Katoomba to Sydney to Hervey Bay

Sorry we have taken a few days to update again. We really wanted to add more pictures today but the computers we're using won't let us. Anyway, on Saturday we spent our second day in the Blue Mountains. We went to the village of Leura where we walked around shops, went to the Leura cascades and saw Gordon Falls, and also tried meat pies - a staple in Australia. They were surprisingly very good! I stayed in Leura and walked around even more shops while Jess went to Katoomba Falls, before we met back up to head back to Sydney. On Saturday night we cooked dinner at Amy's house and lazily watched a movie.

Sunday morning we got up and went into the city. We took the ferry to Manly Beach which was quite nice. It was great to see the city, including the bridge, Opera House, and huge houses on the water from the boat. After laying on the beach for awhile, we toured the Opera House because we didn't get a chance to do that when we visited it before. It was stunning! The architecture was amazing and the history of it's production was fascinating. Additionally, we were able to see a couple rehearsals for productions that would occur later in the evening. We had sushi for dinner and went back to Amy's and watched another movie!

On Monday, Amy went with us to the Koala Sanctuary. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me, although I was slightly mislead by the advertisement that you could "cuddle" koalas... it is actually illegal to hold them, however we were able to hug them from the side and be "cheek to cheek!" We got some great pictures! In addition, we saw kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, many exotic birds, emus, dingos, and penguins. We concluded our time in Sydney with a lunch of Yum Cha - a style of Chinese food where servers bring carts or trays of food around to you constantly as you dine, and you choose different items to sample. It's interesting that when they see Caucasians, they immediately assume we want everything fried, so there were a lot of offers of fried dumplings, fried spring rolls, fried prawns, etc. Needless to say, we had to put in special requests for some non-fried items... Jess even tried chicken feet (while I took pictures!)

We are now in Hervey Bay (pronounced Harvey). The weather is horrible today - it's the first day it's actually poured rain since we've been here. We are just going to go to the marina and walk around in rain jackets. Maybe try some of the fresh seafood the area is known for. Tomorrow we will do a 2 day trek on Fraser Island. We'll update when we return and try to figure out a way to put up pictures.