Australia - Part 3

If you've stuck with me so far, well done and thanks!  If you want to start from the start, then go to Part 1.  This is the last of my photo's and in part 2 I left off that we were on our way back to Perth.

We had quite a long flight back to Perth first though, over 5 hours!

The night we arrived back in Perth we went for a meal - Here's Aishling, Leanne and me

And we celebrated Colin's birthday while we were there!

 We only had a couple of days in Perth before we were due to go home so we decided to go to the zoo and get some pictures of kangaroos, saying as we didn't get any of the one we saw in the wild in Melbourne.

And we saw lizardy things!

And snakey things - this one was trying to escape!

And more lizardy things!

And frogs

A rather large Crocodile

An Emu, it did try to attack us but I didn't see Rod Hull (lol, wee one for UK people there!)

And yay!  Some kangaroos!  They were a bit lazy though!

 

And would ye look at the pose of this boyo!  And there's a wee wallaby in the background.

This is a Tazmanian Devil.

And look at the cute Koala!  I loved them, they looked so cuddly and so stoned!  They were hard to get a good picture of though, away up in the trees, my camera kept focusing on the branches between us.  This is the best of a bad lot.

And here's another wee Wallaby

This fella put the cheeky in Cheeky Monkies!  He hung off the fence and drew a crowd and then pointed, em, himself towards said crowd and did a big pee!  Thankfully there was a fence for us to stand behind and he didn't quite reach us!

This lady had her wee baby orangutan with her but I couldn't get a decent picture of it.

And this chap has been wandering the earth for a very long time.

I love giraffes.  They're so elegant and pretty, I could look at them for hours!

These little chaps were very busy scurrying about the place.  And I didn't hear one Russian accent!

A happy Rhino is the best kind of Rhino!

As is a Sleepy Lion!  (Brave birdy!)

I thought he was scarey enough when he was asleep, then he opened his eyes!

This is a tree kangaroo.  Isn't it gorgeous!

And this is Perth from the zoo side of the water.  We got a boat back across.

And then we went to an interesting pub!

On our last night in Australia we went down to the beach to watch the sun set.  The view over the Indian Ocean was spectacular!

Here's the six of us all together on our last night.

So four of headed off home stopping off in Singapore.  We didn't get to feel the air in Singapore on our way over cos we never left the terminal but Colin spotted a roof-top bar, so we called in (or out) there on our way home.  It was night time but it was like walking into a sauna!  It was so hot and humid!  We had a couple of drinks and when we stood up, our clothes were sticking to us!
Don't let the jackets fool you, we had just left the air-conditioned terminal and the jackets soon came off!

Then we had a 12 hour flight to Frankfurt.  Which was bad enough.  But when we arrived in Frankfurt we were told that some flights were cancelled due to industrial action.  Yeah, almost all flights were cancelled, including ours!  So after a while trying to organise some way home we settled down at the bar for a 14 hour wait til our re-scheduled flight!

I'm glad it was the last flight that was affected like this and not one that we would've missed a connecting flight over, but we could've done without it.  46 hours after I left Leanne's house I went through my own front door.  I suppose that sort of explains the jet-lag!

So over 2 and a half weeks - 50 hours of which flying on 9 seperate flights (and not including time in the airports!) - train journeys, boats, buses and cars, I can say I had an absolutely fantastic time!  Even with the fact that everything was very expensive, the bars were so hard to get into (you had to bring your passport with you which was scanned and you were photographed and stamped after being scrutanised by security staff!) and the length of time getting there, I would go back in the morning!  The people were so friendly and you couldn't go into a shop without ending up chatting to the people in it!
And the weather wasn't bad either!

Thanks for sticking with me!
 

Australia - Part 2

So here's the second part of my holiday
I left off that myself and Colin were heading off to Sydney.
I was the most nervous (I'm a nervous traveller!) about going to Sydney as it was the only place where we weren't staying with anyone and were left to our own devices.  It didn't help when I was asked what part of Sydney we were staying in and was told that it was the red-light-district and could be a bit dodgy! 
Things didn't get any better when we arrived at the airport and Colin's suitcase didn't appear on the carousel.  We went to see if we could get any help and eventually discovered that it was still in Melbourne!  Luckily, there was a flight just about to leave from Melbourne and it was rushed onto it.  Thankfully it was that flight out of the 9 we were on throughout the trip that this happened as it was one of the shortest at an hour and a half.  So we had to hang around the airport til the suitcase turned up.  We put the time to good use though by have a coffee (my first of the whole trip!  Everyone we had been staying with before were tea drinkers so it was good to get a coffee!) and we booked a tour for the next day.  We only had 2 days in Sydney so we wanted to make the most of it.
We got a shuttle bus to our hotel and on the way, we drove around a corner to a view of the Harbour bridge all lit up and we drove under it and the Opera House, also lit up, came into view!  I nearly cried when I saw them both, I just couldn't believe I was actually there seeing them!
And then when we got to the hotel it turned out to be in a lovely area - there was a Lambourgini and Ferrari dealer just around the corner!  So I was a little giddy when we got settled in!

This shows the short flight from Melbourne to Sydney

Our tour bus collected us at our hotel at 7am and we were off for the day.  This is the first place we were taken to, what a way to start the day!

We then went to an area called Manly.  I think this photo says it all! lol!

This is Manly beach.  The story goes that when Captain Cook arrived at the land he saw two figures on the beach.  They were two Aborigine men and he thought they looked manly, so the name stuck!

This was our view of the Opera House as we drove over the Harbour Bridge.

We went on a lunch-time cruise and got some lovely photo's of the area's all around the water, which is most of Sydney!

This is the rest of the city of Sydney that most people forget about thanks to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge!

Ahh, back to the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge!

This picture is currently my desktop picture on my computer at work.  It's great when I'm bored at work I can have a quick peek and I feel so much better!

Then we visited the famous Bondi Beach!

Here are my toes in the water at Bondi Beach!

On our second day we decided to visit the grounds of the Opera House.  We ended up starting the day a little later than we meant to as it was Colin's birthday the day before and we had a few drinks in Sydney when we were dropped off after the tour.

It's hard not to take photo's every couple of steps as you walk around the buildings, every turn has so many new angles and views!  Here are some of them...

We went on a tour in the Opera House too.  You're not allowed to take pictures inside the theatres but these are a couple in the foyer's.

You are able to climb up the frame of the bridge (for a rather large amount of money!) We didn't have time (or money!) to give it a go but we could see other people doing it.

This is Luna Park, it's a state run amusement park located just beside the bridge.  We didn't get to it either but it's fantastic to look at from afar!

It's just across the water from the Opera House, so there's a good view from it as well!

The Botanical Gardens are beside the Opera House so we spent a couple of hours walking around them.  We hadn't intended on spending so long in there, but it was worth it!
This is a BIG tree!

I think it's roots and trunk look like veins or muscles!

Then we came across a flock of (relatively) wild Cockatoos!

There were also heaps of Ibis wandering around!  They're like their version of pigeons!

Colin just happened to look up into a tree and spotted this huge bat hanging from a branch!  I saw it flying around shortly after this and it really was huge!

Then we found an area full of these boyo's!  I took a few photo's and got out of there pronto!  Thankfully they were the only spiders we saw on our whole trip.

More Cockatoos.

And a tree full of Rainbow Lorikeets.  They were really loud!

Then I spotted a Possum, so we followed it as it passed another Ibis.

Isn't it so cute!

So we decided to make our way back to the Opera House to see it lit up at night and we had our dinner at the restaurant.  There's my steak and the Opera House all in one view!

The Harbour Bridge by night

The Opera House by night

The two together by night!

And I'll end this part with a smile and Luna Park by night!

We then had a very early morning the next morning to catch our flight back to Perth for the last part of the trip, which I'll share hopefully tomorrow night.

Thanks for looking!