Sydney!

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Chinese Garden of Friendship. Jess wanted to go to this place and it was great! We got to check out the garden and have tea, scones, and dim sum.

The Opera House and Bridge.

Jess sitting on Mrs. MacQuarie's Chair. Her husband carved it out of stone so she could look out over the harbour.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Justin making his ascent to the top of the Bridge. Justin climbed all the way to the top. Jess and I just happened to be at the right place to see him making his way up!

View of the city while walking across the bridge.

We found this really cool park in The Rocks districts. It was called Foundation Park and it looked like the foundation of an old house. This is at the top.

This is in the park. We really liked the furniture and things. It was a fun park!

We are at the Aquarium. We like to hold crocodiles up with one hand.

Platypus. He is pretty much our new favorite animal ever! He was swimming like crazy and was really cute!

Justin and I with a dugong and a mermaid.

Here is a dugong. It is kinda like a manatee. The old sailors thought they were mermaids. They look nothing like mermaids, I think they must have been drinking too much rum.

Jess and I at the Aquarium.

Sydney Tower. Australians say "it sticks out like dog's balls"

Just patting the boar's nose for good luck. We thought it was really strange they had this statue outside of the hospital.

Flying foxes. These little guys are bats! That is right, bats. Bats flying around Sydney Botanic Garden. They are really cute!

This is of the tile roof of the Opera House. I had no idea that it was made of all these tiles. It was magnificent.

Justin's artsy photo of the Opera House and the Bridge.

Us at the Opera House

View of the Bridge from the Opera House

We are holding up the bridge with our two hands! We are strong.

Opera House

And yet again, more Opera House

On the ferry heading to Manly Beach

On the ferry

Welcome to Manly Beach!

This is Shelly's beach. We couldn't hang out at Manly because some weird water competition was going on. We liked this one though because it was small and cute!

Up close picture of the flying fox. Aren't they so cute and fuzzy?

Queen Victoria Building. A really cool old building with lots of over priced shops.

So we went to Sydney last week with my good friend Jess. We had a lot of fun! Jess and I had two days out on the town before Justin arrived. I think we pretty much did as much of Sydney as we could in 5 days. My favorite was seeing the platypus swim around and Jess's was the fish market. I didn't put up any pictures of that because they were too gross! Lots of icky fish and things. If you do want to see pictures please refer to Jess's blog. Justin's favorites were the flying foxes and the ferry to Manly Beach. Oh, and I can't forget to mention the whole trip was stinking hot!! Sydney had one of its hottest days in 3 years and we were there for it! I think it was over 100 almost everyday. That is pretty much our trip. Jess is still here for this week so more adventures to come. We will be heading to Cleland, Hahndorf, and Victor Harbour. It should be fun and hopefully not too hot! I would also like to send a shout out to Randall Jones who is reading our blog! Thanks for reading! We miss you all!!

Warrawong Sanctuary and The Tour Down Under

Welcome to the first race of the Tour Down Under: The Cancer Council Classic. Every year Adelaide hosts a big cycling event called the Tour Down Under. This year is an extra special year because Lance Armstrong is riding in the tour and it is his first race back since retiring back in 2005. Adelaide is going Lance crazy. He is pretty much always one of the top stories on the news.

This is the race. It was around 50K and they had to ride around a 1.7K circuit 30 times. So we got lots of chances to see them ride by. They were soooo fast. As you can see in the picture they are just a blur. This was our first ever cycling event, so we had no idea what was going on, but we had a great time!

You can't see very well in this picture, but see those three guys in the back, the middle one is Lance Armstrong. He was riding for a team called Astana which is a team from Khazakastan I have no idea how the riders get on these teams. There were two US teams there, Colombia and Garmin.

Some of the cyclist before the race. They could be really famous, but I have no idea. Most of the cyclists were European.

Another potential famous cyclist.

This was the crowd where the announcers where announcing the teams. Our apartment is just behind that one with the blue railings. So the race was literally out our front door!

That guys in the black hat behind the tree's leaves on the stage in Lance Armstrong. It is pretty cool to see him in real life since he is one of the greatest athletes of all time.

This was the cyclists just doing a warm-up

Justin with all of our free stuff we got!

These were the promo cars throwing out the free stuff!

More of the promo cars.

On Saturday we went to Warrawong Sanctuary. It was were we went with Jenny and Ben at night, but we went during the day. We saw a lot less animals. This was one of the albino kangaroos.

Here is a red kangaroo.

Shhh...Platypus Playground. This was the place we saw our 3 platypus on the night tour. No such luck seeing them in the daytime.

Some friendly ducks who kept following us.

A friendly little wallaby.

This weekend was a great weekend! We started off Saturday morning by heading out to Warrawong Sanctuary to check out some animals. Then we ate at a great pizza place for lunch. That evening after dinner we went to Moonlight Cinemas and watched a movie under stars in the parklands. We saw the movie Burn After Reading with George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I had never heard of it before. It was okay, but I really enjoyed watching it outside! On Sunday we had a nice morning run and then for lunch we celebrate Sarah' s(Bob and Anne's daughter) birthday at a smorgasbord restaurant (buffet!). It was great! We had a lot of fun and ate way too much! Then we hurried home packed up a dinner (we thought we might get hungry) and headed off to the Tour Down Under to get prime seating. We arrived about 2 and a half hours early, but the time went fast. It was a great time and we had a lot of fun! We definitely need to learn a bit more about cycling because we are clueless!

That is our weekend in a nutshell. I leave for Sydney on Wednesday morning (6:00 am flight!) to meet my friend Jess, then Justin flies up Thursday night. We will hang out in Sydney until Sunday then fly home. And then we get to show Jess the great city of Adelaide for a week! We are excited! That is about it for now! We miss you all!

Lazy Weekend in Adelaide

This was a great lazy weekend in Adelaide! Jenny and Ben left Saturday morning which was sad, but they still had more holiday to have in Sydney! It was pretty quiet around the apartment with them gone. I really enjoy having guests because they make everything so much more exciting!

All last week I was home from work since the hospital was low on patients, so it was nice because Jenny and Ben were here! They did a lot of exploring around the city and at night we went on lots of walks. The most exciting thing we did was go on a nocturnal walk at a place called Warrawong Sanctuary. We saw 3 platypus! They are way smaller than I thought. We also so little possums on their mom's backs and a baby koala on his mom's back. It was great. We saw heaps of nocturnal animals.

After Jenny and Ben left we cleaned house, went to the grocery store, and relaxed. Then that night we went to Schutzenfest! It was a German fest. Pretty much it was just a bunch of drunk people drinking beer and eating food. It was okay, not really our thing, but a good experience. Justin had one of the best sausages of his life! Sunday we went over to my friends Rachel and Chris's for dinner and just relaxed.

That was our weekend, nice and relaxed! I am back at work this week which is very nice, but I only work two days next week then I am off to Sydney to meet my friend Jess! Yay! We get two days in the city just us girls until Justin flies up! That is about it for now! We miss you all!!

The Great Ocean Road

Our last days of our holiday were on The Great Ocean Road. We drove from Melbourne back to Adelaide. The Great Ocean Road is a famous road that follows the coast line. There are all kinds of things to do along the way. We mostly did small hikes along the way and then viewed the famous 12 Apostles.

Justin and Ben by a giant tree in a temperate Rainforest.

Otway Lighthouse. It was $14 just to go walk by it, so we did a hike and could see it from afar. Good enough for me!

The Twelve Apostles (They are the rocks sticking out of the ocean)

Justin and I with the 12 Apostles

More of the 12 Apostles

12 Apostles

Rock formations on the other side of the 12 Apostles

More rock formations

Our last stop on the way home was the Blue Lake in Mt. Gambier which is about 5 hours away from Adelaide!

Well, our trip is over and we are back in Adelaide. Jenny and Ben will be here until Saturday and then they are off to Sydney for a few days. My work is really slow, so I have this week off. Things are slowing down around here after our big trip! Time to relax! We miss you all!