This was planned to be our last major travel this year so we will have to consider carefully. Having conquered Beijing earlier, there is a inner wish to conquer an “Ang Mo” country which is within budget. So we were thinking, Ang-Mo country that is nearer to us so we can save on airfare…..The Land Down Under —> Australia! And as the official tourism website suggets, “There’s nothing like Austrlia”
So we have 9 days and 8 nights in Australia, but bearing in mind the time difference of 2 hours and the flight time of 7h 40min, the first and last days will be used up mainly for travelling, thus I only have 7 good days to plan for fun. As Kiasu as I am, I love to cramp as much as possible in my trips (poor darling often have to walk a lot during travel with me, but I am sure she likes it! Haha). 3 destinations it shall be! Sydney, Gold Coast Surfer’s Paradise and the Snowy Mountains. Darling have been wanting to see the Sydney Opera House ever since her eldest sister went to Australia for her honeymooon, and me being the ever-enthu theme park freak, would love to visit the theme park wonderland of Gold Coast. The decision for the Snowy Mountains is simple, we have never ever seen or touched real snow before, so this time MUST see snow!!
Day 1:
Mainly used for travel, even though we took the 9.40AM flight, with the additional 2 hours of time difference, it’s already 7-8PM local time. So we took a short stroll to Darling harbour for dinner @ Hard Rock Cafe and returned to hotel. The weather is excellent!!!
Darling Harbour with Darling
Hard Rock Cafe
Day 2:
Today is a walking tour day as I planned for us to walk from hotel through the Sydney CBD, all the way to the Opera house and to walk across the Harbour Bridge. Sounds Un-doable? That’s what I thought too, but darlig proved me wrong! She is able to cover everything! We went to St Andrew’s Cathedral, then to Queen Victoria Building, The Strand, walked through Pitt Street before we reached the Hyde Park. We had lunch at a cafe inside QVB and the interior decor is super Victorian style, Darling’s style too! It’s very relaxing to just stroll inside the buildings and shopping malls, admiring the decor, window shopping, have a cuppa, very relaxing lifestyle. Of course, there are funny moments during the stroll coz it’s also infested with the ever-so-terrifying “Gruuuul, Gruuuuul” pigeons and Darling is constantly on the lookout for them while walking on the streets! Haha, so cute!
St Andrew's Cathedral
Queen Victoria Building
The Strand
Hyde Park is an amazing park and the St Mary’s Church forms a beautiful backdrop with the the Archibald Fountain in the foreground. Hyde park is full of activities, there’s a giant chess set where people can gather to watch 2 chess masters battle it out; there are people strolling or jogging; there is a bubble-man amusing the children while earning some tips from parents. The park is big and lots of greenery around. The Archibald fountain is impressive withthe sculptures. But the highlight is still the majestic St Mary’s Church, which is the seat of the arch-bishop of Australia. Churches always give us the feeling of serenity and peace withthe high ceilings, cool interior and the calmness within. sitting inside a church can relax u instantly. I am not a christian, I just love churches. =) And I think darling do too!
St Mary's Church with the Archibald fountain
From the St Mary’s Church, we walked on the Hyde Park Barracks and onto Macquarie Street. Along the way we passed several victorian style and colonial style buildings with the Sydney Hospital attracting me most. How nice would it be to work within such such environment, rather than the boring hospitals in Singapore. The Sydney National library is also impressive with the columns on exterior facade. We finally reached Opera House and it is beautiful! The sails and glittering tiles under the evening sun, set next to the harbour. The giant Coat-hanger Harbour bridge is equally pretty! Seagulls are aplenty, even though they fly around just like pigeons, darling is not so terrified…maybe looks do matter. Seagulls look harmless and cute even!
Opera House
We took a ferry across to Luna Park and admired the Opera House and Harbour bridge from the sea and they look even nicer from the sea!
Harbour bridge
Luna Park is like the old school funfair and it can be quite spooky at night since it totally resembles the fun fairs of horror movies!!
Luna Park
We walked across the harbour bridge from Luna Park and can claim an experience not many will have! Haha, tour groups will never walk across the bridge! We have dinner of Fish n Chips before taking a ferry back to Darling harbour and our hotel. An eye-opening Day 2 for me.
Day 3:
We are supposed to go to the Fish Market early in the morning but darling is tired from her menses…poor women…so after a few “5 minutes” we set off to have our seafood breakfast/lunch/brunch! Lolz, the fish market is still quite crowded at 11am and the seafood selection is amazing! It even made darling hungry!! ShioK! What did we eat? Grilled lobster, grilled full snapper, scallops, fresh BIG prawns, Fresh oysters and fresh Abalones!!
Fish paradise for Humans
Fresh Abalone
Finish off the meal with a giant scone and muffin, and it is one of the best meals we had! Darling loved the fresh abalone! Next up we went to Sydney Aquarium but I feel that our Underwater World is better…hmm…I bought tickets to the Sydney wildlife world but it was closed for rennovation! OMG! Looks like our koala hugging photo have to wait! We had a short stroll around Darling Harbour and finished up the night with hot chocolate and delicious macarons from Lindt! Heavenly!!
"Darling I want Macaron"....."Nah, give you"
Day 4:
Rise and shine my dear, today is another long haul travel day. We are going towards our SNOW!!! We are taking a greyhound coach directly to the ski-tube terminal in Bullocks Flat, another 7-8 hours of sitting and sleeping. The ski-tube is actually a rail system which brings passengers from the base of mountain to the mid-mountain snow resort Perisher Valley. I chose accomodation near the ski-tube terminal so that we can have an early start on SNOW tomorrow! Once we reached the ski-tube terminal, it’s already 3pm, by the time we reached our accomodation at Lake Crakenback Resort, it’s almost 4pm. So we decided to just walk around the resort, experience some alpine wind, and relax before our big day at the SNOW!! Dinner was delicious fireplace pizza..yummy!
Lake Crackenback
Day 5:
Today shall our first ever experience on snow! So exciting to share this moment with darling! We shall conquer more first-time experiences together! We have a First timers package which includes skis, pants, poles, ski-tube tickets, lift pass and a 2.5 hour lesson!
We have a hard time trying our the equipment, and the ski-shoes are really difficult to wear and very uncomfortable too! But what to do? Skiing is a high risk sport so must be Kiasu about safety. We arrived on the snow finally at 12pm and I am damn excited to see the white shimmering snow!! I was too excited and wanted to put on my skis and start skiing straight away! Opps, and I caused darling to fall over a few times too. Poor darling I am sorry! I am just a kid inside, seeing snow for the very first time! Haha. We built our very snow-man while waiting for our lesson at 1pm and just sat around to enjoy the snow. It’s just 1 big giant plate of fine ice crystals! I am loving every moment. I took out my gloves to touch the snow and BOY, it’s freezing! Almost had my whole hand drop off from the cold but still shiok!!
Darling with our Snowman
Our Snow lesson instructor was from Italy and I am glad we had this lesson, so darling and I can appreciate skiing. The most important take homne message from the lesson….”Snow pla”. That’s the most used word by the instructor! Haha, it means forming a “pizza” shape using the skis to control our speed while skiing. He tried to teach us how to turn left and right but I still cannot master the technique. Darling fell a few times coz her balacing is not as good (oops, sure to ganna her biting my ears one) but I hope she enjoyed her time on the snow as much as I do!! Yah yah, I even “swam” on snow!
Darling on snow! YEAH!
me pose pose only..haha
We licked icicles directly from the tree branches and I ate snow direct from the ground too! Yes yes yes, unhygienic but I really don’t care! Haha. SNOW RULEZ!! 1 small mistake…. Aiyah, I made darling angry coz I left her alone on the chairlift….I tried to rush in after her when the chair lift arrived but the safety barrier closed down before I could pass so she’s left alone on the chair lift…I tried to make up for it loh, I even wrote “darling I love you” on the snow…wonder if it touched her or not…I think it did coz she still hugged me before we left the snow. YESSSSS!!!
Day 6:
Day 6 is another hectic day, we had to catch a 7.50AM greyhound coach to Canberra Airport, in order to catch our 12.30PM flight to Brisbane. The Canberra airport is still under construction so nothing much to see there. We reached Brisbane at 2pm, but the bloody pick up transport cocked up big time and arrived only at 3+!! Lucky today’s activity is a night activity. I am bringing Darling to Curumbin Wildlife Sanctuary for their Wildnight tour! We have a buffet BBQ dinner before the actual tour. We are split up into 2 grops and the guides will bring us through the park. We got an opportunity to take photos with baby crocodiles and pythons AND we finally took our Koala Photo!! And it comes with 4 photo fridge magnets too!
Happy Family
Crocodiles, snakes, Wombats, Koalas, Dingo, Kangeroos we saw and we also saw a perfomance by the Aboriginals. They performed several dances around a fire and we had a rare photo opportunity with them too!
Aboriginal photo
Kangeroo feeding is fun! Darling again is still haunted by the Deer feeding experience in Japan..haha. Can see her scared face at times when too many kangeroos confronted her! So cute my darling!! We had an early night as the next day will be theme park day!!
Day 7:
Our initial plan was for Dreamworld as we had a few “5 minutes” after waking up and we wanted to spend more time in Movie World, so thinking of going tomorrow instead. But when the bus arrived at Movie World, darling says “Dar Dar, I wanna go movie world today” and she looked at me with those cute little puppy eyes….my heart melted and so we ended up at Movie World today! Haha, very drama hor! LOlz, I think darling will Pengz when she read this. The Warner Brothers Movie world is almost like our universal studios since it has a movie theme but it also has many WB cartoon characters which we see during our childhood days…Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Sylvester, Taz, Scooby Doo etc, together with Batman, Catwoman, really a nice nice theme park. The rides are cool as well, Superman escape, Batwing, a pity darling don’t dare to try them.
Warner Brothers Movie World
There’s also a daily parade at about 3-4pm, where the characters will be on their respective vehicles and parade on main street. There’s the Justice League, Tweety, Bugs in his limo, Sylvester is his car with his head, Scooby Doo and gang in their Mystery Inc Van, Joker and his float etc.
At night we had a stroll at the Surfer’s night market by the beach. Wow, a lot of locals set up stalls here with their own DIY goods. We are particularly impressed by the glass-maker. He was blowing shapes right in front of our eyes. We bought about A$160 worth of glass ornaments, to be used to decorate our Love Nest in Punggol Springs!
He has been doing this for 30 years!
We also bought a plaster signboard that says “Home Sweet Home” from another stall for A$5. Damn cheap lah.
Day 8:
Dreamworld it shall be for today! Our final theme park in Australia.
DreamWorld
It looks old from the outside, not as glamorous as Movie World. It is based on a pair of Koalas characters Kenny and Belinda. It has a family feel this themepark. It’s a mixture of feelings when I stepped into this theme park. The rides look awesome but the different worlds does not look too impressive. There is a Nickelodeon section with the Spongebob and a Wiggies World (we think it’s a kids show in Australia). There’s a wildlife world, an Old West section and ? Ocean section rides. There is this famous Big 6 thrill rides in Dreamworld: Motocoaster, The Giant Drop, The Tower of Terror 2, The claw, Wipeout, The cyclone. I tried out Giant drop, Tower of terror and Wipeout. Wipeout is fun and thrilling but The tower of terror 2 is shockingly fun!! Giant drop is not too bad lah, it’s quite scary when you are suspended so high up in the air without knowing when it’ll drop down!! The overall feeling is not as fun in Dreamworld, maybe we are more familiar with the WB characters but I enjoy the experience at Movie world more. What about you darling? I think she will like Movie World more too.
We tried going back to the night stalls we went to last night, hoping to find more unique stuff for our home but to our surprise, the stalls are gone! Looks like they are open only yesterday! We are so glad we bought a lot last night! We had a stroll around surfer’s paradise and the Ang-Mo are really crazy when they are partying…maybe that’s why it’s more fun to party with Ang-Mos. They are really wild and their dresses are really skimpy! How did they tahan the cold wind at night?? Booze and maybe a bit of drugs?
We are feeling really tired today, maybe we played too hard for the last few days…haha. We just lay down on the bed and slept without bathing and changing clothes!!
Day 9:
Today is a short day. Darling woke up early today. She wanted to accompany me to see the famous golden beaches of Gold Coast. The scenery is really nice, almost post-card like. How can I resist not writing on the sand? “Dar Dar loves Darling”.
Relax on a giant beach deck chair
I love you Darling and I hope you will remember this trip for a long long time. Looking forward to our next trip together! Where shall we go for our honeymoon in March 2012???
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