A Stay in Palm Cove and Some Awesome Diving
The day we arrived
The house we were staying in was super cool. Well, the cool thing about it was that it was on a resort, so we could use the pools, room service and parking. We were also a 30 second walk to the beach. The house also had its own pool, which we barely used. Most of the first day was spent unpacking and playing on the beach. Me and Zeb built really big sand cities, (only one out of those three cities survived the ravaging tide), while the girls went in the pool.
Day 1 of Diving
The morning after we arrived we got up early to go scuba diving. We went on a big boat named Silver Sonic with a lot of other people, some of which would go diving with us, and others would just go snorkeling. I rented an underwater camera so I could take photos the pretty reef.
Dive 1 –
Location: Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name: Chaple Reef
Time In: 10:20 AM
Time Out: 11:08 AM
Bottom: 38 Minuets
Depth: 16.2 Meters
Dive 2 –
Location: Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name: Just Magic Reef
Time In: 11:55 AM
Time Out: 12:43
Bottom: 41 Minuets
Depth: 18 Meters
Dive 3 –
Location: Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name: Pavona Reef
Time In: 1:40 PM
Time Out: 2:25 PM
Bottom: 45 Minuets
Depth: 10 – 15 Meters
Day 2 of Diving
We got up early again so we could go diving. We used the same company, but different brand and boat. This one was named was Silver Swift. It was about the same size, and I rented a underwater camera again.
Dive 1 –
Location: Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name: Flynn Reef
Time In: 10:05 AM
Time Out: 11:00 AM
Bottom: 45 Minuets
Depth: 18 Meters
Dive 2 –
Location: Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name: Flyh Reef
Time In: 11:45 AM
Time Out: 12:40 PM
Bottom: 45 Minuets
Depth: 15 Meters
Dive 3 –
Location: Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name: Thetaford Reef, Rascos
Time In: 2:05
Time Out: 2:53
Bottom: 42 Minuets
Depth: 12.3 Meters
Our Stay in Sydney –
Day 1 – Doing the Walking Tour and the Sydney Opera House
We got an Uber from the airport top our house, which looked like a cute little cottage. Actually, it was a huge house. There was five bedrooms, one of which was a house down by the boat shed. None of us choose that one. That night us kids had a kids night while mom and dad went out.
Today we went into the city, and there we explored until we were able to meet up with our guide who would be taking us on a walking tour of the history of Sydney. I have created a different post for the explanation of the history. Next, we went to a really good lunch place called The Fine Food Store. I would defiantly recommend it.
That night we went to the Sydney Opera House to see Don Giovanni. Before, though, we had to eat dinner. We went to the Portside restaurant. It was not the best restaurant. They could do very limited mocktails, and basically refused to make any other kind of mocktail other than the ones on the menu. That wasn’t great, but speaking of the opera, five stars. It was great. If you would like to read more about the opera, go here.
The day of Sickness 🙁 Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge 🙂 –
The next day I was sick. I basically stayed in my bed the whole day. Well… not actually. At the end of the day, after sleeping for like, another five hours, I was feeling better. That night we had planned on climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Since I was feeling better, I decided that I would go. But how do I get there? I use the awesome Sydney ferry system. It is like the best thing ever. It is like when you are getting on a subway in New York. You just scan your phone, and then wait for a ferry to come. Then, wait for it to go to the spot you want. Anyway, I met up with the others, and we did the SO long walk to the place where we would start. The one and only company that we were using to climb the bridge was called Bridge Climb Sydney.
Climbing the Bridge
You were not allowed to bring your phone or anything , because they did not want you to drop it or be taking pictures of the inner workings of the bridge. We ore these flight suit kinda things, which was kinda cool. There were all of these safety cables and stuff, but that wasn’t really a problem. Is was about a thirty minuet climb up to the very top, including stops. We had chosen to do the sunset climb, and it was spectacular. There were lots of planes that were flying into the airport, right over the sun. I was really sad that I could not take photos, because they would be great. There was someone at the top from the company who had a camera who would take family photos of people with the sunset. It was so awesome, and I would defiantly recommend ding if you go to Sydney. It was a magical climb, but after all of the steps, I as wiped out. We would be leaving in the early morning, so I had to get packed.
Going Back to the United States –
We would be doing about 11 hours of travel al the way back to Raleigh, and for the last flight we would have to stay awake, even though it would me like, midnight when we arrived. For the long flight to Houston, Texas, we would be sitting in economy, so it would be very hard to sleep.
On the second flight, I really wanted to go to sleep, but I had to get used to the time change, so I couldn’t. On the first fling I has slept some, but it was the equivalent of sleeping at lunch time, so not much. Actually, when we landed in Raleigh, for some reason I was feeling pretty good.
When we got back to te house, we unloaded, and then went to bed. The trip to French Polynesia, New Zealand, and Australia, was one of the best ever.