Over and out...

The McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley were amazing!  We tasted wines at many vineyards including a few favourites like Two Hands and Torbreck.  Probably a good thing for our bank account that its next to impossible to bring any wines back home.  We had a final dinner with the Horvats and after a sad goodbye we left for Sydney.

We spent yesterday at Darling Harbour and took in the Aquarium which was wonderful.  Walked the beautiful downtown streets of Sydney for a few more hours and went to meet Belinda's sister Kirsten for a coffee.

Today was Bondi Beach which was great.  Very Bohemian and Backpacker, but absolutely beautiful.  We spent some time on the beach and then had a walk arounbd the shops.  Getting home was interesting as although we took a cab there, no cabs would drive us home because we had the kids and not all cabs are outfitted with kid seats.  We took a bus home, which broke down and then took another much moree crowded bus the rest of the way.

Dylan and I had a swim on the rooftop pool of the hotel and the view was unbelieveable.  We are really going to miss it here.

Thannks for reading and see you all in afew days.

Dave, Shannon, Dylan and Kate

Kangaroo Island/Adelaide South Australia

After a VERY early morning (5 am) departure from Auckland, we spent one night in Adelaide and then we had to get up early again to catch a ferry 2 hrs away. We packed up all our stuff and headed off to Kangaroo Island. Actually, we thought we packed up all our stuff, but we left a few unimportant items behind like our passports! luckily they remained in the hotel safe so the hotel found them (we neglected to figure out that we forgot them until we had been on Kangaroo Island for 2 days). 

Kangaroo Island is a very remote Island off the coast of South Australia
View Larger Map

We and the Horvat clan took a Ferry 22 km from a port about an hour and half drive south of Adelaide (a really picturesque drive giving us a taste of South Australia wine country and little country farm houses)to KI and drove to the house Tony and Belinda (our good friends in Adelaide) rented for us (and refuse to let us pay for it!!!).  The house was AMAZING!  It was brand new and overlooked Emu Bay in 3 different directions from the top of the hill.  It has been filmed by an Aussie travel show as one of the best vacation homes.

The kids loved the 3 acres and the parks and beach. 

Spent one day in Kingscote (the first settlement in South Australia) and had lunch at a seaside reasturant which was great and the kids got to play at a park next to the ocean. 

We went to Seal Bay which is a natural seal habitat at the very south of the island and saw a few seals and their pups running around. The island and beaches are beautiful. We really enjoyed our stay, and really enjoyed spending time with Tony and Bel and the kids.

We only saw 2 Kangaroos on Kangaroo Island, both road kill. 

It was really cool to take the ferry back to the mainland as looking out and approaching "Australia" was different than flying into the country (even though Kangaroo Is IS Australia it was just a different perspective of the mainland).

We got back to Adelaide on Friday and on Saturday we went for dinner with Tony and Belinda (the kids were all with a babysitter) at one of their favorite restaurants overlooking the city from the  hills called Windy Point and all met Sunday for Mother's Day lunch at yet another great restaurant /English style pub where the kids could run around a small courtyard.

Adelaide is a really nice city. The suburb areas are reminiscent of little English villages and the hills and scenery are really beautiful.  We are staying in an area called Glenelg, which is right on the beach in Adelaide and is a really great touristy spot with restaurants and shopping. There is a place called the "Beach house" that has a play place and mini golf and bumper cars etc that the kids love.

Wineries in McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley (Bel is watching the kids, thank you!!) for the next few days and then we will be back in Sydney on Wednesday night to take in the last couple days of this amazing trip.

 

Auckland New Zealand

Arrived in New Zealand after what seemed like an exceptionally short flight (5 hrs from Brisbane) even with customs etc. We had no idea what to expect of New Zealand, but quickly got a feel for Auckland as very relaxed and very beautiful city on the water. When we arrived I got my first taste of real driving on the wrong side of the road with our Toyota Torago (Previa) for the drive to the hotel. No accidents, no carnage and no problems other than Shannon always telling me to take a right instead of a left because she was on the wrong side of the car, and me turning on the wipers instead of hitting the turn signal....


Our hotel looked over the harbour and you could see all the volcanic islands along the coast. The first thing we noticed was how cheap everything was as prices were the same as Canada, but in NZD which exchanges at 60 cents CAD to buy one Kiwi $. Everything was cheap except cell phone coverage. It cost $4.15 per minute and $0.75 per text msg while roaming from Australia. I went to see if I could get a New Zealand SIM card for local prices and found out locals pay $0.89 a minute!!!!!!! You can probably tell why we waited to get back to Australia to update the blog (internet was 30$ a day!)


We had some great food and tested the local beer - Steinlager (very good). We made our way up the 300 meter Skytower and watched people bungy jump off the top past us on the observation deck. Shannon couldn't walk on the glass floor, but Dylan and Kate lay down on it and looked straight to the ground... Beautiful views in all directions. We also took a drive up One Tree Hill which was one of the first Maori settlements discovered by the European explorers. Its a volcanic hill in the middle of Auckland that still has sheep grazing on it. They were suspicous of us until they realized we weren't local and as such had no plans for anything romantic with them.
Went back over to Pakuna on the North Shore and visited a volcanic lake (only metres away from the ocean).


We then took a scenic drive to Piha. The drive took us through a tropical forest (Waitaker Ranges) and reminded us very much of Vancouver Island and the drive to Tofino but with a road similar to the road to Hana in Maui.
New Zealand is definitely a place we will come back to.
We arrived in Adelaide on Monday to a warm welcome from Bel and Amelia waiting at the airport for us. We will write more later about our really amazing trip to Kangaroo Island. Plan to spend the next few days with the Horvat's and tour McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley on Monday and Tuesday.

Gold Coast / New Zealand Update

Movieworld was everything a 4 year old fascinated with super heroes could ever want. Dylan got to meet and get photographed with Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman (who still wears giant red panties apparently) and a whole bunch of other heroes. We got to go in to the bat cave, watch a staged batman fight on main street...(are you getting the fact that there was alot of Batman at Movie World?). One item of note is that the girl that runs the roller coaster ride in kid land at Movie World is destined to become an evil lesbian prison guard. She made Dylan take off his shoes and hat to prove he was too short to ride and was still lifting the bar off the ground when measuring him.

Sea World was a little more Katefriendly as they had Sesame Street Beach and a bunch of rides they both could go on. Dylan braved the "volcano" ride and then forced Shannon to go on with him a few times after. Gold Coast ("Brisneyland") was definitely full on resort, and was very relaxing. Every morning they traced out the temperture high in the hotel beach so that we could see it from our hotel room window 16 floors up, and we had our fill of the hotel restaurant fare. Australia doesn't like to part with any kind of food or drink without a substantial amount of money changing hands, and Sufers Paradise was no exception. The daily hotel buffet let our kids eat for free but still managed to require the advancee of a second mortgage.
The big highlight for Dylan was that he learned to swim!!!!! He now wants nothing to do with us in the pool and just wants to jump off the side and swim back to the ladder to do it again. He also learned read, do advanced linear algebra, speak and write Latin and Japanese.

this is Shannon now,

We are in Auckland now. Have spent the last couple days walking around the city. We went to the Sky Tower and ate in a nice little neighbourhood called Parnell at a really great pizza place with a great patio today. Toured a bit on the North Shore today also, Devonport was one area and we plan on going back to Takapuna tomorrow as its a great beach area and has a huge Volcanic lake (Lake Pupuke) and great restaurants/cafes etc.we will also try to get to Rangitoto Island this weekend as well which is only 800 years old. Auckland is a really beuatiful city, you can see the Pacific ocean and the Tasman sea and there are 49 small volcano mountains within the city. It has a lot of the Maori (indigenous people) culture that influences life here and a huge Polyenesian population so it feels very South Pacific. We will update you with some pictures soon.

Ayers Rock/Central Australia Outback

for more see below pictures....

We have had a really great week visiting Ayers Rock (also called Uluru) and we are now in Gold Coast in Queensland staying in the beach area called "Surfers Paradise".

The trip from Ayers Rock was pretty long, its a very remote area and one we debated on booking for a long time. The resort out there is really all there is, and so you only stay for a couple nights at most which makes it a lot of work!

The remoteness is what makes it even more unique, the seclusion and the landscape is really like nothing we could have imagined. It truly felt like we landed on an uninhabited planet.

We went out and toured around the area a bit and went out to a viewing area at sunset to watch as the "rock" changed colours. The first day we went out and decided to walk around the rock and take a little hike to the cultural center on site. We recieved stern warnings on the bus from the airport about dehydration, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, dangerous dingos, biting monitor lizzards, extreme UV hazzards and everything else that can bite, burn or sting. The problem was that no one had mentioned anything to us about the flies...

When we stepped off the bus we were literally swarmed by flies. Flies in our mouths, ears, noses and everywhere else they could find. We were all constatntly orbitted by flies and looked like we were waiting for rice bags from the UN trucks as we swatted, ran, rolled, jumped and did everything we possibly could to evade the miserable little flies in 36 degree heat in the middle of the outback. Dave thought he was attracting them the most and was definitely Lord of the Flies. It all ended after a 2 km dash down the "scenic walking trail" to the cultural centre where for just 10$ you can buy fly netting to wear. We wore the fly nets eveytime we stepped outside again to ensure not one more fly was ingested.

The "sunset" was definitely a highlight as being out in the outback in that environment as the sun set was very tranquil (for about 2 minutes because of a "Mommy" or a "Daddy" interuption ha ha).

The national park and Ayers are World Heritage sites.

We spent today at our pool here at the hotel. The next couple days we are taking the kids to some of the theme parks, and we even have some childcare all lined up for the spa and dinner!

Bye Bye Sydney!

Time to leave Sydney tomorrow. For anyone who has never been here - make sure you do. Sydney has been amazing! It has everything anyone could ask for. Good weather, shopping and scenery. Great zoo, amusement park and playgrounds for the kids. A drunk midget falling down in the train station for me. What else could you want?

On Friday we took the ferry over to the zoo which was a real highlight. Its on the north side of Harbour and overlooks Sydney Harbour and Opera house and feels like you are in a jungle. We have walked every mile of downtown Sydney. We got a guided tour from our friend Belinda and her Dad Alan of the botanic gardens, the shopping district (the Queen Victoria Buiding is Shannon's favorite) and the Opera House. We spent the day yesterday with Belinda's very LARGE family having lunch on the waterfront at Circular Quays. We had a great afternoon with them and they really are great people. Thanks to all of them!

Today we went over to Manley Beach which was beautiful! On the way back we had some 20 ft swells near Sydney Heads and the boat felt like it may flip, but we made it back OK. Today was Shannon's birthday, so we gave her a mini party with her very own Dora the Explorer cake (Kate's pick).

Off to Ayers Rock in the Outback tomorrow.

Sydney update

Hi! We have had a great couple of days touring around Sydney. Yesterday we spent at Darling Harbour, a great area in Sydney that has restaurants and stores and also the Aquarium and Wildlife Center and Maritime Musuem. We took the ferry over which the kids really enjoyed.

As you can see in the pictures, Sydney's "Wildlife World" was a big hit with the kids too and we got to take our picture with a Koala and pat him. I am attaching some pictures from the ferry and the Wildlife World.

The weather has been great, 27 degrees for the past couple days.

We had a slight stroller malfunction and spent a bit of time today touring a "suburb" in search of "BabyKingdom" to buy a replacement (yes we have just added another stroller to our fleet at home!). Still managed to salvage the day (for me at least) shopping along Pitt Street.

We are meeting up with our friend Belinda and her kids Sam and Amelia tomorrow and headed to the Taronga Zoo.

Talk soon

We have arrived!

just an update to let you know we made it! i am attaching a picture of the view from our hotel room here in Sydney (and a couple of the kids on the plane and at the airport). Sydney is amazing and just what we imagined. As you can tell from the view in the hotel room its great. We spent yesterday walking around the Rocks area and Circular Quays. Dylan was awesome the entire flight, Kate not as much but overall did great considering how long the trip was . We mananged to stay awake until 5pm and up at 4am so should be adjusted to the time tomorrow.

Talk again soon!

YVR

9:30 in Vancouver. Kids were great on the 1 hr flight in the middle of the day, so i see no reason why they won't be the same for 17 more hrs in the middle of the night after a 4 hr layover.

Kate's Take

Dylan's Take on the Trip

Heading Out

We're headed out on the 11th for Sydney (finally) for a glorious 17 hr direct flight. Can't imagine Dylan and Kate will get bored in a mere 17 hrs, but we'll bring their ipods just in case...

We have ended up with two extra seats so we have two whole rows (kind of a home made executive class that fits right in to the global economic crisis) so I may bring the midget.

First Test on Blog

Just a quick test