New Year's Eve 2013

For the second year in a row, we spent New Year's Eve in Sydney. This year, however, we booked a 4-person table on the balcony of the Novotel at Darling Harbour. The meal included a fantastic all-you-can-eat buffet, all-you-can-drink alcohol, and a perfect view to the fireworks at Darling. It was a great night, and allowed us easy access to our room in the hotel after the celebrations were done (thus avoiding the ridiculous crowds at the end of the evening).

Here are a very few photos of our NYE celebrations.

 

Blue Mountains

A few days after Christmas we all made our way towards Sydney for our NYE reservation. We had planned this trip with a stopover in the Blue Mountains as we had never been there ourselves and Stacy's parents wanted to see them before they headed back to Canada.

We had a very busy 2-night stopover, with us cramming in both Jenolan Caves and Katoomba's Scenic World all in one day. It was a day full of beautiful sights, but by the end of it we were exhausted.

Here are some photos of our stop at Jenolan Caves:

And here are some pictures from our stop at Scenic World:

The Famous 'Three Sisters'

The steepest passenger railway in the world

Another shot of the steepest passenger railway in the world

It was BUSY! (between Xmas and NYE)

Christmas 2013

Once again, sorry for the delay in getting these posts up. We have a personal goal of getting all posts updated before Stacy heads back to work in 6 weeks! :o

------- Anyways....

Christmas 2013 was a special one to us as it was Matty's first. We also had Stacy's parents here, so we had even more to celebrate.

Christmas in Oz, however, has never felt like Christmas to us. It is just too hot and there are so many traditions that are just so foreign to us (bbq on the beach anyone?). Nonetheless, it is fun time, but we always try to incorporate some of our own traditions into it. One of these traditions includes having a turkey dinner. Unfortunately, turkey in Australia is a bit difficult to come by.  First of all, the only time of the year that they are sold here is at Christmas time. Not many Aussies buy turkeys though (they prefer to buy seafood for Christmas) - so I speculate that they only sell them here to appease the expats. ;) Second of all, turkeys are ridiculously over-priced. We're talking $80 AUD for a standard-sized bird. Furthermore, it's never easy finding the standard trimmings that you are used to. For instance, cranberry sauce (jellied or whole) is not sold down here. They do have cranberry "jam" though (which was suggested as a substitute to us our first year here - barf). So this year we were prepared - we had Stacy's parents bring all the necessary trimmings down with them from Canada.

So everything was looking good for this year's celebration - that is, until the day before Christmas Eve when Blair came down with the norwalk virus. And as everyone knows, norwalk is quite contagious, so it was passed along to Stacy next. This meant that we needed to delay (gasp!!) Christmas by a day. So, in the end, we opened our presents on boxing day and had our turkey dinner that day too. All in all, it was a great celebration, but still fell short on feeling like a proper Christmas.

The Great Ocean Road

After Melbourne, we headed west along the coast and drove the famous Great Ocean Road (famous for the Twelve Apostles).

On the first day, we drove from Melbourne to Warrnambool. This drive, although only 264km, took us the entire day to complete because we were stopping every few minutes to see the sights. It was a very warm day (+38 degrees), which made touring the Apostles quite uncomfortable. Another difficulty we ran into was the number of mozzies in the area. Look closely at the photo of our car door below to see just how many flies we had to deal with at each stop along the highway. Honestly, these little suckers did take some of the beauty away from this drive!

Anyways, it still was a very beautiful drive that we are very glad we had the opportunity to do. Here are some of the sights along the highway:

 

Here are some photos of the Twelve Apostles:

 

 And here are some additional sights near the Apostles:

On the second day, we headed back towards Melbourne via the Grampions National Park. Here are some pictures from our tour through this park.

Melbourne - Take 2

Following Tasmania, we hopped on a plane and flew back to Melbourne. We spent another three days in this awesome city. This time we toured around the Crown Resort and Entertainment Complex to see some of their Christmas displays, we did a boat cruise down the Yarra river, we had High Coffee at the Intercontinental, and we drove to Phillip Island to see the penguins and the sights along the way.

Christmas at the Crown

Christmas show at the Crown

Christmas in Melbourne

Christmas in Melbourne

Yarra River Boat Cruise

 Finally, here are some photos from Phillip Island: