There it is! I see it! Hallelujah!

Today marked the first Tuesday where we didn’t have to go to our Outdoor Education class since we finished with the course. All we have left to do is complete a 3000 word reflection blog on our Blue Mountains weekend trip, but that’ll get done somehow I’m sure. We knew that we had to celebrate by going to explore of Sydney, since that’s what we’ve been waiting to do all along. We had a couple of plans floating around in our heads like maybe having another go at making it down to Cronulla beach, but we ran out of time again, then thought about going to Luna Park but figured we’d save that til Thursday. Finally we just decided to flip through our Sydney books that Riley’s mom had given us and just pick an attraction that looked appealing. We laid our finger on the Macquarie Lighthouse and set off. This meant we would be walking across the city to catch a train that would take us to Watson’s bay, kinda on the other side of the harbor. It was also close to the Sydney Harbour National Park (which we didn’t know existed) so we figured we would check that out as well. Our bus took a turn off the main road and seemed to be doing front door service for people, but out of nowhere popped the national park. Of course we got off here to check it out and actually had a hard time finding the entrance. Then when we found the entrance we didn’t even know if we were in the right place. There were only a few people about and most of them were swimming in this small little section off part of the bay.

We didn’t really know what to think, but they weren’t too surprised to see us so we just went on our way. Up the hill we saw a house that we thought was maybe a visitor centre of some sort. It turned out to just be a historic house, but a pretty one at that.

Well, we were in a National Park after all, so we figured there opt to be some trails and we sent off. This led to great views of the Harbour and Bridge, as well as the Opera House (although it looks so small).

Perfect view of the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and boats going by!

Our lunch spot was similar to this, but a little more flat on the top.

We decided to go out on a rock ledge and enjoy our lunch with the scenery of Sydney right before our eyes. Lots of boats were going by and we even saw a famous Jetboat. This is an attraction where you pay like $40 to get on this small boat that jets you around at some crazy kilometer per hour for 30 minutes. When we first arrived we thought that would be pretty fun, but now that we’ve been on many boats in Fiji I think we’ll be passing on that offer. We knew we had to find our way out of the park somehow though since we still had a lot more to explore before the day ended. We took the easy way of backtracking out of the trails and taking what we thought was the main road out of the neighborhood to the bigger main road. Let’s just say that neighborhood road was definitely the longer way around and took us almost all the way around the bay before putting us along the main road which did lead to the lighthouse. We were almost completely exhausted at this point, but very glad to have found the lighthouse! This one was a lot different than we had seen in Wollongong since it seemed to have a house underneath it.

The clouds were billowing up in the distance and getting rather close and dark. Made for a great picture, but not so great weather. We weren’t trying to test our luck so we started on our long journey back. We did stumble upon this mini gym right on the other side of the lighthouse. 

I know that I would love to ride the elliptical right next to a lighthouse that was overlooking the sea. Much better than seeing the inside of gym walls! Why hasn’t the US thought of this? We tried to see if there were any good shops before catching the bus back, but there were just bakeries which I was of course drawn to, but Riley wasn’t too keen on looking at more chocolate. He thinks I’m addicted, but I just tell him that I like to look at the possibilities and creations. We had originally planned on going Salsa dancing at a pub later that night, but our feet ended up being more exhausted than expected. We agreed that next Tuesday we would go Salsa dancing and not travel as much throughout the day.