Day 1 – 22 May 2016

A very pleasant start with James, Venetia & River taking us into town for our bus trip to Sydney. Young River is now reacting to us & is very cute, it was a little sad waving goodbye & missing out on our grandsons (and children) for a couple of months. The Murrays bus trip to Sydney international airport was uneventful & a very relaxing way to travel, we both dozed off a few times on the way. Our motel was only 100m away from the bus drop-off and we were in our room 3 ¼ hours after leaving Canberra.

We caught the train into Circular Quay & had a stroll around the harbour before boarding the tall ship Southern Swan for a twilight dinner cruise for a couple of hours on Sydney Harbour. These beautiful wooden tall sailing ships are very rare, only about 150 left in the world, Australia has about 15. The one we were on was built in Denmark from Danish oak, in 1922 – imagine sailing the 7 seas in one of these little ships. The lights of the city were all coming on as we departed Circular Quay & both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House looked spectacular. We were treated to a magnificent full moon rise over the harbour, accompanied by a very bright planet Mars. The sail back to Circular Quay was very pleasant with the square sails drawing the last of the sea breeze & pushing us gently along. The food tasted good (or were we just very hungry) & we enjoyed the pleasant roll of the ship & the lights of the city, as well as the very busy harbour traffic with an endless number of Sydney ferries churning past us at speed.

We strolled back to the railway station & then train back to the airport, with a quite drink before back to our room with a view of the main runway & the constant movement of aircraft. A very pleasant start to our next European adventure.