Only the log book could fit in there!

These trips must be wearing us out because it was yet another morning that we slept in. Luckily, Claire had the same idea and woke up even later than we did, but it wasn’t that bad since it gave us some time to pack up. Once Claire woke up, she informed us that she would take us to Cateract Gorge, but she would not be partaking in the hike since she has done it many times before. We were fine with this since it meant that we could do a little exploring on our own as well as search for more geocaches. As we made our way to the gorge, Claire also pointed out some other places that we could visit, so we definitely marked it down on our to do list. We finally arrived at the gorge and our exploring began. It was a pretty view from the start, with the suspension bridge spanning across the water.

After seeing the bridge, and knowing that’s the path our next geocache was on, we knew we were going in that direction. Soon enough we found ourselves on top of the bridge! Other couples wanted pictures on the bridge, so we quickly moved onward with our journey. Lauren wanted to take the path next to the water, so we got a few pictures and moved on. As we continued, we came across what could have been the tree of life!

Mama, remember the snake tree limb? Think I've found one better - the bear rock!

The gorge was turning out to be quite the journey with all the sights we were seeing, but now it was time for the real reason we were here – the geocache. Claire said she had never found this geocache, so this motivated us even more to find it! With the hint being, ‘The bench closest to the water’, we were wondering how hard it could be. As we approached the first set of benches, we searched and searched but nothing was found. We moved on and soon came across a couple of benches. Since the trail was about to end, Lauren and I both agreed that it had to be here. As we searched the benches, the closest one to the water first, we came across this tiny bullet size magnet that was attached to the underside of the bench. We both agreed that it couldn’t be it because nothing could fit in it. Yet, we pulled off the magnet, unscrewed the top, and sure enough there was a tiny scroll spun up inside. We were actually surprised at how tiny the scroll actually was!

Unfortunately we didn’t have a pencil, so we couldn’t sign our names saying we found it as well.  With our trail ending at the Gorge, we decided to head back to town and finish exploring. We ended up going to another museum, but this time it was more arts than science. With time zooming by, and knowing we had to get back soon, we started our journey back to Claire’s house. It didn’t take us long before we hit a McDonalds and decided that we needed some fries and ice cream to give us energy. Well deserved I would say. Once we got back to Claire’s house, we ended up doing some more geocaching in the park next to her house. We realized after finding the first geocache that people in Launceston don’t put great gifts inside their geocaches (except Claire, she puts jewelry inside of hers). The second geocache was just the same as we found a leaf, punch card for a hairdresser, an expired train ticket and already used lipstick. After finding that, we decided that we had enough and needed to get to the bus station to catch our ride to Hobart. Claire actually offered to drive us there which was super nice! We arrived and said our goodbyes as we hopped onto the bus. The ride wasn’t too terrible, slightly bumpy and dropping people off on the side of the road made for quite the journey. As we arrived in Hobart, one of Murray’s other surfer’s contacted us and told us to contact her when we arrived since she was planning to wait for us in town. With our stomach grumbling, we headed to the local wooly’s first to grab some pizzas for tonight; first time with an oven in a while! We contacted the other surfer and met up with her at the local bank. She took us up a long road where we finally made it to their house to shed all our warm clothes now sweaty from the long walk and cook our delicious Hawaiian pizzas. 

An old timey fire station for Lauren's dad

Monkey Business

Although we had gone to bed early the night before it didn’t mean that we were going to wake up early. Will had to be up early for work and had clunked around in the kitchen, slightly waking us up but we made no effort to actually get up. Soon we were up and moving, making toast and chatting when Claire joined us in the kitchen. We were planning to go to Will’s friend, Carlos’ house for a BBQ and Claire was messaging the friend to see when we could come up. That’s when Carlos told Claire he was in celebration mode which kinda worried us all. There is a story here but you’ll have to ask us about it when we get back to the US. We ended up changing our minds and not going to BBQ but staying around town and exploring the park and several museums in the city. We stopped by the art museum first which had a lot of hands on science gadgets to try out which amused Riley and myself for quite some time. We even had to see taxidermy Tasmanian devils!

We couldn’t stay for long since our parking meter would run out but we were alright with that since we got to move on other things. We drove into town and parked near the city park to check out the car museum. Riley had found out about the museum on the internet but with it costing over $12 he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go in or not. There was a gift shop that showed just about everything that was in the museum though, so we decided to opt out on actually going in. Instead we hopped across the street to the city park to play a lifesize game of chess and check out the monkeys! Claire beat Riley in the abbreviated game of best two out of three pieces in chess and the monkeys got the rest of our attention.

Apparently Launceston has a sister city in Japan that gave them Japanese monkeys and Launceston gave them wombats. We don’t know if that’s a fair trade or not, but we were definitely glad that we got the monkeys. They were very entertaining, especially the three baby monkeys that we running around and jumping and swinging off everything. The majority of the monkey’s day is spent looking for and picking off fleas from the other monkey’s fur. We don’t understand how they can really have that many fleas or insects or whatever they were looking for. We didn’t really know what to do after the monkeys since they were just so entertaining but Claire told us that there were a few geocaches hidden throughout the park and asked if we wanted to give it a go. We agreed since we’d never done it before and were lucky enough to find our first one with a lot of Claire’s hints. We weren’t so lucky with the second one, but Claire hasn’t found that one either. Afterwards we just shopped around town, got toasties for lunch and just wasted away the afternoon. It was approaching five o’clock and Claire had somewhere to be so we dropped by Will’s office to see when he would be going home. The second State of Origin game was on tonight and we were planning to go to a pub to catch the game. Will said he would be sticking around his office for a while and could give us a ride home later if we wanted to but we were more interested in just exploring the city a little and staying out until the game.

They warned us that everything would be closing up at 5 o’clock, and naïve us didn’t really believe them. However, they were right and our options were limited after 5, but Target stayed open and had tablets with wifi on them! We spent a long while surfing the internet and coloring some pictures for the photo contest (no we didn’t submit our perfectly colored ninja turtles). Soon it was time to head towards the Sports Bar in town and catch the game that we thought started at 8 PM. It turned out to start around 8:30 so we had quite a bit of time to wait again but we didn’t mind since we were inside and away from the cold. This pub was a lot quieter than the ones we’re used to in Sydney, but it made for a better viewing of the game since there weren’t any people in the way. We were really hoping that NSW would come out with a  second win, but unfortunately Queensland scored within the first 2 minutes and it just went downhill from there. At halftime NSW still hadn’t scored and we were just hoping it wouldn’t be a shutout. Right off the bat they scored but weren’t able to overcome the twenty points that Queensland had scored. That left the State of Origin score tied with one more game to go in another three weeks. It really is interesting how their ‘superbowls’ work.

We've already paid for that

Waking up today, we knew that the morning would be slightly easy -  all we had to do was put our luggage into our storage unit and head to the airport. It was easier said than done because with five suitcases, lugging them around was rather difficult! We were able to get two suitcases into the storage unit before it started raining. Yes, as you have read in the blog, it has been raining in Sydney for the last week it seems! Since we knew that we had to get all of our luggage into the unit, we decided we would take on the rain and carry the rest of the suitcases to the unit. If getting our luggage into the unit wasn’t exciting enough, today was the day we would get our bond back! We were super excited about this until our landlord tried shorting us out 50 bucks each saying that we hadn’t paid yet. We set her straight right needless to say. Since it was the last time at our place, we said bye to our house mates (the ones that were there) and headed off to the library, so I could print out my itinerary for the return flight back to the United States. As we stepped into the library, Lauren and I were both shocked to see that most of the computers were open (this is really exciting because usually there are no computers open). It seemed that everything was going just as planned with printing until we found out that all the printers were frozen! What are the chances? So, we’ll just put that off until we get back. Wondering where we are going? Well, we have set up a week trip to explore Tasmania and Melbourne and it was time to finally head to the airport for our first stop: Launceston! We got to the airport the same way we went to Cairns, making it seem like getting to the airport is a breeze! We actually consider ourselves airport pros because checking in and getting through security now comes so easy to us! As we made our way to the gate, we noticed that the gate number on our boarding pass and the gate number the attendant told us were different. Slightly confused, we just went with the one that was on our boarding pass. We should have listened to the attendant because they ended up changing our gate number! Once we found our right gate, we soon boarded the plane and were off on a 1 ½ hour flight to Launceston! We found that this was much more enjoyable than longer flights such as Cairns which was 3 hours! As we landed, we were told that we could not bring any outside fruit, which we thought was ridiculous, but apparently Tasmania doesn’t have crop disease like mainland Australia, so they are cautious on what they allow ing in. That being said, we had to do some grubbing because we brought 3 apples and two bananas! We stuffed our faces with delicious fruits, but were slightly sad since we would have no more fruit after that. Once we finally made our way through, we headed outside the airport to find a shuttle bus that would take us directly to our couch surfer’s house! With no other way of getting there, we thought that this would be the best way. The ride was rather crowded and again, we were one of the last ones off, but it was totally worth it. As we walked up to the door, Claire opened the door and greeted us, telling us to come in and set our stuff down. She later offered us some Milo (Australian hot chocolate), and you know Lauren, she couldn’t resist! For the rest of the night, we just sipped on our milo and told our stories. Will came back a little later and helped us plan out what to do throughout our two days in Launceston. Claire graciously offered to drive us to a few different places the next day and went to bed excited for what was to come in the morning.

We couldn't have fit it into four

Unknowingly we had both planned on skyping our parents today, just at different times so it all worked out. Riley woke up early to skype his mom which was a bit of a bust at first since skype wouldn’t show his image to his mom. After I woke up I decided to turn on my computer to see if I couldn’t connect to skype better, but I was having the same problem. I was planning to skpe with my family afterwards, and they hadn’t been able to see me last time on the webcam so I decided I was going to fix the problem. I googled how to fix it and found out I just had to download a windows fix and then redownload skype. I was so proud of myself that it actually worked since Riley is the one that usually fixes my computer problems! So his mom was finally able to see him, along with my family being able to see me which was even better since my Grandma was in town visiting. We were obviously putting off doing what we had to do today – pack. Long story short our renter had gotten in trouble with the landlord and was getting kick out of her apartment. This meant that she had to kick everyone out of the apartments that she owned, which included both of us. We would be able to stay until July 1^st, but that was right in the middle of our trip to Melbourne so we wouldn’t be back in time to move all of our stuff out. We made the decision to pack up our stuff early and just put it in storage until we left for the United States. This will actually save us money in the long run, but just puts a little extra stress on us before we leave for Tasmania. So the rest of the day was literally spent just packing, organizing and weighing all of our stuff into the five suitcases that we had. Hands down we both agreed that we had brought way too much stuff, but with this being our first trip overseas, we had no reference to go by. But either way, packing up is a lot easier than packing for Australia since everything had to go in the suitcases somehow, someway. We took many short breaks to eat pasta for lunch and pasta for dinner; obviously that’s our best source of energy. By nightfall we had almost everything packed and were ready to move into storage in the morning, plus we were proud of ourselves since we hadn’t gotten a short temper with each other all day. Riley usually gets pretty anxious whenever there’s a big mess and/or we have to pack so I was a worried about how it would go but it turned out to be a lot easier than we had thought. We ventured off to Victoria Park because we had another thing to check off our list – take a picture of the possums in the park. I happen to think that these possums are super cute because it’s a family of 3 that live in a tree near the side of the road. We have been able to see them outside their nest several times around dusk, just sitting there all together. There was only one out for us to take a picture of, but he was still really photogenic and even came down the tree for us.

It's exhausting being a live audience!

We were up a little later than we usually are on Saturday, so getting up for Sunday church was a little tougher than normal. It turned out to be even worse when we stepped outside, after getting ready, to see it down pouring. We had to rush back in to get Lauren’s red umbrella, which has holes and scrapes in it, so I would hardly call it an umbrella! Nonetheless, it did keep us out of some rain and managed to get us to the church dryer than we probably would have been without it. The new priest from last week was doing the mass again today which I liked because both of us could follow him a little better. Once church was over we headed back to the house to get some grub because we were both beyond starving! After lunch we checked outside to see if it was still raining, and sure enough it was, so we stayed inside and did a little bit of pre-packing since tomorrow we would be packing our bags for America. It wasn’t as hard as we both intended it to be, seeing as we were only doing little things, but the little things added up and soon enough our rooms were getting tidied up! We stopped a little early because we had to get ready to head to Parramatta for Australia’s Got Talent! Getting ready was super easy because we were both super excited to go see a televised show! It was still raining as we left our places, so we made a quick jog down to central station where we would catch the 3:30 train to Parramatta. Even though the show wasn’t until 6:30, we decided to get to Parramatta early to check out what the city had to offer. We arrived at Parramatta station, which was conveniently connected to a huge mall, so we decided to check it out. We weren’t disappointed when we found an ultra-cheap candy shop and bought a couple boxes of Mike & Ikes! It was only 5 o’ clock when we found that most of the stores were closing up for the day! This isn’t something new to us since a lot of places close early in Australia. That being said, we decided to leave and head toward the direction of Australia’s Got Talent. Since we had another hour to kill, we stopped at a few shops along the way and found the same souvenirs that you could find at the markets, only ten times more expensive! We left that shop quickly and decided to just hang out at the local Oporto, which kept us out of the rain for a good while. Since Claire (girl who had to AGT tickets) said she would meet us at 5:30 to exchange tickets, we left Oporto and arrived at the venue right at 5:30. Lauren and I thought that the place was about to open since the line was packed, but we soon found out that wasn’t the case. We waited and waited for Claire to arrive, but it didn’t happen for another hour! So at 6:30 we finally got our tickets and headed in the door! We met a couple of other couch surfers who had tagged along to see the show as well who were pretty cool! The whole gang was able to get seats on the second floor, which allowed for a great view! It was quite the sight to see since you only see this type of stuff on T.V.!

The somewhat funny host (left) and judge Kyle (right)

Everyone was waiting for the judges to come out, because apparently they were all big in Australia! The first judge that came out was Dawn, (no idea who she is)! The second was Timomatic, who we also didn’t know, but won on a previous season of Australia’s got talent. The third judge to come out was Geri, who was previously known as Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls, so of course we knew who she was. Lastly, Kyle came out, whom again, we had no clue who he was. It was cool to see everyone cheering and clapping as the judges came out because you could tell that everyone was excited! After all of the commotion ended, we finally had our first performance. It was a man who said he had been singing professionally for over 20 years, so apparently he had to be good. As he began to sing, there was not doubt in my mind that he would be getting to the next round because he was so good! Sure enough, after the judges made their decision to let him through to the next round, we had to sit for at least 15 minutes before the next person would come out. There was a guy named Dylan who would entertain the crowd in between acts, which was different than what we imagined since we were under the impression that it’d be act right after act. TV is quite different when you’re the live crowd! In between acts we had to do things such as: standing ovations, sitting ovations, cheers and boo’s, clapping while in our seats, just so they could have footage of different crowds doing different things. It was actually exhausting to be part of a live audience! Lauren and I were beginning to think that the judges were too nice since we were halfway through the show and no one had been buzzed yet (meaning their act was bad) including the dancing poodle! We were quite amazed by this because in America you can get buzzed off a show so easily! We had our first group not make it through when a couple of ballerina’s were doing an amazing routine on a floating ring in the air. It really looked like they had worked really hard of perfecting the routine and even just working out to have the strength to hold on to it in midair. But unfortunately they didn’t win the judges over and got the first no from the judges. From there the show took a turn and seemed to resemble more of a buck or hen party (bachelor or bachelorette) with all the male strippers that took the stage. I joked with Lauren saying she was getting a little flushed but I think she was more disgusted since there were even oompa loompa strippers at one point! And, they all got through to the next round. This is also around the time when we started to lose faith in the show because they seemed to be letting everyone through even if their talent was mediocre.  This show is obviously going to be overcrowded with acts. More and more people kept leaving through and we were thinking about doing it ourselves since it was already past 11 o’clock, but Lauren says she would have felt bad since there weren’t many people left. Turns out there weren’t that many acts left anyways so we decided to stick it out. Usually they save the best for last but that was not the case today; a Korean man took the stage dressed exactly like Psy the artist of Gangnum Style which was of course the song he was choosing to sing. Neither of us are a fan of this song since it’s so over played now and today was no different. We couldn’t believe that the judges actually let him through since he was claiming to have written another song titled “Color Men” which sounds oddly similar to Psy’s new song ‘Gentleman.’ We were definitely done watching the show after that and quickly made our way to the train station with the other couchsurfing, talking about our favorite acts the whole way. Soon enough we were back in Sydney and on our way to make some midnight sloppy joes. We always tell ourselves that we’ll eat before we go out and do things, but somehow always get caught in the trap with starving and eating much later than we would like. Those sloppy joes were delicious though! 

It was only meant to be that one time...

Today was the day – My final day at Sydney Uni, which also meant one final test.  I started the day out at 7:30 by enjoying a nice breakfast, although I was hoping for a breakfast from Lauren since she ever so nicely did it the first time, but unfortunately I made it myself.  After looking at my notes one last time, I came to a conclusion that I knew the material well enough and that I was ready to take the exam. As I left for school, dark clouds began to roll in, which I was hoping wasn’t going to be a sign on how today was going to play out. When I arrived at my building it started raining, so at least I was lucky enough not to get stuck in the rain! Right when I arrived I took my test, which didn’t turn out to be as tough as I thought it was going to be! At 11:30 exactly I finished my time at Sydney Uni and boy, was it a good feeling! I headed back and Lauren was still in her jammies, even though she had already taken a shower. I was about to take another shower because I was finally able to shave my beard today (superstition during exam time), which I was happy about. After this busy morning, we decided that we would head out and do some errands. By the time dinner time rolled around, we were both starving and craving chicken because we were planning to go to The Nest (place with delicious chicken) for our celebration dinner of being all done with our school semester in Australia! As we arrived to the Nest, our hearts were torn in half; there was a big sign that said ‘For Lease’ on the window. We were beyond sad because every time after the first time we came, the place has been closed. Now it’s shut down for good which is such a bummer since we hate when locally owned restaurants don’t make it! With our stomachs grumbling, we had to settle for another chicken place that was right up the road. Lauren ordered a chicken schnitzel sandwich which turned out to be a chicken strip sandwich, while I ordered the closest thing that resembled the sandwich that we had at the Nest, a mona troppe. All in all, the place wasn’t that bad, but no comparison to the Nest. We had also planned to go see the fireworks at Cockle Bay tonight, since it was the last Saturday that we would be in Sydney, which meant the last Saturday that we would be able to see the fireworks. It had been raining all day, like every other Saturday, so we figured that they wouldn’t have them, yet we went the harbor to try anyways. There were heaps of people waiting near the water when we arrived, so we figured that they still had to be on. At 8:30 on the dot the fireworks began to shoot off into the air. It was quite the show and Lauren even said that it was one of the best that she has seen since there were some different designs and it was a nonstop show! The show only lasted about 15 minutes, but it was the perfect amount of time. It felt good to finally check that off our list.

I hope they win

I told myself that I would get up early today, but only because I needed to study for my last exam that was just around the corner! Lauren doesn’t have any more exams, so she enjoyed her morning sleeping in just a little longer than I did. I studied for most of the morning, but since the NBA finals were on, I had a tough time keeping my focus. It was the Heat vs. Spurs in game 7 and they were already tied 3-3 in the series, so this was the game to see who would be the champions! I missed the first half of the game since it started while I was sleeping, but caught the second half over gamecast, which lets me watch it play by play. It wasn’t as exciting, but it was still exciting enough! After a neck and neck game, the Heat finally won, which made me pretty happy. Since Lauren had been doing some computer surfing, and I had been ‘studying’, we decided that a nice walk outside would do us good. I thought we would do a nice walk in the park, or maybe along the beach, but Lauren knew what should be on my mind so we took a walk to the library. She had to return some books that she had recently checked out, so the trip wasn’t completely wasted!  The rest of the day was filled with rain, so we just decided to relax and have our famous tuna and corn salads again tonight!

I think we do more than backpackers!

With this being the last day in Cairns we knew we’d have to get up early to get as much sightseeing in as possible before we caught our flight back to Sydney at 11 am. Neither of us wanted to get up early of course, especially after being on the reef all day yesterday, but when you go to bed early it really isn’t that bad. We expected the check out process of the hostel to take at least 30 minutes but we were pleasantly surprised that it took less than 5 minutes! Riley had his hopes on doing some bird watching on the promenade, so that’s where we headed. Along the way we passed St. Monica’s Cathedral since they apparenty have the largest themed stained glass display which we really wanted to see. We were again pleasantly surprised that the church doors were open at 7 AM and quietly walked inside. Stained glass lined the aisles and it was truly an amazing sight. Each side had its own theme of the earth and followed the story from space to ocean.

Pictures to come later :(

With that checked off our list so early we continued to the Promenade which is apparently the highlight of Cairns lifestyle and I can see why. Even at 7 o’clock in the morning the boardwalk was crowded with walkers, runners or people just on their way to work. We are still amazed at how early people get up and going in Cairns! Riley was able to do some bird watching just like he wanted while I collected some sand. We knew we didn’t have too long to waste though since we were planning to walk to the airport. Don’t worry, it wasn’t too far away and the hostel wanted to charge $12 each to take us there! This is why we think we do a little bit more backpacking than the ‘backpackers;’ we’re not afraid to do a little bit of walking. Plus, the weather was pretty mild, even though we weren’t really used to this warm weather anymore. We were also happy that no taxis were pulling over, yelling at us to see if we wanted a taxi. We made perfect timing and were even able to take a few stops along the way. After we checked in and made our way to the gate we were shocked to see the same family that had sat next to us on the plane here. I couldn’t believe our luck, but we just hoped they wouldn’t be sitting next to us again. Lucky us, they were. Riley was about to have an empty seat next to him until the uncle had to move since they had too many babies in their row. Turns out we’re not so lucky after all! The plane ride flew by though and we were back in Sydney in no time. But it definitely felt long enough since we were both starving and couldn’t wait to get back and find anything to munch on. Because we knew we were going away for a few days we had made sure to eat most of our food so our options were limited. We ended up cooking up grilled cheese rolls before heading to Coles to go shopping and come back to cook cheeseburgers for dinner. Trivia was on our agenda for the night and we were more than ready. Riley had said he’d practice his airplane again, but rather just rubbed his lucky airplane all over him instead. With all the walking we had done throughout the morning we decided we’d take the bus down to Newtown and ended up passing by Neill’s apartment and seeing him in the lobby. For once we were able to all ride down to the pub together! We stepped into Kelly’s to see that the place was packed with barely any tables left. This left us sitting all the way in the back, which we’ll blame for our bad results. The questions just weren’t on our side but we didn’t come in last place, so we can be somewhat proud of ourselves. Neill wanted to give the airplane contest a go, despite Riley’s desire to become the champion again, but we figured he might as well give him a chance. Instead of hitting the side of the door it actually hit the top of the door and would have gone through otherwise. It was alright though since we were all tired, causing Riley and I to pass on the frozen yogurt invitation. Shocker, I know!

The best blog of all

We are very sad to say that Riley typed up this super long blog detailing all our experiences at the Great Barrier Reef, and we won't be able to post it yet. His computer got tucked away in storage before we remembered that we hadn't posted that blog yet. Maybe the posts for Melbourne and Tasmania will make up for it!

Their on their own Fiji time!

The morning started a lot earlier than I would have liked but I told Riley to just come in and say “We’re going to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef” if I looked like I wasn’t going to get out of bed. Luckily, he didn’t have to since I was wide awake by the time the alarm clock went off. This could have been because I woke up several times throughout the night to check the time and make sure I hadn’t overslept and missed the plane. With our bags packed and ready to go we were able to get out the door even earlier than expected and make it to Central Station by 5:15; this is quite the accomplishment for me! We were going to catch a train to Mascot, costing $1.80 instead of catching the airport train, costing $12, and walk 1.5 km to the airport. I mean, why haven’t other people thought of this? The walk was a lot easier than we both expected and we only got confused as we were entering the airport because there were barely any signs directing us where to go. We ended up just asking a worker and luckily we were in the right vicinity. We went upstairs to the departures check-in desks and were encountered by the longest line belonging to our airline, Tiger Airways, of course. We were about an hour early so we didn’t know what was going to happen since our flight check-in closed 45 minutes before departure. We were at the front of line just in time though and made it through check-in and security easily. As we went downstairs to our gate I was starting to wonder how we were going to get on our plane since we were on the ground level and not on the second floor like usual gates that have a tunnel leading to the plane. It didn’t take me long to figure out we’d be taking a bus to the airplane but what surprised me was the fact that we were actually going to board the plane ourselves, as in we were going to walk across the tarmac and climb the stairs that roll away. I guess that’s what we get for choosing the cheap flight, but we don’t mind one bit! We were also going to have our first experience with sitting next to a baby and just hoped he’d stay calm and not cry. Luck was on our side because both the baby and adult were out within minutes allowing Riley and I to shortly follow. Sleeping on the airplane is never easy for me but I was able to get about an hour’s rest in there. We’ll fast forward the rest of the long three hour flight to the landing. As we peeked out the window, since I was lucky enough to land my first window seat, we noticed that it looked a lot like Fiji with the beach and big mountains right behind it. Plus it was a little cloudy with the clouds literally coming over the top of the mountains which brought back memories of landing in Nadi. As we stepped off the airplane we were hit with a wall of 80 degree weather which felt like home to us, North Carolina. This is the weather we had been waiting for! Cairns airport was rather small and with no check in bag to collect we made our way to the exit to call our hostel to come pick us up. We didn’t make the first shuttle bus since other people had arrived at the dock by then, even though we had been the first ones, so I was a little agitated. Then when we finally got to the hostel the owner decided to take her own sweet time checking us in. There were five of us sitting in front of waiting to check-in but she decided to stop what she was doing and help everyone that walked up to her instead of helping us out first. We literally had to wait about 40 minutes until we were all done paying, got our sheets and our keys! Then a guy had to give us a tour of the place, but had forgotten to give us our keys so we had to go back to the front desk. I was beyond irritated at this point since we only had two days in Cairns to explore and see everything and he was taking away precious time.. Once we were finally in our rooms we didn’t waste any time just dropping our bags and heading out the door. We were planning on going to the Botanical Gardens, the Centenary Lakes, and some WWII tanks. I had picked up a map from the hostel lounge during the 40 minute wait so we knew exactly where we were heading. Along the way we passed a lot of restaurants we tried to spot a good one to stop at for dinner that night. We finally reached the Botanical Gardens sign, but we had a few stops before that to check out the Tanks and another Nature Center. I was under the impression that the tanks were going to be replicas of the Army Tanks used during WWII but turns out its giant oil tanks with art galleries inside about WWII. It obviously wasn’t what we were expecting, but it was still cool to see. We ventured on to see the Botanical Gardens which isn’t as big as the one in Sydney but still beautiful with a lot of bamboo.

Bamboo upon bamboo upon bamboo...

He's just playing his bamboo guitar!

Just a bamboo tree.

Big excitement for a slightly disappointing let down. 

Can anyone find me

From the gardens we took a boardwalk into the rainforest that was going to lead us to the Centenary Lakes. The boardwalk was definitely my favorite part since the scenery was so beautiful and made me feel like we were in another place altogether.

Where it leads no one knows.

The lakes were quite a sight with giant palm trees off to the side. We headed back into the city to try and find the beachfront. I think we were both expecting to see a long, stretching beach like in North Carolina since it was Cairns after all, but we walked onto another typical Australian beach. There was barely any sand between the path and water line and rocks lined the outer edges of the bay. So really it was just a sound that they call a beach. We were sitting along the Promenade, a boardwalk that ran all the way from the city to the Pier and a focal point of the beach town. There were great birds to watch and small ripples of wavescoming unto the sand so we were both content until we started getting really hungry!

Saw this nasty thing!

Then we were off to finally find a good restaurant for us, but our search got pretty frustrating whenever we noticed that none of the places looked open. It was only a little after 4 o’clock and all the restaurants weren’t going to open until later in the day, which we obviously couldn’t wait for. We had gotten up so early to catch the plane and hadn’t had much to eat throughout the day, so we were pretty desperate to eat. We ended up following the signs to the mall and getting Hungry Jack’s which is an Australian restaurant, just not the classical fish and chips type of place that we were looking for. It was still delicious, especially since it seems like forever since we’ve had fast food! With Coles right there we stopped in to get a few more food items to last us our few days in Cairns before heading back to the hostel. Asylum is known for having crazy parties but lucky for us we were staying in-between the party dates and the place was awesomely quiet. We were able to just relax and pack our bag for our cruise to the Great Barrier Reef the next day. It didn’t take us long and we were able to turn out the lights by 10 o’clock, but with the Great Barrier Reef on the list of things to do tomorrow we were more than ready to get some good rest so we could really enjoy it!

Check off the Coke Sign!

Today I had my first exam: There was a small party afterwards for the class to celebrate being over, but I was just ready to get back to see Lauren especially since she had told she had good news. Right when I walked in Lauren ran up to give me a big hug and congratulate me with being done with my first exam then she was excited to tell me that we finally had a couchsurfer host for our last week in Sydney. We found out that we would unfortunately have to move out before we expected because the landlord wasn’t happy with our renter. We thought this was a big inconveince at first, but now we’re okay with it since we’ll be the ones saving money in the long run! Having a confirmed couchsurfer definitely makes going to Melbourne and Tasmania a lot easier though. Lauren had been skyping with her family for Father’s Day while I was taking my exam so it was perfect timing once I got back since she was off and ready to go explore Sydney. We made a stop at St. Mary’s Cathedral one last time before we headed off to Kings Cross. We had been running low on candy and there’s this one shop in the Cross that usually has cheap candy, even if it is within a few days of the expiration date. We took a new route into Kings Cross from Hyde Park which we wish we would have discovered whenever we lived down that way because it definitely felt a lot shorter. Just like we expected, the shop had cheap candy which wasn’t close to it's expiration date, so that was a plus. We had a little over an hour to kill before sunset because we had another item on our bucket list to check off – take a picture of the Coco-Cola sign. We had seen this sign lit up many times during our first few weeks in Sydney and have actually missed seeing it since then. 

Finally got a picture of it fully lit up!

Does some cool designs!

Afterwards we were able to take our usual path back into the city to make it back and cook dinner, or rather breakfast. We were planning on having the breakfast works of pancakes, hashbrowns, and scrambled eggs for dinner! I’ll have to do a little perfecting on the hashbrowns but it was still delicious. We had to stay in for the night and pack for our upcoming trip to Cairns! That’s right, we were going to see the Great Barrier Reef in just two days! We also had to wake up around 5 o’clock to catch a train to the airport so we were planning on heading to bed early. Packing for warmer weather was a little strange, but made our backpacks a lot lighter!

Spontaneous Captured Sunset

Since we both like to have a relaxed day every now and then we decided that today would be it, but it was more for Riley since he had an exam the next morning. We got up fairly early to go to church and then came back to get lunch and settle in before Riley got to work on studying. He has his first exam on Anthropology tomorrow and is slightly worried about the essays that he has to write since he’d rather take a multiple choice test. I spent my relax time on the internet, mainly on Facebook talking to my old suitemate Jessica! But I can never stay indoors for long and Riley doesn’t like to study for long so we made sure to get out into Sydney by 1:30 and head to the markets. Since it was Sunday the place was packed and we got what we needed before we made a bee line for the door! We have been constantly watching the sky for the past few days trying to determine when would be the best time to go to the Pylon Lookout and catch the sunset. Unfortunately it has been very cloudy lately, or rather sunny during the day and then the clouds cover the sky by 4 o’clock which has really annoyed us. However, whenever we stepped out of the markets there was sunshine everywhere and we made a quick decision to go ahead and do the Pylon Lookout. This meant we had to take the free bus all the way down to Circular Quay and swiftly walk to the Harbour Bridge, hoping we’d make it up to the top in time to catch the sunset. Luckily we already knew the way to the bridge and got there in record time! Along the way I spotted something on the ground and of course picked it up; it was a two person pass to the Pylon Lookout which meant even if we didn’t catch the perfect sunset today we’d have another chance! I was very ecstatic about my find to say the least since I’m starting to get on Riley’s level. We were practically running across the Harbour Bridge, dodging people left and right, took the Pylon stairs two at a time, skipped all the history information and made it to the time with plenty of time to spare. We scoped out the best place to catch the sunset, but were a little disheartened whenever we figured out that the pylon across from us would be in the way. This made it a little less romantic, but hey, what can we do? We still got awesome pictures and were finally able to cross this event off of our bucket list! 

Since the sunset is so early now (before 5 o’clock) we were able to save our feet and take the free bus back into the city. We headed back to make tuna salad for dinner, which may not be what you picture in your mind. It was actually just a regular green salad, lettuce and all, with corn, onions, and tuna which had been warmed on the stovetop poured over it. Neither of us had ever had tuna in our salad but it was delicious and we definitely recommend it!

I think the chips make me tired

We slept in as per our usual for a Saturday morning, especially since the night before we had been out a little later than normal. But we had things on our to-do list for the day. After getting ready and packing a lunch we headed down to the markets since I had wanted this one rain jacket for some time. I had tried on the rain jacket the week before but had decided not to get it just yet since I didn’t have any cash on me. I had thought about throughout the week though, so I knew I had to go back and get it especially since I don’t really have a proper rain jacket. Luckily they still had my size and Lauren was able to take some pictures of me in it so I could make sure it fit like I imagined it did. After my successful buy we looked around a little bit more but decided we had wasted enough time at the markets. We walked a few blocks over and enjoyed our packed lunch in a small park across from Central Station. I was keener on feeding the pigeons, but the seagulls always ruin the fun. Lauren had spotted his nice sweater in the window display of a store along George while we were pub hopping last night and wanted to go search for it. With nothing else to do I went along but since she couldn’t exactly remember which street it was near, or when exactly she had seen it we ended up walking up and down the street at least twice. Finally we spotted a rack of sweaters that were similar, just not in the exact print that she had seen. Unfortunately, they were also a lot baggier than she had imagined and ended up passing on the whole deal. With the weather getting pretty windy and cold we headed back to relax before dinner and by this I mean really relax because Lauren ended up falling asleep! She blames it on the Doritos she had eaten earlier and the cloudy weather making her sleepy but I don’t know if I should believe her or not. After she woke up we whipped up a nice concoction of a dinner – tuna alfredo pasta. Really that’s all it was – tuna, spiral noodles and alfredo sauce but let me tell you it was good! I could eat tuna everyday I’m pretty sure. We had plans to go to Neill’s for more board games so we had to slightly rush to clean up and get ready to go out in the cold again. I even looked up how to say hello in Filipino to surprise Neill but because we were a little late we didn’t get to the normal hello from Neill and I kept it to myself; maybe next time. We started out with another round of Pandemic on the difficult level. We weren’t successful at first, but the second round we decided to pick our roles and really optimized on the game. Then it was time for Dominion since we were down to our last few sets before we graduated from the beginner level and could move on to his App version. We’re also starting to get our strategies down since we come closer to beating Neill every time! But Cluedo is something we can always count on winning. Lauren took winner status for the first round by beating me and Neill out by one move and then I took the reigning champion title back. Have to admit, it feels good to beat Neill in something!

Pretty sure that was all juice!

Now that my credit card was back in commission we decided it would just be best to go ahead and buy the rest of our plane tickets for all our travels in Australia. That meant we are officially going to Cairns next week to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef along with Tasmania and Melbourne at the end of the month. We celebrated by heading to the library first thing this morning to go ahead and print out all of our itineraries! Plus, its just a huge relief having all those big purchases out of the way since we’re famous for putting off buying expensive things, although these plane tickets were nothing compared to plane tickets in the US. They are so much cheaper! I had the task of printing out the itineraries while Riley went ahead and got to work on his study guide. He has his first exam in Anthropology on Monday and has to complete an outline so he knows what to write about for his final essay. Needless to say he’s not excited about having to write an essay for his exam since he’d much rather take a test, but what can ya do? Sydney University sure does love their writing. Once he was confident in his outline we headed back to get even more writing done – blogs. They always seem to pile up as I’m sure you guys know since we don’t post them as often as we used to. Our days have just been so packed lately with all the final things to do in Sydney! We took the afternoon easy since we knew our evening was going to be a little crazier than usual – we were going on our first pub crawl. I know, you guys are probably shocked by this since we’re not the type to do this, but it was only going to be $5 and we’ve never been on an official pub crawl so we figured why not. We were supposed to meet everyone at 8 o’clock at the Queen Victoria Building, but we were so excited that we got there 20 minutes and no one there seemed to be waiting for a pub crawl. So we wandered into the Queen Victoria Building to get out of the cold and slight drizzle. We have actually never been in the QVB because we honestly didn’t know that you could just wander in. I’ve read online about tours and thought it was more of a parliament building than a shopping mall, because that’s exactly what it turned out to be – a huge 3 story mall. I mean the stores were all top brand like Ralph Lauren and Chanel, so we obviously just did some window shopping. There was however a cool clock in the middle that had rotating minutes, hours, dates, and months. There was a vertical line where all the circles would align to tell the actual time and date! As it got closer to 8 o’clock we made our way back outside to be confronted by a fairly large group of students. We were greeted by the hosts of the pub crawl and given the rundown on how the night would go. Basically we were going to 4 pubs/bars and would get free entry to all of them and supposedly pizza at the 3^rd bar. That was good enough for us, so we just have to wait until everyone arrived until we headed off to Sweeney’s which was literally just a block away. Once we got there we all made our way up 4 flights of stairs to the balcony or rooftop. Riley was surprised that it was actually an open rooftop with fresh air; he thought it would still be a closed in room. I didn’t mind the fresh air except for the smokers. Anyways, right as we were getting adjusted to the small space a guy stuck out his hand to introduce himself to me, saying he was Andrias from Germany. Seeing as I’m going to Germany in just a few shorts months I am always excited to meet German people so I can get more of a feel for what I’m getting myself into. And the conversation between all of us took off from there. From having met all our German friends in Fiji we are accustomed to their accent and humor by now so we all got along perfectly. We shared our first drink together which was basically just cranberry juice before we headed off to the next bar. The next pub was Scruffy’s Murphys which we’re familiar with since it’s the pub we went to for St. Patrick’s Day as I’m sure you can imagine why (its an irish pub). We were able to get a nice beer at this pub and share it quietly upstairs with an American from Minnesota, a guy from Iran and another girl from Hamburg, Germany. Most of our conversations centered about our journeys through Australia as well as the girl’s upcoming trip to the west coast of the US. The third bar, Scu bar, was a little more chaotic than the last two since it was more like a bar in Charlotte. There was loud music, black dance floor and DJ in the back corner of the room bobbing his head to the music. We grabbed a table near the back and were informed by the host to stay there since the pizza would be coming out soon. Andrias had warned us not to get our hopes up since he had never gotten pizza here in all the seven times he’s done the pub crawl, but we were still hopeful. Sure enough, not even five minutes later they had brought out 5 small pizzas, I mean personal size pizzas, and we were first in line! Because it was so dark inside we barely knew what we were eating, but some were barbeque flavored and others more vegetarian. We signaled Andrias to come over and he was so excited that he was able to finally get a slice of pizza! By then they had moved the pool table away to make room for the dance floor and the rhythm of the songs got to us. We soon found ourselves on the dance floor but not for long since we barely knew half the songs. We were just as content with sitting off to the side and people watching. It was definitely entertaining to watch one half-dressed girl dance with five guys circling her. She obviously liked the attention. The last bar was called Side Bar which is right next to the Central Station bus stop so it was closer to where we used to live. We stepped down the stairs into the same type of scene – dark room with loud music and lots of people on the dance floor. There was a huge bar in the middle of the room and everyone dancing off to the one corner. We took to the dance floor first but then a couple of guys were getting too close for my comfort so we moved around. We were beginning to hear the same songs that had played at the previous bar so we decided to grab our drink and find a seat. We agreed that the loud music and crazy dancing wasn’t our thing and we don’t know how some international students can do this almost every night! We’re obviously more into the trivia nights and board games. It was a good experience though and we met some cool people along the way. In the end we left around 12:30 just like we had planned and walked back feeling normal.

I have always wanted you to throw it underhand!

Lauren has been having trouble using her credit card in Australia, so she called her mom on Skype to see if she could help. Needless to say it was supermom to the rescue! She had an awesome idea to just hold the phone up to the computer so Lauren could talk to the Citi worker over Skype! It worked wonders and Lauren is now able to use her credit card again since they blocked her card since they had suspected problems! With that out of the way we were ready to start our day and get out since it was actually sunny, with markets first on the list. I know it seems we always go to the markets, but they are always for good reasons! Today we planned on going to find a wine holder and a key hook that we could share with the extra money we had left over from my $50 find. As we strolled through the aisles, we were trying to see if we couldn’t find the cheapest of both items. We were able to find a lot of stalls with key holders, but all of them had the same designs that we weren’t too fond of. The wind holder is a different story. We made our way back to a stand that we scoped out earlier that was selling them for a reasonable price. As we looked through our choices, we both spotted an awesome one with bright colors! We had never seen one with such bright colors before, so we knew that this was the one. We bought the holder and decided to stroll around a little bit more, but we didn’t find anything else that we liked, so we headed to buy a couple of vegetables before we headed off to do the pylon climb. Once we bought our veggies, we headed outside to sort them in our bag, as well check to make sure we had our Pylon tickets. As we sorted, we found one problem – our tickets were not in the bag. We double checked but our tickets definitely weren’t in the bag. With disappointment, we headed to World Square Shopping Center to just fill out the rest of our day, plus we thought we could possibly find a different key holder. The key holders in those stores were also a letdown, but Lauren noticed something that got her attention – Macaroons for $1! Since we had never tried one before, we said today was going to be the day! We clanked our macaroons together (since it was the first time we had them) and took a nice small bite, since they are only the size of a quarter! They were delicious! We were both pleased with our macaroons and both agreed that it was a dollar well spent! We soon headed back since the sunset was coming in and we planned on going to the park to watch it instead of the Harbour Bridge. Good thing we did because huge clouds rolled in and covered the sunset completely! Since there was no sun but lots of clouds, we decided to head back and make dinner before trivia. On our Wednesday menu, we made what Lauren called a shepherd’s pie. It consisted of mashed potatoes, veggies and tuna, which combined makes a very delicious meal! After we stuffed our faces, we got ready for trivia by looking up a world map since every week they do a geography question and most of the time we get it wrong or rely on Neill. We quizzed one another and agreed that we knew all we were going to know. As we headed out the door, I realized that I had not practiced my paper airplane technique! This meant that we had to wait a couple more minutes since paper airplanes had become a big part of trivia! Lauren had always told me to throw it underhand, so I gave it a shot. I think I should have listened to her the whole time because that was the best way to throw an airplane! After about 5 minutes of throwing, we grabbed our skateboards and headed off to trivia. We are on regular basis with the host now, and he hands us the trivia paper and crossword puzzle as we walk in the door. We find this funny because he also knows us as the Americans with the skateboards! As we sat down, we tried to work on the crossword puzzle, but unfortunately it was a playoff of last week’s ‘movies in 2000’s’ with ‘movies in 1990’s’. We only got a few answers before we called it quits. The first round went by and we only scored 6 out of 20 points (if you think that’s bad, well it kind of is, but they asked so many Australian questions, it was borderline not fair!). The second round was a little better and we scored 10 out of 20. Our only hope to win anything was now on paper planes. I have worked hard the last couple weeks to get my plane through the door, but have been unsuccessful. Today was going to be the week I was going to win!  As we lined up with our paper planes, plane after plane wasn’t going through the door. When I stepped up to throw, I nervously planted my feet behind the line and quickly threw it underhand and it soared out of the door! All thanks to Lauren since I finally listened to her and threw it underhanded or that’s what she says! There were only a few people left to throw their airplanes, and one almost beat mine, but finally I was victorious! Lauren cheered as I walked back, and I can’t lie, I was pretty happy to have finally won! And there was only one way to celebrate – Karaoke of course! We shocked even ourselves by stepping up to do it, but we are living by the ‘don’t delay’ motto now, so we decided to give it a shot. We tried to sing Stereohearts by gym class heroes, and tried is the correct word here. For those that don’t know the song, it is actually a fairly upbeat one with a rap portion in the beginning. We ended up mumbling the rap part completely, but at least we got the chorus down! It was so much fun to just be up there singing together though since the crowd was so supportive! It was like the karaoke that we had in mind where everyone is so nervous to give it a shot since everyone is staring at you. In fact, people could really careless who’s singing, or how bad they sound since everyone’s just after having a good time. We stayed a little bit longer to just sit back and listen to everyone else sing. The ride back on our skateboards was interesting, but there definitely weren’t as many people on the footpaths at that hour. We had gone to trivia with high hopes of winning something, so we were both giddy and excited that this hope had finally come true! Karaoke was just the icing on the cake!

Thank you P1

Laundry has been a continuous process for us throughout the past few days but we wanted to go ahead and knock out the last few loads so could not forgot about laundry for a couple of weeks. Riley was also in the cleaning mood, meaning he wanted to get rid of unneeded stuff – AKA our razor scooter. We had bought the scooter a while back to go hand in hand with the bike, but after two trips down to IKEA Tempe the back wheel had gotten busted. Not mentioning any names, but someone had ran over a pretty big rock which left a small crack in the rubber and then decided to slam on the brake a little too hard making chunks of rubber come off the wheel. We thought it would be fine to ride, but it really isn’t too pleasant going up and down on a scooter that’s supposed to be a smooth ride. Obviously we weren’t going to bring it back to the United States, or use it anymore while we were here so it had to go. I had hoped that we could just put it on gumtree for free to give to a family in need but then we realized that a screw had come off and we wouldn’t want a little kid to get hurt by using it. We ventured down to the ground floor of the apartment complex but right when we stepped into the elevator and tried to swipe our card we realized we didn’t have the card since Riley didn’t have his wallet. We frantically tried pushing the open button but nothing happened! What type of elevator doesn’t open whenever you push the open button?! I thought for sure we were doomed and we were, but luckily neither of us is claustrophobic. We tried everything: banging on the door, hitting all the buttons and even going down to the 2^nd floor and going up the fire exit to bang on the 3^rd floor door. But because we didn’t have the swipe key we couldn’t get back up to the 3^rd floor without someone having the proper key to hit the 3^rd floor button. There are seriously so many fire hazards in this place since even the fire hazard doors are locked to every floor, meaning we could even get locked in there if we didn’t put something in the doorway! In the end we decided it would just be best to wait in the elevator to ride it up and down until it stopped at the 3^rd floor. This proved to be a great idea because within five minutes we were able to safely step out of the elevator for good! Well not really since we just grabbed Riley’s wallet and proceeded to do what we had originally planned on doing 45 minutes ago – throw away the scooter. Whenever we stepped onto the basement of the building this is what we saw!

We both thought this was hilarious and perfect description of our life here. People obviously do not read signs or obey them. We barely thought it was trash though, rather just stuff people didn’t want anymore and were able to find a nice wooden chair to go with a dresser that we had found and made into a desk. We thought it was a great find! The day was once again rainy and cold so I didn’t really want to go out and do anything but rather just wanted to just stay in bed. I had woken up early to skype with my family again so I had to catch up on some sleep, even though I really wasn’t all that tired. I think I just felt like being lazy since the weather wasn’t cooperating. We easily accomplished that since we barely did anything until we went off to play board games again with Neill. This time we switched it up a little playing a team game of pandemic. In this game we’re all on the same time and have to work together to cure the world from diseases. We lost the first game, but by the second round we were pros at it! I’m really looking forward to hopefully playing these games with my family in the future! We also played Dominion and lost track of time so we couldn’t end the night with a round of Cluedo. Riley didn’t mind though since it meant he was able to hang on to his winner status! We headed back to relax and watch the movie Rio which I have wanted Riley to watch for some time now since his love for birds has dramatically increased while we’ve been here in Australia!

Hoped the Queen liked rain!

Today was actually a public holiday because it is the celebration of the first Queen’s birthday. That meant a lot of places were closed or had short hours and almost everybody was off of work. However, that didn’t mean they were out in the city since it was pretty gloomy, cold and rainy. We didn’t really have anything special planned for this holiday since it kinda snuck up on us and we barely knew the significance of it anyways. All we knew was that they kinda treat it like Labor Day with all the 3 day shopping deals. In order to stay dry we had to stay indoors for most of the day until 4 o’clock rolled around and we ventured down the street to Neill’s place for boardgames. We had decided we’d start earlier in the day so we could get more playing in, since he was off from work as well. We stuck with the usual game of Dominion since there are so many expansions and different variations to the games. Neill has informed us that we have only seen about 40 percent of all the playing cards which is mind blowing since we have played it quite a bit! Riley and I are still trying to get our strategies down and figure out what cards are best to collect so Neill triumphed as usual. We have started a new tradition of ending the night with Cluedo where Riley shocked us all (even himself) and ended up with the winner again. We had joked that the winner would be able to take home the trophy but Riley had forgotten about this until we were already out the door.

3D printer is out of commission

The washer machine has been out of service for about 2 ½ weeks now, which means that the stinky clothes pile was becoming more of a mountain, unfortunately. Yet, luckily someone had bought a new washer machine which meant it was wash day for Lauren and I! Washing clothes is literally what we did most of our day. We started at 9 am and didn’t finish until 11pm. Although it goes throughout the whole day, we did have time in between washes, so we thought we would tag along to an office tour that Neill was hosting. He said he was going to take us through the Tech lab which we both thought would be very interesting! We didn’t get our hopes crushed because the tech lab was just awesome! They had everything from waterproof tablets to an interactive digital heart where you could spin and rotate to see all the valves. It was really cool to see what technology we have in this world! Since the tour wasn’t long, and with laundry to finish up, we headed back to finish laundry while we ate chicken salads.

Big 2.2

Yesterday had been a little rushed to make it to church since we had just made it up to the Sydney Eye whenever it was time for church. Instead of rushing we decided to take our time up there and wait for the whole skyline to light up. That meant we had to get up early in the morning to go to church, but really it wasn’t too early. Afterwards we enjoyed a nice Sunday brunch with all the leftovers that we’ve stocked up on. With not much else planned for the day except for fireworks and a water show later on at the Harbour, we once again decided to head to the markets and do some souvenir shopping. Sunday is definitely the best day to do this for the deals, but not necessarily since its always overcrowded. We had to fight our way through the aisles most of the time, which started to bother us after a while. I think we’re both ready to be back in Goldsboro to walk around freely and not have anyone in our way all the time! Somehow we always manage to spend a considerable amount of time at the markets since there’s just so much to see! But I was ready to be back and maybe catch up on some reading and just relax in peace and quiet. So I grabbed a book and sulu and we headed to the park across the street to relax on the swings. Inbetween the time of walking down from the markets and going to the park the sun had set which meant the air was a lot colder than I expected. I was clearly not prepared for this weather, so although it was only about 60 degrees I thought it was absolutely freezing and would not be able to read without thinking about how cold I was. Riley was keen on feeding the birds with a piece of bread that he had brought but there were no birds to be found since they were obviously hibernating. We lasted maybe five minutes before we left and went back inside to read and look up more recipes, as you can imagine this was Riley’s choice of activity. We had delicious sweet and sour chicken planned for dinner and I was more than ready to get started on that! The recipe really does go by rather quickly with two people, especially since we’ve gotten quite used to being in the kitchen together and working as a team. The recipe might have been slightly altered since we didn’t have enough sugar for the sauce, but was still good none the less. We were soon on our way to Cockle Bay to catch the water show before heading to the Harbour to watch fireworks. We didn’t know what was happening when we arrived because Cockle Bay was packed! We have been through this place many times since the IMAX theatre, Sea Life, wax museum and aquarium are all right along the water front and have never seen this many people. We fought through the crowd to try and get a good view on the show but we knew it would be hard. Soon it didn’t matter though since it was actually a firework show as well.

Turns out that this is where the Harbour fireworks go off and the reason why we never saw them that one time we waited by the Opera House. It was truly a great show and we soon decided that we would stick around for the next show in close to an hour. We didn’t have to wander far until we came across our entertainment for the next hour. It was a juggler/entertainer who was promising the audience that he would do a grand finale juggling act with three knives and an axe. Well that sounded all fun and dandy until we realized it was going to take him the whole hour to get to this grand finale. Apparently it was more of a comedy act instead of a circus act, with jokes we weren’t too fond of it. However, he did keep our attention and laughing slightly so we stuck around. He’s been around the world and kept asking if there were other nationalities represented in the audience and when he got to America gave let out a big yell. He says we gotta be proud to be Americans, which I definitely am! Unfortunately he hasn’t been to North Carolina, but rather just the big cities like Seattle, Boston, New York City, LA, and Miami. Finally he did get to the final act which was quite impressive. All throughout the show he kept busking people for money. This is what Australians call the act of singing or playing an instrument for money – busking. He made it into a guilt game that if you didn’t give him money you’d feel guilty since he has to provide for his family and blah blah blah. We didn’t agree with this since it’s his choice to do this act instead of having a real job like everyone else. But in the end he entertained us long enough to see the next show which was just a water show with no fireworks. It did have music from all other the world though which dancers lit up on the water fountain. Hard to explain, but basically because of the light show it looked like dancers were dancing on top of the water. 

The light was projected onto the water to make it visible!

Earth just floating int he background!

Stop, turn, take a look around, at all the lights and sounds!

Fancy lookin' fountains!

Pano of  Cockle Bay!

In order to see the fireworks show one more time we walked around the Bay one last time, fighting our way through the crowds of people to try and find a good spot for the show. We had planned on going to the car overpass that was right behind the waterfront but the police men had blocked that off so we were sent in the other direction to stand on stairs to get a good view of the whole Bay. The firework show was awesome and a great way to end the Vivid show for us. We don’t know what we’re going to do without the Opera House being lit up now, but we still have the real Saturday night fireworks to look forward to! We had found a coupon earlier in the day for lava cakes at Dominoes, so with Riley’s extra money that he had found we decided to treat ourselves. They were definitely delicious and fulfilled our American need for good, but not so good for you food that we are missing!