My first trip to Australia was in November 2013.  After a series of very long flights from Boston, we arrived in Sydney in the morning hours having lost a full day in the air. Our hotel room wasn’t ready, so we checked our luggage and headed out to see the city.  I insisted our first stop was to be the iconic opera house.  Bill was totally exhausted from the flight, but he managed to keep up with me as we marched to Sydney harbor.  Finally, there it was, gleaming like large seashells the tile roof of the opera house didn’t disappoint.   

We stayed several days in Sydney seeing Manly beach, Oxford Street, Bondi Beach, and the Sydney harbor bridge. We drove our rental car to Melbourne, took in Phillip Island where their famous penguins are on parade then flew to Brisbane to stay with friends.   

What’s not to love about Brisbane?  The downtown was very walkable and seeing the university as it sat on the river and taking free ferry rides from place to place was the best. Our friends offered us one of their cars and we galivanted all over. I believe the largest crocodile I’ve ever seen was at the Steve Irwin Australia Zoo. A visit to the Blue Mountains where we saw the Three Sisters rock formation near Katoomba was breathtaking. We capped off the visit with lunch in the revolving restaurant in the Crown Plaza hotel in the Gold Coast with our friends.