Quick June Escape to Sydney- Cut Short

 Doing a little bit of catch up here on the blog.  In June we finally took our first real trip in Australia. We headed to Sydney to check out all there is too see.  The girls had a day off of school (and we had it off work) for the Queen's birthday.  It happened to fall really close to my birthday, so I figured we could celebrate both me and the Queen (I guess) in Sydney. 

The trip came after a bit of a rough week as the heater in our house broke (in dramatic fashion). It sounded like a plane was landing in the house.  It was the sound of a metal fan on metal. The heater in the house is old and they don't make it anymore, so they couldn't just find the part that was needed.  We were without heat for about a week (and Canberra was having a winter cold spell). It was really less than ideal. We were able to borrow a bunch of space heaters, but it turned out that we could only have a couple turned on without tripping the power.  The house is already colder than we are used during the winter.  It is an "older" home and does not seem to be insulated, and has single pane windows.  Although this Canberra winter is milder than a Maryland winter, heat is still essential.  Needless to say, we were excited to get out of the cold house and hopefully into a warmer hotel. 

We took the train to Sydney even though it takes an hour longer than driving, because Mike loves the train. It is nice too because you can get up and move around and use the restroom without stopping.  Another really nice thing-- they only charged us $1 per kid per way for a seat. It reminded me of Europe where we never had to pay for Cailtyn's seat on the train.

When we arrived in Sydney we were able to walk to hour hotel which was in Darling Harbour, really close to China Town.  We then high-tailed it over to the King Street Wharf for a surprise I had for the kids.  We were in town during a light and music festival they called "Vivid Sydney."  Basically they had a bunch of light installations and stuff.  I'm sure its a ploy to bring visitors into the city. It was pretty cool. I booked a boat trip around the harbour so we could see all the lights from the boat.  I figured that would be easier than trying to march the kids around the city. I'm so glad I booked this. It is one of my favorite memories from living here so far.  Here are some pictures during our evening boat ride around the harbour during Vivid:

The next day we did one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours.  Mike loves those too. It is admittedly a nice way to see all the sights without having to walk it all, which would lead to huge levels of whining from small children. 

We went to a sushi restaurant where the sushi goes past you on little conveyor belt.  The kids thought it was the greatest. Now they are on the lookout for more places like that.

That afternoon we had another surprise for the girls.  We found a cat cafe for them to go and spend some time with kitties.

We had tickets to the zoo for Sunday. I was excited because we also had tickets for the Zoo's Vivid stuff at night too, which looked like a cool version of zoo lights. However, I woke up Sunday morning just feeling terrible. I asked mike if he could rent a car so we could get back to Canberra without having to expose anyone else to me.  I was relatively sure I had covid, but had neglected to travel with a rapid covid test. It was a long holiday weekend, so finding a rental car was not an easy feat. I'm pretty sure Mike found the last/only available car in they Sydney area. It was an electric vehicle, which was an experience. Australia doesn't exactly have the infrastructure to make a three hour car electric car ride super easy. We had to stop multiple times to charge the car, and the trip home took much longer than the train ride up.

When we got home it was confirmed Mike and I both had covid.  I felt like garbage for days. Luckily, Mike wasn't feeling too terrible, so he was able to manage the kids for me.  I CANNOT imagine how awful I would have felt if I hadn't been vaccinated and boosted.  Thanks science!

I had a isolation birthday. Mike and the girls tried to make it special and made me cupcakes.  And unfortunately Caitlyn also tested positive on my birthday, just a few days after Mike and I did. 

We will have to go back to Sydney as we haven't done all the things we want to do.