Holiday Inn Old Sydney

My parents were supposed to fly in on Sunday, March 9th for a 10-day visit, but as luck would have it the last leg of their journey was cancelled. This gave them a whole day of sight-seeing in LA, but one less day in Sydney. It was too late for us to cancel the hotel reservation for that night, so I got to live it up in a room for three at the Lord Nelson Brewery. Quite the change after staying in hostels for the past two months! They finally arrived early Monday morning, and we wasted no tim...

Oh my goodness, I think we have had far to much fun here in Sydney. We arrived on Saturday the 27th December and just relaxed after a long drive from Swansea. We had a BBQ at a friends house and had a few to many catch up beers with Uncle Simon. The next day we drove out to the Blue Mountains to have lunch with an old friend of Donna's and took a drive up to the Wentworth Falls area. We had a lovely time but the drive did take it out of us. On the Monday we moved into a hotel in the city and ...

Mon 1 Sep - First Day of Spring!
8:00
AM - I ached the whole night with body pains and a fever, but I sweat
it out and took the nighttime cold medicine, and woke up all better.

9:00
AM - We headed back to Nood so I could get some of the stuff I saw the
day before but wanted to think about, and we walked around looking for
a breakfast cafe.

10:00 AM - I think it was called Piazzo,
around the corner from the hotel, a really hip lofty looking cafe with
spira...

The weather did brighten up in Picton on Xmas Day and we managed to challenging bike ride and hike along to Harbour View, Bob's Bay and the Charlotte Track viewpoint. We had dinner in the hotel as the only place open - it was a shambles but let's not worry too much about that. On Boxing Day we hiked up a hill which overlooks Picton before heading for the train down to Kaikoura - a (former) whaling and (now only line or pot) fishing and (still) farming peninsula where tourism has boomed over r...

Headed immediately down to the harbor and booked a harbor cruise. Glad I did. Perfect antidote to having been cooped up on a plane for the last 36 hours. Chose Captain Cook cruises, the 10 a.m. Coffee Tour. Two and a half hours for about 50 bucks American. Well worth it. Gorgeous day, mid-winter there, sun was high and bright and there was a nip in the air. There was a narrator, dialog in English. Half way through the tour they served coffee, tea, scones and muffins with butter, jam and whipp...