Down Under in Sydney

Back in January, Mark and I traveled to Australia for three amazing weeks. I have wanted to go to Australia for as long as I can remember, so we booked it as a welcome home vacation. If you want to call it our honeymoon, almost six years after the fact, you could. And if you want to know why I'm holding a bird, continue onward.

Happy New Year from Sydney!

We traveled first to Sydney, then on to Melbourne and Cairns for the rest of the vacation. We landed in Sydney on the morning of New Year's Eve. Luckily, we were able to check in early, shower, and take a quick nap before heading down to Sydney Harbour for drinks and fireworks.

It's officially vacation when Mark starts ordering girly drinks. 

We went to Milson's Point to view the New Year's Eve fireworks, as suggested by our hotel. It was crazy packed, but we knew it would be going into it. Like the old people we are, we went to the "family show" because it was earlier in the evening. That's right; we didn't even make it to midnight.

The following day, we checked out of our hotel near the airport and made our way to our new location in the city. Since we couldn't check in until later in the afternoon, we spent the day wandering around Sydney.

The following day, we took the ferry to Manly Beach and chilled the whole afternoon. It was a little overcast, so the beach wasn't as crowded, which was nice. All the relaxing was perfect for an adventurous next day in the Blue Mountains.

We left for the Blue Mountains fairly early in the morning and arrived a little before noon. The weather couldn't have been better. It was decently crowded at the visitor center and the Three Sisters, which is the main attraction.

There were a ton of hiking trails through the mountains, including a path to the Three Sisters, so we started our journey there.

After going out on the rocks, we had lunch at the visitors center before heading on our walkabout. That's right. Walkabout. Because we're in Australia.

The walk wasn't too bad, and it was super lush. We saw a peacock while we were walking, but there was too much foliage in the way to get a good shot. We kept following signs for the Leura Waterfalls because they looked really pretty on Pinterest. Yep, I use Pinterest to plan trips. The signs kept pointing in a bunch of different directions, and we kept running into the same groups trying to find the waterfalls. At this point, it was painfully obvious how accustom we have grown to being lost in Japan. Here we were in an English speaking country, and it didn't even occur to us to ask for directions.

Eventually, we found them without any help.

At this point, I really needed to go to the bathroom, so we headed back up to the main road and found this awesome little bar. The bartenders were from France and in Australia on a work visa. They had traveled to Katoomba and loved it so much they stayed and learned English from bar patrons. One of my favorite parts of traveling is meeting people from other countries; you learn so much about different cultures.

Bird cages at Angel Place

The following day, we spent another, more sunny day at Manly Beach. We didn't take any pictures at Manly, because it's just a beach. You've seen one of those before, right? Okay, good. Those of you waiting for the bird story, your time is now.

For our final day in Sydney, we had planned on going to the Featherdale Wildlife Park so I could pet a kangaroo and a koala. As we got ready for bed, Mark said he had a surprise for me before going to the kangaroos. He told me we would get breakfast to go, then head to the Royal Botanical Gardens. For those of you who don't know Mark very well, this is very out of character for him. I'm the planner and Mark just kind of shows up when and where I tell him. This should have been my first red flag.

I ordered breakfast for both of us the following morning, while Mark went to pick up an item needed for the surprise. At this point, I was fairly excited, thinking Mark was going to be romantic. Wrong. Once we were in the botanical garden, we saw a wild cockatoo, and I asked Mark if he wanted to take a picture, to which he surprisingly said no. This should have been my second red flag. 

Wild bird in the garden

We came to a clearing in the gardens, and Mark asked if I was ready for my surprise. He set his backpack down and whipped out a bag of almonds. Immediately, a cockatoo came flying out of nowhere and landed on his shoulder. The lights finally clicked; my surprise is feeding the damn birds. Loyal readers should know by now how terrified I am of winged beasts, as evidenced here. It was clear at this moment, I would not be petting a kangaroo until I fed the birds. So after a lot of coercing, and general fear of not getting to see my beloved kangaroos, I did it.

And produced great gems such as this. 

Mark's personal favorite and current lock screen picture on his phone.

So quick recap: I fed the WILD cockatoos in Sydney, it was terrifying, and I am no longer interested in surprises of any sort. We also found out later it is illegal to feed the birds, which I pointed out to Mark. He said the fine would have been worth it. We ate our cold breakfasts and walked through the rest of the park on the way to Featherdale.

Featherdale Wildlife Park was about an hour train ride from Syndey, and again we got there in the afternoon. The kangaroos pretty much roam the entire park, so they were very friendly and ready to be fed and petted. 

The wallabies were more active. This little guy loved me.

You could purchase cones of hay to feed the kangaroos and wallabies for $1. Almost everyone in the park bought a cone, so a lot of them weren't hungry.

One of the enclosures had wallabies and emus, and again, Mark wanted me to feed the damn birds. The emus were scary as hell. They are huge and would come running up to you while you were trying to feed the cute, little wallabies. Apparently, they were the only hungry animals in that whole park.

Did I mention they also have freaking teeth?!

They also had koalas at the park, so we got to pet one and take our picture with it. They were super fuzzy!

After a fun-filled day with all of the animals, we packed up our stuff and headed for Melbourne! Sydney was my favorite part of the trip, and I would highly recommend visiting if you have the chance.