has an app for that, and we got to the airport several hours early, so I was able to fill out the forms and pay the fee (probably the real reason for the new requirement) all on my phone while waiting at the check in area. Then, it was a waiting game while the AirAsia staff checked with immigration to make sure that they could process everything. I spent about an hour standing at the counter waiting for the rep to come back and tell us whether or not we were going to be allowed on the plane. We ended up just making it, so I was too wound up to sleep, but Elena, my seatmate got a good night's sleep and woke up to enjoy her AirAsia Chicken Rice.
Our approach took us by the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, so it was fun to catch a glimpse of them out of the window.
On our last trip to Sydney, we had a bad experience with a taxi driver who seemed either half asleep or drunk, and I thought we weren't going to make it from the airport to our Airbnb, so this time I overpaid to get a car through the hotel to pick us up. We were staying at the Marriott right near the harbor. It wasn't terribly fancy, but the location was great. They upgraded me and Jeff to a suite, but all we had a view of was the building next door. The girls could actually see the Opera House from their window.
By the time we got checked in, it was about lunch time, and we were all hungry, so we went out looking for lunch. There were tons of restaurants in the area, but we settled on a Thai one, since we figured we could find good Thai food in Sydney. We were right. The food was great, and it was clearly a popular lunchtime spot, because it quickly filled up.
Once we were fueled up, we went exploring. One of the main reasons for picking the hotel was that we could easily walk to the park near the Opera House, so we headed that way.
The girls loved the park. Jeff took hundreds of pictures of flowers, and the girls could run around and explore.
One of their favorite spots was the bamboo grove.
They also rolled down hills, attempted to climb trees, and took some well deserved rests on the grass. By the time we came out the other end, everyone was tired.
The girls got cleaned up in order to enjoy the other big perk of the hotel, club level "evening snacks" which was really enough food for dinner. They had a cauliflower soup which was seasoned with hunger earned from a whole day of playing outside, so we all had several bowls of it.
We all slept well that night, and we were ready for our next day's adventure. We had decided to take the hop on hop off bus around Sydney to see if there was anything we'd missed on our first trip here. We got one of the first ones of the day, so it wasn't very crowded, and the sun wasn't too hot yet.
We enjoyed the narration, but the "hold music" in between was horrible, so we would leave one person on listening duty to let the rest of us know when to put our headphones back in. As usual, Jeff took tons of pictures. I have included one of the hundred.
It was a lovely way to spend a little over an hour. We found that we'd gone to all the museums they recommended on our last trip to Sydney, and there wasn't anything that the whole family wanted to get off the bus and see, so when we had made the complete circuit, we got off again at the harbor and went to look for lunch. There was a steak place we had walked by the other day that Jeff and Viv had set their sights on, so we had a lovely outdoor lunch watching boats go back and forth and keeping an eye out for seagull footprints on the umbrellas above us. Jeff tried to capture the strange phenomenon, but pictures don't do it justice. It was a fun lunch though.
After lunch, there was a unanimous decision to go back and hang out at the park, so we walked up the steps near the opera house and went in through a different route than we had used the day before.
We found a nice, big grassy hill, where Vivian proceeded to try and teach Elena rolling skills. Jeff and I just stood in the shade of a tree at the bottom laughing and occasionally taking pictures and video.
When they were ready for a rolling break, we walked on until we found an open area littered with "ruins". The girls thought this presented an excellent climbing/photo op setting.
After that, we went back into the gardens proper to admire flowers. Elena found some birds and spent quite a bit of time chasing them around.
We made it down to the water for another bridge picture. There was a big party boat in the middle of the water, so Jeff had quite the challenge to get us, the bridge, and NOT the party boat in the picture.
We finished the day off with some tree "climbing".
When we got to the park exit, the girls insisted that it was their turn to take our picture.
We had our club dinner that night and uploaded our negative covid tests to the ship's portal. Elena stayed out of the way as we finished our final pack up, and we headed from the hotel to the ship for our first cruise in three years.
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