It's been awhile...

Hi Everyone,

I need to preface this post with the fact that I am unable to locate my camera cord at the moment. Therefore, I am unable to post the fabulous pictures of the events that I will be writing about.  I will try to post them tomorrow morning. So sorry.

On another note, I am very excited to learn that so many of you non students are following this blog including my Australian friend Richard who I ran into last night. If you have been following, but haven't commented yet, please feel free. Yes mom that means you!

So, the past couple days have been hectic and fun filled. We started out our morning taking a relaxing ferry ride to a nice little spot for brekkie. The name is escaping me right now but I had a lovely iced coffee and BLAT sandwich which consisted of bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato. Ha you can tell where my priorities have been. Food! More on that later.

Soon after, we began the rental car adventure without a GPS. The first mission was to navigate back to the Avis rental place and get the all important GPS. Normally, it is not a big deal to drive a short distance, but when you are in a major city and have to drive on the left hand side of the road, it can be a bit tricky. It proved to be downright difficult. Luckily I was the trusty navigator and only got us lost a couple of times. I was, however, able to read the map eventually and get to Avis.

On to the Blue Mountains to see the Three Sisters. Now, I'm not one for landscapes, but this one was quite amazing.  Journey really enjoyed the view and the hike to
follow. He was prepared for the heat of the day with his hat, the rest of us were not so lucky. After the 10 minute hike that lasted an hour, we ended up at a tram station to take us over the gully and past the waterfall. This tram had a glass floor and glided nicely into the station; not too bad. The next leg, however, was terrifying. We came upon the steepest railway in the world, and after talking to the guy who worked there, he informed us that we had to go and that he would just let us in free of charge. This was a fabulous savings, so we had to jump at the chance.  We sat in this train like vehicle with seats that were inclined back. As the train started moving, we entered a tunnel and emerged to be pitched at a 53 degree incline. See if you can figure out what that looks like. Journey loved it, but I was not very happy. The even bigger problem was that once I was at the bottom, I had to take it back up again. Luckily, it moved very slow and felt like an elevator on the way up. It was one of those experiences that you just have to do like taking a zip line through the Costa Rican rainforest. Well, we were not about to take another hike, so a bus miraculously appeared and only charged us $3 to go back to the other side where the car was parked. Worth every penny. Journey even made a new friend.

What do you think his name should be????

Now it was time for the car and the beginning of the trip up the coast to Brisbane. It was also time for a few wrong turns and for the GPS lady with the Australian accent, who I appropriately named Matilda, to get quite frustrated when we didn't follow her directions correctly. "Recalculating" was a very popular phrase for a while.

We drove, and drove, and drove, and finally decided that it was time to find a nice hotel on the beach. It never occurred to us that hotels are not manned 24 hours a day and that we would have some trouble finding a place. We settled on the only place that we could find that was opened: the lovely Apollo Resort. Resort it was not, and when we opened the outside door to let some air in, there was a chorus of strange creatures that I'm sure would have loved to come in and visit. Sleep did not come easily.