Sunday December 19th

Of all the days the kids decide to sleep in, they pick Sunday, the day we need to get to church and off and running to get to downtown Sydney. Church got bumped from 8am to 930 am and was promptly over by 1015.

 After returning to the house to get Darren's wallet, camera lens and a few other things we were on our way. It was a beautiful sunny day and a great start to our day of exploring! We parked our car at the train station and purchased an all-day pass for 5 of us for a whopping$12.50 ( Sunday family pricing - normally $110!! Yahoo!! After riding the train for 45 minutes, we arrived in downtown Sydney. The skyscrapers in the downtown core stretched high into the blue summer sky and truly felt like a summer day. We hiked around the downtown seeing a few sights.

 We proceeded to the Paddington Farmers Market, a year round building filled with 500 vendors selling every known tourist trinket known to mankind. After stocking up on t-shirts, a few toys, some last minute gifts and clothes. we vacated the building with 4 bags of stuff in tow. We decided that our feet were too tired to walk the 30 blocks to the aquarium so bought a day pass on the monorail. We were there in no time flat.

Toni decided not to waste $40 on the experience as she had been to the aquarium before.  We jammed some hotdogs into the children and toured around the place. As expected, there were hundreds of varieties of fish and sea creatures, but the highlight was clearly the underwater tunnels beneath two different pools in which fish would swim right up to the glass and were extremely close! The first tank was simply fish and turtles, but the second had 10 sharks, 2 of which were well over 12 ft in length.  There was a 15 foot stingray that coasted around while walking through as well.  The boys were fascinated by the huge water creatures. It was a bit pricy, but appropriate for an aquarium of this magnitude.  The animals were fascinating and like nothing we had ever seen before.

After departing the aquarium, we waited for Toni to arrive before striking out for the ferry. We travelled across the bay towards the Sydney tower bridge and the opera house. The ominous clouds appeared and was totally socked in and pouring. Our views of the bridgeand Opera House were tainted by weather, but still, amazing world landmarks to have been seen.  We arrived at Circle Quay and tried to decide what to eat. Being a huge tourist area, restaurants were top notch with prices ranging from $20-$50. The kids wanted McDonalds and Toni/Krista wanted a glass of wine - so we compromised. I took the boys to McDonalds and they went for pasta and wine.  We met up an hour later and by then the rain had magically subsided. The clouds parted and we had a nice sunset to complete our downtown Sydney experience.

We caught a train and headed for home arriving back at around 9pm. It was a full day of walking and the boys were quickly asleep as were there parents shortly after 10.  Great day - tomorrow will be a mellow one around the pool and stay put at Melissa’s as Devin and Melissa have to return to work and we are back to full time parenting all four kids!