Carol & Bill's Epic Adventure

I have lived in some wonderful cities with great harbors…New York, San Francisco, and Boston…but after visiting Sydney, I must admit that those harbor-based cities don’t compare to Sydney! The Sydney harbor is massive with seemingly countless bays, inlets, and coves surrounded by beautiful towns and villages and beaches, too! The Sydney Harbour Ferry system is the lifeblood of the entire community and a fantastic means of getting around! I guess you could say that I’ve been somewhat “taken” with Sydney…

Our hotel was right downtown, just across the street from the classic Town Hall and the beautiful Queen Victoria Building, which is a huge Victorian-inspired very high-end shopping experience with incredible holiday decorations and everyday wrought-iron balconies, stained glass and mosaic floors…I appreciated the architecture and beautiful storefronts but didn’t buy anything there!

We loved the little outdoor balcony we had in our inner city hotel room…Sydney is hopping 24 hours a day!!

We oriented ourselves to Sydney by going on a couple of walking tours, which led us to a restaurant in a historic building in The Rocks neighborhood, The Glenmore, with rooftop dining and an awesome view of the Opera house. It was really exciting to get …

Flying from Melbourne to Cairns (pronounced “cans”) on a clear day provided some interesting insight into this country which is approximately the same size as the USA with a fraction of the population. With all 8-10 major cities on the coastline, much of inner Australia is uninhabited…the outback. It’s pretty amazing to fly over such a large land mass for hours, and wonder if anyone ever walked there…I saw rivers and lakes, hills and fields and brush land, and more parched brush land. And eventually we reached the coast of north-east Australia and saw a gorgeous coast line, towns and cities, and as we flew over the Coral Sea I realized that I was seeing beautiful reefs everywhere…they must be part of the Great Barrier Reef! Wow!!!!

We arrived to a nearly cloudless sky and 90 degree temperatures and drove an hour north to a lovely tourist town called Port Douglas (PD) in the state of Queensland, along some very curvy and narrow coastal roads showcasing incredibly beautiful beaches and tropical landscapes. Port Douglas provides closer and easier access to some of the outer portions of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)…and that’s what I was looking for! I had been …

The next day we continued driving on some of the curviest portion of the GOR with another beautiful beach around every curve! We headed for Apollo Bay, another beautiful beachside town, which is also about the halfway point on the GOR. After we arrived, we went exploring and found some lovely rainforest hikes…

…and we also drove along a road leading to the Cape Otway Lightstation. This road was koala sighting heaven!! The first koala we sighted turned out to be a mama koala with a baby (“joey”) poking its head out of the mama’s pouch! A few minutes later, the joey had crawled out of the pouch and onto the mama’s back and was holding on while mama climbed! So cool!

As we proceeded along the road we saw LOTS of koalas relaxing and snoozing on forked branches high up on eucalyptus trees. At one point we when we were looking at several koalas high in trees, one large koala surprised us by climbing down from a tree and crossed the road right between Carol and me, practically walking on Carol’s toes!! It came so close we almost got scared! …then …

On a beautiful, sunny and very warm morning in Melbourne we picked up the first rental car of our adventure and took on (to be read “Billy took on”…I’m the co-pilot!!) the challenge of driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong seat in the car!! I must say that this challenge has absolutely been lessened by being away from US driving for 3 weeks, and becoming acclimated to this “backwards” driving in Thailand, Indonesia and now Australia. Billy has done a terrific job driving, other than turning on the windshield wipers instead of the directional numerous times before getting the hang of it!

The Great Ocean Road (GOR), which is south of Melbourne and a bit over 150 miles, is one of Australia’s most famous roadways passing by world-class surfing beaches, seaside towns, rain forests, and spectacular rock formations just off the beach and just beside amazing cliffs. Parts of the road hug the ocean and are incredibly curvy, narrow and picturesque…it’s kinda’ a mix of California Highway US 1 and the Hana Highway in Maui…with some of the scenic coastline of Oregon and Washington thrown in. There are many bus tours that traverse the Great …

After a red-eye flight from Bali to Melbourne, we arrived to a grey and somewhat showery day…but who cared…it was Thanksgiving Day AND Chanukah and we were going to see David!!! YEAH!!!!

Since we arrived so early, and we couldn’t check into our hotel yet, we decided to go on a 2-hour walking tour of Melbourne which was a great orientation to the city…even in the sporadic drizzle.

Our hotel in Melbourne was a brand new high-rise building, with 16 floors available, and they hoped to finish the final 7 floors by the end of December. We had a beautiful ultra-modern hotel room with kitchenette and a small table and 3 chairs in front of large floor- to-ceiling windows looking at beautiful Melbourne, the Queen Victoria Market, the construction of several other high-rise buildings, and we could even see David’s apartment building…just a short 5 minute walk away!

Since I couldn’t find restaurants offering Thanksgiving dinner, I opted for going to a grocery store, buying a rotisserie chicken, instant mashed potatoes, rolls, frozen veggies, cookies and beer! It was sooooooooo great to see David (after he finished his day of working on his school project-job), and we had a FABULOUS …