Pictures

I am having problems getting all my photos on here because I have so many on the camera! It is really confusing the computer, so I have to figure out something else to do...working on the problem!

Flight Home

Starting the trip..

About 10 hours in and really mad at the loud drunk guys sitting in front of me..

Today is the long journey home. I am now sitting on an airplane headed for Charlotte, N.C. as I write this. We flew 2 hours from Cairns to Brisbane, 12 hours from Brisbane to Los Angeles, and are now are in a 3 and a half hour flight from Los Angeles to Charlotte. From Charlotte we will hop onto a short 15 minute flight to Columbia. That makes for a very, very long day. We will be so glad to get home home and see our baby girls Bella, Dora, and Willow!

The Great Barrier Reef

The boat SilverSonic behind us is the one we took out on the reef.

Bryon flipper fitting

ok who's ready to go snorkeling now?

suited up

Part of my lunch...squid! It is really actually good! Go to any chinese buffet and you will find it :0)

The light turquois area under the water is the sand...the dark blue is really deep and the medium tannish blue color is the actual coral under the surface.

Best seat in the house on the ride home. The front deck!

Today we woke up early and met in the lobby with a few other couples to go snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. We took the Quicksilver Tour line out there and had a blast! When we returned to the hotel, we took a quick shower and decided to walk to the Beach Shack Bar for dinner. We had a pizza and salad that was soooo good! We walked back to the hotel and packed for the 3:00 a.m. departure to the airport. Should we have to pay for a whole night if we only stay in the room half of it? :0)

Flight to Port Douglass

We headed to the airport this morning and flew up to Port Douglass. This is a very small town and has not been commercialized. It has no stop lights, or chain type restaurants and is very laid back. We stayed in the Sea Temple Resort and our room was great! Better in some ways than the Shangri-la we stayed in while in Sydney. The room was a lot smaller, and you had to walk all the way around the complex to get to our room and it was a very large complex…we got a lot of walking in :0) But, the pool area was awesome. We ate dinner at the Salsa bar which is a local favorite. The food there was great!

Shopping-Superbowl-Black Tie Gala

Today we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel. We walked with Nima Hiyati and Angela and Bo Orr over to the Sydney Opera House. We took lots of photos on the outside, and looked around the inside lobby. We decided not to pay the forty dollars per person to enter the tour that took an hour and a half. We decided to take a taxi back to the market area which is beside China Town. We were very disappointed when we got there and saw that it was only open Fri, Sat, Sun, and Monday! We were really looking forward to shopping there and finish up getting gifts for those at home. We walked down George Street back towards the hotel and popped into the Three Wise Monkeys Pub. We watched the Super Bowl there for a while, while we ate lunch. After eating, we looked in some various shops. We walked past the hotel a little bit, and found a gem shop. Bryon bought me a light opal necklace for Valentines Day there! We headed back up to the hotel to get ready for the final night Black Tie Gala. The guys had to be in the lobby by 5:00, and the girls by 5:30. It was really fun getting all dressed up! Federated rented out the Sydney Town Hall for the night, one of the oldest buildings in the town. At one point, it was the tallest in Sydney. Now, it is nestled down between all the skyscrapers. They also had a band, but we did not stay very long for that. We were so tired and had to go back to the hotel and pack for the 5:30 luggage pick-up the next morning..

Aquarium then China Town

After the Blue Mountain Tour Bryon and I went off on our own for the afternoon. We headed down to the Sydney Aquarium to have a look around. We really enjoyed it, but there were lots of people. We then hopped on the Monorail and rode across the Harbor to China Town. This area reminded me of a few things. #1: When you are walking through the mall and they try and recruit you to eat at their restaurant #2: The items they sell there are like those at the flea market. Cheap and in bulk. We did not buy any souvenirs from there because everything was so cheaply made.
We ate at a great restaurant upstairs off the street with an open window view of the street below. It had AC upstairs as well, which was not something common in the restaurants in Australia in general. Most of the restaurants were outside with lots of sail type covers over the top and fans to cool you off. Ultimately we picked this particular restaurant in China Town because it had pretty lights hanging outside. This is so me :0) After we ate, we walked back up George Street which was quite a haul. We walked through the Queen Elizabeth building and took photos of the great architecture there. Another great day in Sydney!

The Blue Mountain Tour

fern pine trees

It was rainy again this day, but that did not stop us from touring the Blue Mountains. They get the name "Blue Mountians" from the oil off of the eucalyptis plants. We ode this cart backwards at a 52 degree angle...little scary

BEAUTIFUL waterfall..I have so many pics just not enough time to put all that one here

we went to a theatre setting and watched some more aboriginal dancing

this was a special needs aboriginal boy. I just grabbed him and said "come here buddy" and took my pic with him :) I am not sure what his deal was as far as diagnoses or anything..

This is us with some of the dancers

Theme Party Night

dancing with the fringe flyin'!

Bryon painted the rock...

We came in from the Manly beach tour and then wanted a hot shower! We had about 15 minutes to get ready for the theme party from the day's excursions. Talk about boom boom boom one event after another! It was still pouring rain as everyone loaded busses to go across town to the location. It was supposed to be held outside, but because of the rain had to be moved indoors. My favorite part of this party was the aborigional people that they had sing and dance at the beginning. They had different areas set up for us to go such as a painting station where you could paint rocks, a koala and baby kangaroo petting station, a station where they were having a sheep shearing (?), a bean bag toss game, and then of course a cocktail bar, food, and dessert bar. I took a video of the dancing, and of the man painting.

The Many Beach Tour

From the ferry on the ride over
at the beach...and no that's not us :0)

after a very very long day of surfing, walking around, and then being rained on for several hours...

ok we'll give it a go..

From the ferry on the ride over

It was raining a little this morning when we got up. We went to breakfast, and then came back up to the room to get ready. We went to Manly Beach via a ferry (this looked like a very huge boat to me) and I got a lot of photos on the way. It was very foggy, and misty at times. When we got over to the beach, we went to surf school! This was a lot of fun, but the undertow was very strong and I did not really want to venture far out. I did stand up on the board a few times, and so did Bryon. The water started to get really rough, and we had to drag out surf boards that were made of waterlogged foam all the way down the beach back to the hut. That was not fun, they are really very heavy and for that distance....I was not able to get surfing pictures due to the fact we were in the water, but got some pre-pictures. After surfing, we walked down to a restaurant called Emporium that had really good local food. We ordered the gnocchi pasta salad, a turkey sandwich with sun dried tomatoes and avocado on it, as well as a corn and sweet chili fritter. The fritter was by far our favorite of the the three.

After the Wine tour..

Kirk and Tammy Morris
As we entered...

Bryon, his boss Donald, and his Marketing Reps Brad and Frank

The ceiling decorations...I really liked these :0)

Bo and Angela Orr

Al and Cathy Annexstead-Chairman of Federated

From the balcony..

Shot one....notice the look in my eye..and Bryon looks waaaayyy too excited
this is Justin and Tanya Cargill

And shot number two...

The bar called The Argyle was rented out by Federated from 6-10:00. We had a great time here :0) I don't know about it being one of the best bars in the world, but it most definately was one of the best in Sydney. This so far has been on of my favorite events of the trip it was just such a good atmosphere. They served heavy finger foods that they would walk by and serve off of trays...some of them were not really finger foods I don't think. They had chicken legs that looked very barbaric as you would walk around holding them...anyway here are some pics. (other food included fish and chips, calamari, risolto balls (pasta and cheese), hamberger sliders, and hotdogs.) Great time! ...when we got to the room it was only 9:30...it felt like 12:30. What a long day!