We left Seattle on a gray winter day and after a 14 hour flight, we arrived in Sydney, Australia, on a beautiful, warm summer day.  We were tired from the long flight, but we were determined to explore Sydney before we flew to Melbourne, to meet our cruise ship.

    We found our way to the car rental garage and immediately got our first taste of the Aussie experience.  I started to get in the car to drive and quickly realized that the steering wheel was on the other side of the car.  Problem number 2 was the manual transmission that I had ordered on the car.  Somehow  I managed to maneuver onto the highway and we headed into downtown Sydney.  We parked along the waterfront and boarded the ferry to the Taronga Zoo, which was on an island across the harbor.  We cruised past the famous opera house and enjoyed seeing all the sailboats out on water in the summer sun.

     We arrived at the zoo and took the tram to the top of the hill.  The view of the harbor and downtown skyline was spectacular.  We worked our way down the hill and viewed each exhibit along the way.  We really liked the koala bears.  I noticed that Debi's face was bright red and I realized she was having problems with the heat.  We stopped for water and got in the shade to cool off.  Suddenly, the wind picked up dramatically and dark clouds appeared on the horizon.  We hurried down to the base of the zoo and got back on the ferry just as a heavy rain squall moved in.  We headed out into the harbor, which was whipped into a frenzy in the high wind.  We watched sailors in small boats bailing frantically to stay ahead of the crashing waves.  We finally made it back to the pier and had a little more time to explore. We decided to try to find world famous Bondi Beach.  We went down the wrong way on a couple of streets and made some wrong terns, but we finally made it to the beach.  The beach was pretty quiet because of the colder weather and rain.  We returned to the airport and found out that the temperature had reached 109 degrees earlier in the day. No wonder we were hot!  We boarded our flight to Melbourne and enjoyed the flight over the enormous Australian landscape.  

    We arrived at the pier in Melbourne,just after our ship arrived.  It was 8 hours behind schedule because of stormy weather . Several thousand passengers were  departing while several thousand  more were waiting to board the ship. It was a mess!  We finally met our son, Kristian and his friend and explored the waterfront while we waited to board the ship.  The ship finally departed and we were on our way to New Zealand.