Australia

Here comes the mother of all posts. I may need to do this in two parts. Once again, I am not a fan of slide shows, so mas y mas y mas pictures are coming your way.

The plane ride was long, and we had the misfortune of not having any movies (because of the terrorist threat that happened in Detroit, they could not use their GPS media gizmo and that was linked with the movies, so we got no movies- though we did wait for and hour and 15 minutes as they tried to fix it, and then decided they couldn't. Passengers were not happy (esp us sardines in the back- where you had to sit on the person next to you to get out). All this aside, it really wasn't that bad. I read a lot and did get some sleep.

We went strait from the airport to our apartment in Carlingford (a suburb of Sydney), which with trains and busses took about 2 1/2h, but we made it there just fine. Aaron was proud we never got lost or took the wrong train/bus. After settling and napping for a little bit, we went back into Sydney and took a look at the harbor. This is in a train station.

We took tons of pictures of the Sydney Opera house. It really was impressive.

We walked around Sydney Harbor for a little bit, and then decided to walk over the Botanic Gardens. I was thinking they would just be neat plants and what not, but it is more like a park- a really really neat and big park. There were different sections to it and you could just walk around. You could spend at least a day just looking and strolling, laying down for a picnic in the grass. It was really neat. This is the rose garden. Pleas excuse my sexiness.When we first saw these bats, we thought it was so cool, then we realized they are all over the gardens. Still cool though. Yes, those are not pods, those are bats. Flying foxes I believe. They were loud- they sounded like screaching birds. Did they generate a lot of poop? Yes, they did. Did I step in it? Yes, I did. (Though not on this first vist, when we went back later I got whole helpings of bat feces on my sandals.)

Cool bat shot.There were neat neat trees all over. They had huge trunks that were bulging and hanging all over the place. Aaron really liked the trees. He doesn't like this picture, but I do. :) There was an area near a cool pond that had all sorts of colorful, exotic birds (like parrots and whatnot). Very cool. Opera House from the other side. A nice random lady took this for us. It was just Aaron and I on the first day, the rest of my family got there the next day.

My family (Dad, Matt, Maggie, Whitney, and Kelsey) got there the next day. Their flight got in pretty early, so they made it to our apartment by like 11 in the morning. They were exhausted and hungry so we made a run up to the grocery market (by run I mean walk- it was only like a 15 min walk). Matt and Maggie slept longer, but the rest of us went into the city. We took a double decker-open top bus tour around Sydney (the typical tourist ones, though they only had recordings for the guide rather than an actual person).

Sydney is a neat blend of old architecture with the new. There would be this old building and then literally right next to it would be a skyscraper. It was neat. We should have taken more pictures on the bus, but it is hard when it is moving. Here is a neat cathedral, though we never went in it (I think cathedral tours are best done in Europe). We stopped the bus tour at Darling Harbor (which is right next to Sydney Harbor). Darling Harbor is really neat- very clean with lots of shops and restaurants and museums. We weren't able to see all the shops and museums, but just all the stuff out on the sidewalks were really neat. Case in point: this fantastic Christmas tree (Sidney didn't take their Christmas stuff down till right before New Years). Notice the silver kangaroos!!!Isn't this an awesome fountain? They had water fountains in random places (not all like this fantastic one, but still really neat) that you were supposed to play in. It felt like Disney World.That night we went to the Opera House to see the Australian Symphony. It was AMAZING! Just being in the Opera House was cool (though it was actually hot as a fart when we finally sat down, probably because of all the body heat). The performance was really neat- they played just instrumental pieces and also had opera-style type singers that actually weren't that bad. They brought in this solo violinist who was amazing! The acoustics were really good (though I don't have too much to compare too). The view during intermission is awesome because you look out onto the harbor.

Aaron and I before the performance.

Opera House at night. It is actually an off-white almost tannish color, but at night it looks white (I always though it was perfectly white).
Okay, that's all for now.