Brant and I had the chance of a lifetime to take a trip together to Australia. He presented one of his papers at two different universities and had a week between presentations to see the sights in Sydney. I thought I'd join him and I'm so glad I did. He left Tuesday morning and presented at the first university on Friday (which was really Thursday in Texas since it's 16 hours ahead there). I left Thursday morning and got there Saturday morning. It was a 32 hour trip so I was really glad when I met Brant at the airport and then we took the train to our hotel. We couldn't check in for a few hours so we left our bags there and took the bus to the Harbor. It was incredible! Brant and I just kept looking at each other because we couldn't believe we were in Sydney.
One of the first places we went to at the Harbor was the Sydney Opera House. It was magnificent.
We spent a long time walking along the Harbor and there's an amazing Botanical Garden that we spent an afternoon exploring.
This is the bus stop outside of our hotel. We took the bus to the main Harbor everyday to catch a ferry to another part of the Harbor.
Here's one of the ferries with the Harbor Bridge in the background.
They had a huge bar/lounge area next to the Opera House. It was packed full of people in the afternoon/evening.
Here we're on a ferry to Manly Beach which took about 30 minutes to get to.
This is Manly Beach which is on the north side of the Harbor. On Wednesday we switched hotels to one that was closer to the University where Brant was presenting on Friday. It also was closer to a lot of other beaches. Once we checked in, we walked to Coogee Beach that was just a few blocks away. From there we walked along the shore line to Bondi Beach. It took a couple of hours and we stopped and swam at different beaches in between those two. Brant has a lot more pictures than I do so I'll try to post those too.
As much fun as we had, we were so excited to get back to these three little guys! Sorry for the creepy eye picture, I've got to do some photo editing. It was 9 at night and Brant and I had just had a 40 hour Saturday since we got to Dallas about the same time we left Sydney. Then we had a long layover before our flight to College Station.
Our trip would not have been possible without the help of Grandpa Rich and Grandma Pam! They were so generous to come down and watch our kids for 10 days. We knew our kids were in good hands so we really didn't worry about them. Also, Rich did some awesome projects while he was here, including making the picnic table they're sitting on as well as a lego table and some other fun things I'll post about later.
Pam even made some Halloween sugar cookies and the boys (and Grandpa) had a fun time decorating them.
