In Search of Nemo and The Perfect Wave

Brad, what a long board you have...
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It has been a fantastic four days in Sydney, thanks in large part to Brad and Lisa's hospitality.  It is a real pity that more of their friends have not taken advantage of their offer to come visit (hint hint). It has been wonderful being taken care of with dinners and tourism hints and tips.  Daniel even got to take Tonya out for a surprise birthday dinner tonight, sans Max!

We went for a walk out on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and climbed one of the pylons, where we were treated to great views of the harbour, opera house, and the suckers who paid $160 a head to walk the bridge and get the same views we had from our $9 lookout.  Had a nice walk about town, through the Botanical Gardens, where we saw lots of ferns and the Wollemi pines (dinosaur tree) and at least 1000 very large bats hanging from the trees.  It's a wonder we didn't get pooped on (more on that later).  Then we headed North to MacQuarie Point and a chair carved out of rock, which apparently had wonderful harbour views for Mrs. MacQuarie in the 1800s, but now has a rather large tree in front of it!  The opera house hasn't lost it's wow factor - still a very impressive building even after seeing it on TV dozens of times.  Elli, we hope you get to set up a stage here some day!  The first day ended with gelatto and a relaxing ferry ride back to Manly.

We found Nemo...

Is this the perfect wave?
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Saturday, we had Brad and Lisa's company, and we all headed out to Paddington Market (not Paddy's Market) on Oxford street.  Very cool market, the girls were very hard to tear away, even after not one, not two, but four pigeon poops hitting home.  A sombrero would have come in handy...  Introduced Brad & Lisa to geocaching - they are hooked like any good nerd would be!  Brad is getting himself a GPS for Christmas...

Sunday was the day for Daniel and Brad to hang ten and catch that perfect wave.  Surfing is hard.

Harbour view on the ferry to Darling Harbour
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Monday, after another early 10am-ish start, we took a couple leisurely ferry rides over to Darling harbour, with more great harbour views on the way (holy tourist trap, batman!).  We did the aquarium, which is a most excellent aquarium.  The downside was the wall-to-wall tourists who had a particular knack for standing right in front of you and taking 1001 pictures of the platypus until they realized someone else might want to have a look...

Max is growing up fast.  He slept the whole way through the night last night - the fourth time this trip so far!  He is getting much more interested in walking, after being crawling-fixated for the past few weeks.  Any of the other kids at home walking yet?  Oh, and Max hasn't worn a bib yet this trip - he seems to have figured out how not to drool, so T is happy now that all his cute outfits aren't ruined by the 'dumb' bibs.

Maxzilla deciding which part of Sydney to eat next
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Now we are headed into the Blue Mountains in the morning, and then up the NSW coast to Byron Bay, Brisbane and beyond.

Cheers,

T&D&m