Sydney, Australia - October, 2023

We left Hawaii on Wednesday, October 18th at 9:30 am and arrived at our hotel in Sydney at 9 pm on Thursday, October 19th. We lost a day crossing the International Date Line. The jet lag wasn't that bad because even though we lost an entire day, we were only actually about four hours ahead of Hawaii time. So confusing!!

We stayed four nights before our cruise at a very nice hotel called View Sydney in North Sydney, just north of the Harbor Bridge. The view from our room was spectacular during the day and also at night. The train station was only half a block from our hotel. It's super easy to ride the train and very inexpensive. We road the train several times to get across the bridge to Circular Quay, which is the main tourist area and where the cruise ship docked.

 The first day we actually walked across the Harbor Bridge from our hotel. We got a bit lost on the way back, and ended up walking over seven miles. After that, we took the train!! 

There is an adventure you can book to walk over the top of the bridge. We saw lots of people up there. Not good for my fear of heights, plus it was about $200 each to do it. No thanks!

We bought a two day ticket on the Big Bus Sydney hop on-hop off bus tour. This also included a harbor boat tour. That kept us busy for two days.

Its pretty hard to get good pictures from the top of a moving bus, but I did get a few. Here's the Sydney Tower.

Cockatoos are all over the city. There were several of them sitting in this tree right above the bus. We saw many other birds including the Australian Magpie and the white ibis which were scavenging all around the busy tourist area.

Australian Magpie

White Ibis

The address of this building is One Central Park. The walls are vertical gardens The two residential apartment towers have been recognized as a unique structure at an international level. Key elements are its vertical hanging gardens, cantilevered heliostat, low carbon tri-generation power plant and internal water recycling plant. It is the world's tallest vertical garden. In 2014, the average price for an apartment was $770,000 Australian Dollars. That's over $500,000 US Dollars. A very unique place to see!

We were fortunate to be visiting Australia in October (which is spring in the southern hemisphere) to enjoy the blooming Blue Jacaranda trees. They actually are more purple, and are so beautiful. Interestingly, two years ago we visited San Diego in May and saw the same type of trees blooming there.

This is the iconic Bondi beach which is renowned for surfing and the trendy neighborhood around it. There is a clifftop coastal walk which overlooks this beautiful and dramatic scenery.

Views of Sydney from across the harbor.

We thoroughly enjoyed our bus and boat tours of Sydney, learning much along the way.

Of course, Sydney is known for its beautiful Opera House right on the harbor. The weekend we were there was its 50th anniversary. The crowds were huge, and the lines were long. We admired it from a distance.

This Aboriginal group was performing on the steps.

Behind the opera house is the botanical gardens which are free of charge. We noticed most every city we visited in Australia and New Zealand had free botanical gardens. As it was spring, there were not that many flowers blooming. We did enjoy a walk through the gardens. This is a New Caledonian Pine tree with very long needles. 

There were many beautifully unique varieties in the rose garden.

This plant whale sculpture was huge and amazing to see.

Located next to the gardens is the Sydney Government House which looks like a castle, and was completed in 1843. It is the official residence of the governor of the state of New South Wales, Australia. 

Another impressive building next to the gardens is the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, which also looks like a castle. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious music schools in Australia. This building was originally built around 1820 as stables for the governor's house, and was also used to house servants. It received much criticism as being too extravagant for stables, and in 1910 was turned into the Conservatorium of Music.

Our cruise began on October 23rd. There is a Royal Princess Facebook page. Someone who was staying in a hotel on the harbor took these pictures of the ship coming into and leaving the harbor and posted it to that page.

Our ship arriving in the harbor at 6 am

Docked waiting for passengers

Leaving the harbor at 5 pm

Sail away party on board!

Sunset from our balcony

The Love Boat show that aired in the 1970s was a Princess Cruise ship. The first night at dinner I had the Love Boat dessert. Too bad, it looked a lot better than it tasted.

So, that's the end of our stay in Sydney. Our first day on the ship was a sea day. Next stop, Brisbane!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Kauai, Hawaii October, 2023

 On our way to Australia, we took a few days to visit Kauai, Hawaii. We had been there once before in 2012 just for a day while on a Hawaiian cruise. We didn't get to see it all, so decided to return for another visit.

We stayed at the Hotel Coral Reef in Kapaa right on the ocean. The location was beautiful, but the hotel could use some updating and sprucing up. For $300 per night, I was expecting a little better.

We've been to Hawaii before, and there have always been chickens running around all the islands. This time, however, there were more than ever.

Many years ago, red junglefowl roosters were brought to Hawaii from Polynesia for cock fighting. Over time, some got loose and reproduced. Feral chickens became a part of life. In 1992, there was a severe hurricane than hit Kauai very hard. Many chicken coops were blown away, and more chickens became wild. Now, they are everywhere! There are notices for tourists not to feed them, but I don't think most people follow that rule.

This fun driftwood swing was behind our hotel.

We did see some other birds as well, including this Red crested cardinal and Common myna bird.

There are so many beautiful flowers and plants all over Kauai. Here are just a few. The flowers of the Pulmaria tree are used in lei making.

Pulmaria tree

Hibiscus

Hydrangea

We drove to the west side of the island to Waimea Canyon, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. We drove to the farthest lookout point where there are supposed to be fantastic views of the Napali Coast, which is where some of Jurassic Park was filmed. Unfortunately, it was mostly fogged in.

A bit further down the road, the canyon was fully visible. Such a beautiful place!

We visited Wailua Falls the last time we were here in 2012. There seems to be much more vegetation growing along the road, so it was harder to get a good picture this time. The first picture below is October, 2023. The second is January, 2012. 

We visited the Kauai Coffee Plantation. The first picture below is a coffee plant. Each tree only produces one pound of coffee each year. They sure have a fantastic location with beautiful views.

There was a self-guided walking tour at the plantation. A mama feral pig and her three babies were hanging around the path.

Mama pig

We did a tour that took us to many places where movies have been filmed on Kauai. This bay had a beautiful rainbow.

Opaekaa Falls was in Blue Hawaii. So was the Coco Palms hotel. The hurricane of 1992 also destroyed that hotel. It has been bought and sold several times since then, but development keeps being put off. It is really in bad shape.

The field below was part of Jurassic Park. 

Do you see the profile of King Kong in this next photo?

The Kilauea lighthouse was in the movie Lilo and Stitch.

These Albezia trees are all over the island. They remind me of scenes from Avatar which was also filmed on Kauai.

We headed all the way to the north end of the island to Hanalei Bay. Another beautiful spot!

Mount Waialeale is at an elevation of 5,148 feet. It's in the clouds below. It gets on average 450 inches of annual rainfall, making it the second wettest place on earth. In 1982, they had a whopping 683 inches of rain. Wow!!

The latest version of The Jungle Cruise movie by Disney was filmed on the Wailua River.

The spouting horn is a blowhole created from a natural lava tube. It can blow up to 50 feet.

We did another tour with Mountain Tubing Adventure where we went tubing down former irrigation canals that were dug out of lava on the former Lihue sugar cane plantation. Hawaii stopped exporting sugar cane in 2016. High labor costs made it impossible to compete with other countries. We went through several tunnels that had been hand dug out of the lava. It was a great tour. They drove us through parts of the plantation and explained some of the history, and then we went tubing. Here's the vehicle we were in. I don't have any pictures of the actual tubing, but I've included two from the web.

So, after five days in Kauai, we boarded a plane for a ten hour flight to Sydney, Australia.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!