I Love You, California!

Though there is so much to do in Sydney proper, a trip isn't complete without exploring some of the beach communities. Looking back on the city, Sydney is very much California meets Europe. So escaping to Manly was a bit like visiting southern California. We took the Fast Ferry from the Circular Quay to Manly which took about 20 minutes. We were treated to beautiful views along the way. The wharf as we pulled in. From the wharf it is only about three blocks to the beach, so we walked around to get a lay of the land a bit. Manly is quite a touristy place, so after going through a couple shops I was over that. We went back near the wharf to 4 Pines, a microbrewery. Turns out that Will's colleague knows one of the guys who opened the place, so we knew we had to make a visit. We had really good beer and really good salads. The outdoor patio overlooked the main street outside of the Ferry Building which made for great people watching. Lots of beer brewe...

Our country escape was beautiful, but we were ready to get to the city for many of the conveniences and good food options that we had been missing! After breakfast and coffee in The Hunter we made another spectacular drive along the coast on the way back to Sydney. This drive didn't offer the wildlife that the outback did, but the scenery was breathtaking. We dropped our rental car off at the airport and took a cab to our Holiday Inn. Will gets great rewards through them and we got four nights for virtually free! And look, we even had a pretty good view of the Harbor Bridge and Opera House from our room! We settled in a bit but didn't waste too much time before we started exploring. The hotel was right at Kings Cross, right around the corner from William Street. Here's a pretty cute map of Sydney to help you understand where we were. We walked from Kings Cross to The Rocks area by way of the East side of the Central Business District (CBD) through the Botan...

One of the many aspects of living in the Bay Area that we absolutely loved  was its proximity to Napa and Sonoma. We took many day trips to wine country, but were never able to make it for an overnight trip or biking trip, which we had really wanted to do. So we were really excited about the opportunity to do just that in Australia. I found a wonderful company that allowed us to rent bikes for 24 hours and they would drop off the bikes in the morning and pick them up the next day right from our hotel room! So that morning, Mark from Hunter Valley Cycling brought by two wonderful bikes for us. Will's even had saddle bags so he wouldn't have to wear his backpack, which was great because temps today got into the 90s! The next two days saw temps of over 100, so we were happy we "lucked out" with the 90s. Here is a map of the region we visited. I'll make mention of where we traveled. What's a day in wine country without a bubbly breakfast? Well, it just i...