Australia - The Blue Mountains, Bus Tour and Bondi Beach

Tuesday. A great day to get out of the city.  We took a 2 hour and 15 minute train ride out west to a place called The Blue Mountains.  I've heard this place referred to as The Grand Canyon of Australia, except with trees! :)

Our first stop there was at the 3 sisters monument.  You can see in the pictures the 3 stone sisters sticking out.  It really is a magnificent view from there and it was such a pretty day with bright blue skies.  We walked down to the 1st of the 3 sisters.  It was 150 stairs down and my parents even did the hike.  It doesn't seem that hard but it was pretty tiring to do.  There are 1000 steps to the bottom of the canyon you can walk.  I did that on a p-day on my mission but we didn't do it this time around.







After that we took a bus over to The Scenic World.  Here they have a cafe, gift shop and then 3 different rides you can do.  A skyway, railway, and cableway.  We of course did all 3. By far the best though was the railway.  They have this rail car that goes so steep straight down the mountain.  It's so fun but even a little scary.  You can go down it and you get off and walk around and then you can take it back up or walk over to the cableway.  When you get to the bottom there are little walk ways to walk through the area and enjoy the scenery.  It's all really well maintained walkways and it was so fun.  Jeff, Whitney, Shane and I decided to do a little longer hike so my parents said they would just wait for us in the cafe and as we got on the railway we looked up and my parents had decided to just ride the railway again for fun. It was kind of cute just to see them having fun.




It was a fun day.  That night we had some yummy pizza from a place that had just opened up nearby our condo and we took it back to our condo and ate it.

Wednesday. Our last full day in Sydney.  My parents, Shane and I decided to do a bus tour.  They take you around different suburbs of Sydney and different look out points.  It was interesting to see different areas and some fun facts that we didn't know.  We got to drive through the 'rich' areas of Sydney where the prime minister lives, see the area Russell Crowe owns a place, and then we saw the prostitute area of Sydney as well.  And I'm not joking when I saw we saw a lady approach someone looking for some business.  eeek! It was a pretty fun tour.



Our tour ended at Bondi beach.  Jeff and Whitney decided to do a little shopping at Darling Harbour and then they met us at Bondi beach.  Bondi beach I would say is the most famous beach in Sydney. We got some lunch (I had a roasted lamb sandwich...I had lots of lamb on my mission) and then went and sat on the sand for a while.  The sand was soo soft there.  Then we decided to walk along the beach to a lookout point to the south part of the beach.  It was really pretty to look back at the beach and see the ocean, etc.  We even saw some whales blowing out in the distance.



That night Jeff and Whitney got tickets to 'My Fair Lady' at the Opera House which was being directed by Julie Andrews.  Whitney was like a kid on Christmas she was so excited to see it.  And she said it was incredible.  My parents decided to hang out at the condo.  Shane and I decided to walk down to the harbour one last time.  We got there while it was still light and sat between the Opera House and the bridge and just talked, people watched, watched it get dark and see the Opera house light up.  It was a relaxing fun night.

Australia - Opera House Tour and Featherdale Wildlife Park

Monday was our one and only rainy day on our trip.  It was pretty cool especially by the harbour but luckily we planned to do a tour of the Opera House so it ended up working out pretty well.  I was glad I took the opportunity to go in and see the inside.  It was interesting to hear all about the building of the Opera House because it does have quite an interesting story and it took so long to finish it and was way over budget.  We were also glad we took the time to do this on this day because when we went back a couple days later they had put up barriers, scaffolding and blocked all but one section of the stairs.  They were setting up for an outdoor play about the building of the Opera House but wasn't happening until November.  Anyways, we got some great pictures that we wouldn't have been able to get otherwise.






After our tour we headed out to Blacktown to Featherdale Wildlife Park.  There are other parks and zoos right in Sydney but I had been to this one before and everyone had told me this was the best one so we did this one.  It was perfect because by the time we traveled there it had stopped raining. It was so fun because as soon as you walk in you're surrounded by little Wallabies (Kangaroos) that you can feed, pet and take pictures with.  There was also a section with mommy kangaroos with babies in their pouches (they were protected behind a fence but it was sooo cute.) Then there are several other enclosures that had the bigger kangaroos as well.  And of course we had to get our picture with a Koala.  They won't let you hold them anymore because they are endangered but you could pet one. We also saw a Tasmanian Devil, Wombat, Dingo, bats, lots of birds, and a crocodile.  By far the highlight was petting the kangaroos.  It was such a fun afternoon though to see all that we saw there.






These larger kangaroos apparently liked Whitney because they decided they wanted to eat her hair or something.  I was going to take a picture with Jeff and Whitney and look at what happened.  I can just hear Whitney laughing/screaming.  I figured Jeff would help her so I just kept snapping pictures...Jeff was a little clueless for a few seconds.  She had all this dirt in her hair from it's feet.  It was seriously funny and everyone else that heard/saw it was laughing and talking about it as well.  You can tell in the pictures that she thought it was funny at first, then she started screaming, then Jeff had to grab the kangaroo and remove it from Whitney's head.



When we got back we had checked out of our hotel and had to pick up our luggage and take it to our new place.  We were lucky that my parents let us use their points and we stayed in their timeshare.  It was fun because we were all able to stay in one condo together.  It was also in downtown Sydney and was about a 15 minute walk from our other hotel...not too bad.  So we got settled into our new place and did Tim Tam slams that night (see pictures from previous post)

Australia - Church, Parramatta, the Bridge, Royal Bontanical Gardens and Food!

Sunday morning we woke up and went to church.  The closest and only ward where we were staying was a young single adult ward.  We found the building and everyone was so nice and welcoming.  They had at least 4 or 5 sets of missionaries in that ward and it happened to be missionary Sunday.  2 of the missionaries were heading home that week so they had them both speak.  I loved it of course.  It once again brought back a lot of memories and made me reflect a lot about my time as a missionary there.

After church we headed out on the train to the one area I wanted to see from my mission.  Church Street in Parramatta.  This was my first area and my last area I served in and on Church street I spent a lot of time street contacting.  Every morning in both these areas and a 3rd area close by that I served in we would head over to Church street and street contact.  I taught a lot of first discussions in front of this Anglican church there and spent more time in this little shopping area than any other area on my mission.  So it was fun to see it and see how it had changed a little.  We ate lunch at the shopping center near by.  We were going to head over to the temple but the Sunday train schedule didn't really line up right so we ended up not going there.



When we got back to Sydney we headed over and climbed the bridge...well ok we walked across the bridge.  Ok we didn't walk across the whole thing but we walked out quite a ways to see the views, etc.  :) Apparently someone told us a lot of people have a hard time finding how to get to the right place to walk across but we found it just fine.



We then walk to the whole other side of the harbour and walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens, Mrs. Macquarie's chair and Macquarie's point which has more great views of the Opera House and Bridge.  We saw my favorite yellow crested cockatoo's and lorikeet birds there and although being tired from a lot of walking, the gardens were really pretty as well.




On our way home we walked though St. Mary's cathedral for part of a catholic mass and then headed to 'NoodleFest' that was going on in Hyde Park.  We got some good chicken skewers but most the food was pretty over priced.  On the way home we saw a red carpet event everyone was gathered around staring at.  It was the Australia premiere of Blacksaw Ridge, a film by Russell Crowe, apparently he was there but we didn't see him.



Speaking of food...food tended to be more expensive than I remember it.  But with the AUD to USD conversion I guess it was about the same or a touch more.

However, there was a lot of food I was looking forward to eating while I was there...so here's a few pictures of my favorite foods I ate while I was there.  One thing to note, there is so much chinese food in Australia...I remember thinking I ate a lot of chinese take out on my mission but really didn't know how true that was until I went back and realized that every where you look there are 4-5 chinese take outs.

However, First and foremost of all my favorite foods to eat while I was there...mangoes.  It was just the beginning of Mango season but I was not going to miss out...even if 1 mango cost almost $5.00 AUD...that's still about $4.00 US!!  A lot for one piece of fruit...but seriously I LOVE the mangoes over there.  I could eat several a day and never get sick of them.  And the mangoes in the US taste nothing like the ones here, they are so delicious and juicy.  My mouth is watering just typing this.



Other food I got to enjoy...Kebabs...not Kebobs and not the greek Kebabs you get here.  They are made with a thin pita, kind of like a tortilla, chicken, beef or lamb and then lettuce, tomato and onion with a bunch of choices of sauces.  Then they grill it in the pita bread to make it crispy.  Yum



The one day it rained we stopped and got some yummy pumpkin soup which I had a ton of on my mission.  I always was surprised how much I liked it and it was good once again.  Although the warm bread roll served with it made the whole meal.



And then I introduced everyone else to Tim Tam slams.  We did them a few nights we were there and they are always a delicious treat.  Although we kept laughing at my parents who kept missing putting their Tim Tam in the hot chocolate far enough and missing the whole point.




I took a video of my dad and was laughing so hard I never got a picture.