Karen & David's travel

Sydney skyline - with the Opera House and the Sydney Bridge super-sized lotus flower Ah, today is our second last day in Australia, it is hard to believe that we have been here 38 days! We only had two things on the agenda today - botanical garden and the Contemporary Art Museum. The botanical garden is huge and all their plants have been super-sized; especially if you were to compare to those in Canada, they are at least twice the size! The first thing we saw was the lotus flowers - they are bigger than a soccer ball and they are very pretty! The succulent garden was interesting too. The cacti were SO big, and some of them looked like plastics. There were many spider webs too, and fortunately we did not run into any on the path. The body of the spiders was the size of my thumb; they would be bigger than a loonie if you were to include their legs. We also saw a native sting less bee nest on the side of a log and the bees were smaller than houseflies. We spen...

Sydney Harbour Bridge QVB - Queen Victoria Building We went back to another 'pay what you think it's worth' walking tour this morning.  This tour highlights the best of Sydney by going through the main attractions / historic buildings in downtown, the wharf and the Rocks in a 2.5 hours walk. Most of the buildings took many years to build and some were never used for their original intents, e.g. the Queen Victoria Building (QVB as the Aussies call it). QVB is gorgeous inside out - the stained glass windows, the dome, the clocks, the magnificent facade; and they even manage to keep the original tiles on the first and second floors!  It was built to house a market, but it never materialized; nowadays it serves as a very busy and chic shopping mall. Sydney Town Hall It turned out that our guide is the founder of this tour company.  He started the company after seeing something similar in Europe during his travel as a student.  I think it is now his full tim...

We left Blue Mountain this morning and returned to Sydney. We got to Sydney in good time, but there were constructions around the hotel and traffic was absolutely horrible. It took David half an hour to go around the block once, and the worst part was there were no parking anywhere except in a garage 2 blocks away. We also found out parking cost about $70 a day!  Since we had planned to use public transit in the city, we decided to return the car that afternoon. Since we had been to many beautiful beaches already, Bondi Beach was a real let down. While it is a nice white sandy beach and also the most crowded beach we have come across so far, the waves are rather tame and it does not appear to be anything special. Sydney has the most people and it is the most lively of the Australian cities we have visited thus far.  One could feel and sense the vibes of the city. Still Life with Stone and Car - sculpture by Jimmie Durham one of the last cast iron public urnials or...

Blue Mountains Mar 2 was pretty much a travel day. We left for the airport at 10:45 to catch the 12:15 flight to Sydney. Since we lost 1.5 hours due to the time difference, we landed in Sydney around 4:30. We picked up the rental car and arrived at our hotel in Blue Mountain at 7 after going through Sydney's rush hour traffic. We called it a day after picking up some grocery and dinner. Our hotel package included a full breakfast, and it was good to get sausage/bacon/eggs as we had not had those for a while. We started off our Blue Mountains touring at the Sublime Point Lookout. The view was quite impressive as we had the whole valley in front of us, and the exposed rocks were interesting.  Blue Mountains got its name because of the blue-greyish tinge caused by the reaction of the emission from the eucalyptus forest and the ultraviolet radiation.  Next we went to the information centre at Echo point. This spot provides the best view of the Three Sisters - rock format...

at the beginning of the hike, only the top part of the domes were lit up We actually made it this morning and was able to leave at 5:30. You must realize that we needed to make and eat breakfast, clean up, and put everything back onto the trailer. We got to Kings Canyon and started the Rim Walk shortly after 6. It was still dark when I went to the toilet at the trail head. It was a good thing that I had my cell phone flashlight on ... I saw a frog in the toilet bowl!  I cannot imagine what would happen if I did not see it. cross-bedding is very common in rocks that originated as desert sand dunes a dead sea's ripples Kings Canyon was absolutely beautiful! The rock formations were very interesting and impressive. The guide showed us some fossils - a shell, sea bed ripples and a centipede track. The centipede track was around 2" wide and 2 feet long - can you imagine running into something like that on a hike. We also went to a permanent water h...

the Olgas I woke up at 3:30 with a very bright half moon right above me. It was cooler, but it was not cold enough for me to get under the sleeping bag. We had to be ready to leave at 5:45 to catch the sun rise!  Our location allowed us to watch the sun rise over Uluru, and catch the change in colour on the Kata Tjuta.  Kata Tjuta is also known as the Olgas and is about 50 km from Uluru.  Unlike the Uluru, which is a huge monolith, Kata Tjuta consists of a number of smaller, but taller, domed rock formations.  In general, sun rise is not as nice as sunset; and since there were no clouds, today's sunrise was quite ordinary. But since it is a barren landscape for as far as the eyes can see, it is still a rather unique experience. the Olgas are made up of a lot of these relatively smooth domed rock formations and below the smooth surface, you will find a bunch of smaller rocks fused together  We then went on the Valley of the Winds hike. ...