Wine Country

After Carl's week in Japan, I drove back to Sydney to pick him up and then we headed up to wine country. I was great to see him and as always after a big work trip (plus a red-eye flight), he was exhausted. The Hunter Valley was just what we needed.
Time together as a family, great scenery, nice 2 bedroom villa with good swimming pools for Olivia, about 100 wineries with free tastings and fabulous local produce including cheeses and meats. We had recommendations on which wineries to go to and ended up visiting about 10. We bought more wine that we had expected and have to now figure out how to drink more of it before we head home!

Japan or the beach?

Carl had to take a work trip to Japan for 6 days. I'd love to visit since I've never been and I think that it's a fascinating culture. The issue is that it is FREEZING there, the flights are $1300 each (and no reduction for the peanut) and flight schedules are nasty. So Australia wins the challenge and I decide to hire a car and head up the Aussie coast for some beach and pool action while Carl works in Japan. Will have to do Japan another time.
I rented a car and easily got back into the hang of driving on the left (the proper side of the road to drive!) Olivia and I spent the time at three different locations a few hours north of Sydney. We had a lot of time on the beach and in the pool. I definitely have a real little mermaid on my hands. And with a pool the beach, unrestricted mummy-time and one ice-cream a day, who can't have a good time?

Park

All this sightseeing can get very tiring so I decided that we needed a 'rest' day! Olivia and I went to the park for a pic-nic. She chased the birds for about an hour, poor things; she was calling "Albert" at them all the time since her current favourite book is about a seagull called Albert. She caused lots of smiles from office workers in the park for lunch.
Lunch was followed by gorgeous cupcakes from the store next to our hotel. It was totally worth getting her that cupcake just to watch her eat it - too cute, she even had to close her eyes to savour the taste.

Taronga

Now I've said before that I'm not a huge fan of zoos but I was looking forward to going to Sydney's famous Taronga zoo. Some of the animals there have multi-million dollar views of the bay, bridge and opera house.
We caught a ferry from the city across the bay, then took a cable car up to the zoo entrance. This confused Olivia since I called it a 'bubble car' and she wanted to know where all the bubbles were!
There was an baby elephant born there last July and we saw him in full cuteness playing in the water with his mummy. Particularly impressive were the big cats and the water enclosure with penguins, seals and yet more sharks. It's a fabulous zoo and Olivia and I may have to pay another visit before we leave.

Aussie animals

Right next to the Aquarium is Sydney Animal Kingdom which is like a zoo only for Australian animals. Cue lots of spiders, snakes and creepy crawlies. Amazingly Olivia was less freaked out by them than Mummy was (never have been a big fan of spiders - thanks grandpa!) The zoo is right in the middle of the city and although compact, is really well presented. They have a few open area 'walkabouts' where you can walk through giant cages with wombats, kangaroos, koalas, butterflies etc. Here is Olivia looking at a male crocodile measuring 4.8m - yikes. Note to self not to swim in any creeks while we are over here!

Daddies

For Australia Day we headed down to Melbourne. Carl had 3 days of work there and I decided to tag long with Olivia. Since the whole of Australia has the day off for Jan 26th Australia Day, we felt justified in going to see INSEAD friends of ours who live in Geelong, about an hour outside Melbourne. They have 3 girls so Olivia was in her element and changed into a mermaid outfit within 2 minutes of arriving.
It was so good to catch up with them; we hadn't seen Jonno since the INSEAD 5 year reunion and hadn't seen his wife since leaving France and never met his 3 kids. We had a very relaxed day including the inevitable BBQ and a few beers. We went to the beach and a kiddie playground for a few hours in the pm and here is a photo of Carl and Jonno catching up while the kids played (and mums supervised).

Sydney Aquarium

At Darling Harbour is a very nice aquarium. It's possibly not as nice as Monterey but it does have two HUGE tanks with underwater tunnels. One tank has Dudongs or sea cows which are what the ancient mariners used to call Mermaids, and the other tank has sharks and rays. The dudongs are quite boring but the shark tank is fabulous. There are thousands of fish including about 40 sharks and rays which can swim right over your head. I did ask one of the docents about the sharks eating the other fish but apparently they are kept very well fed and eating each other is just too much effort. Better to just wait for food to be dropped right into your mouth. In addition to these tanks are lots of smaller tanks containing jelly fish (including the Aussie poisonous ones), gorgeous reef fish, sea horses etc. A great diversion for a few hours.