February 28, 2011
The time has come to depart this beautiful country! We are packed up and ready to head to the airport first thing in the morning. Bondi Beach turned out to be ok after all. Not my favorite place, but ok none the less, with an amazing beach and famous walk along the rocky coast, which covers three other beaches.
Yesterday we took the bus into Sydney for the day. We explored the “Opera House” and the “Harbor Bridge”. The “Opera House” is amazing and very impressive. I read that the Architect that designed it got the idea from an orange. He was eating an orange and playing with the peels when he got the idea for it. If you take all the sail looking pieces of the Opera House and put them together, they form a sphere.
Today we had a lazy last day and tonight the older kids are taking the bus into Sydney to go to “Kings Crossing”. I guess it is a popular place for the young people to go out at night.
We have met so many travelers that have traveled to so many places; places I have never even heard of! It seems it doesn’t cost that much more to go to numerous countries than to just one. One young German couple was traveling around the world and it only cost them $200 more to go around the world than to go to New Zealand and back home. We made connections in both New Zealand and Australia and have friends should we ever want to come back.
We have done an amazing job of getting along with each other and leaving with positive feelings about group travel. We have planned meals, shopped together for them and then prepared them together “every single day”, oh, and worked on clean up together too! No complaints! The longer we’re together, the sillier we get. These days we’re laughing over just about anything! We’ve had numerous discussions about everything under the sun. We’ve gotten very relaxed and comfortable with traveling and moving from bed to bed.
Our statistics:
*We took nine flights
*Flew 50 hours
*Traveled for 86 days
*Slept in 37 beds
*Drove 10,000 Kilometers “on the wrong side of the road!”
“Cheers” Australia!