australia-day 4.

These next couple days were so jam packed full of awesomeness, I get a little giddy looking at the pictures and remembering all the fun I had.

Except this first part, when I had to go to see the dentist, who also happens to be my brother in law. This is one of the 3 offices he works at. It’s about 5 minutes from his house, so really convenient for them.

This is Wes’s office space. Each dentist has their own room and the walls, chairs and tools are one color so it doesn’t get confusing for the poor people that work or go there. Purple goes with purple.

Since Wes always knew that he wanted to be a purple marshmallow when he grew up, so he picked the purple space without any hesitation. ;)

Nicola getting her teeth checked, they’re so low key here in Aussie, the dentists wear Ghost Buster shirts as uniforms.

Just kidding, it was his day off, and I think I recall him saying something about not taking pictures of him in his Ghostbusters shirt… hmmm.

After a quick check we were on our way back home with appointments set for next week to fill a couple of cavities.

Did I mention that the dentist also bought us Krispy Kreme donuts to eat. Guess that’s how he stays in business. Also since I LOVE KK donuts and haven’t had one in years!

After we got home we popped out to the Mall to pick up a few things before we headed into the City for a couple days.

The mall we went to was an outdoor mall. With some places having no covering at all. It was nice to be able to walk outside in the sunshine and shop at Target and all the other cool stores.

Trying on fascinators at Target.

When we got back from the mall, it was time to head into the city. Which I think is so fancy to say. “Just going into the city for a few days.”

Our generous hosts had come up with this fantastic plan that we would stay at the Shangri-La hotel and go to the Sydney Opera House that night.

We knew that this hotel was posh, because we sufficiently worried ourselves to death the night before looking it up online. And we were a little nervous, since we had an executive check in at the Horizon Club. The instructions on the website told us to go up to the 30th floor and announce our arrival to the hotel staff.

Let me tell you, I think that if I showed up on a white stallion with real gold hair I still wouldn’t have been fancy enough for this place.

IT WAS AWESOME!! So I just pretended that I had a gazillion dollars and stuck my nose in the air and announced our arrival.

After we got our keys, we headed down to our room. It was through a double set of doors, and it even had it’s own doorbell.

Once inside we were like a bunch of kids, so giddy, excited and happy to be there. The only difference is that we didn’t tear the place apart and jump on the beds like our kids would have.

The view from our living room.

Running across the bottom of the TV’s was a personalized message.

Heading into the bedroom.

Our suite was on a corner, so the windows wrapped all the way around. We had a perfect view of the bridge and the Opera House.

The suite also had 2 bathrooms (one of them was looked bigger than my kitchen at home!) with a shower, tub and make-up area. And again wall to wall windows.

It was such a fantastic room. Like a little slice of luxury tucked away just for us.

After we got acquainted with the room we headed back up to the Horizon club for tea time and canapés. (fancy desserts and stuff) I wished I had taken a picture of the club, because it was gorgeous. Like a 5 story room with grand ceilings, fancy tables and a view of downtown Sydney to die for! We had access to unlimited pop (glass bottles chilling in a glass cooler) fancy food, and a wait staff.

After we hung out there for a bit, we headed back down to the suite to get ready for the Opera that night.

After a hilarious attempt to get a picture of the 3 of us together, which involved stacking books and garbage cans to get the camera up high enough.

We finally settled for a reflective mirror picture,

And then the fun posing really began!

So. Much. FUN!

Wes had told us it was about a 10 minute walk to the Opera House, so we assumed it would probably be more like 20. We left early, got directions from the Hotel Staff and headed off in our pretty clothes and pretty shoes to the Opera.

20 minutes later when we all agreed we were officially lost; we unintentionally took the scenic route to get there, which involved about 40 minutes of walking around downtown Sydney. When we were about 5 blocks away from the Opera House I couldn’t take it anymore. Our feet had bleeding blisters, toe cramps and swelling beyond the point of return.

So I took my shoes off, and walked barefoot around downtown Sydney, Amanda took hers off too. At least I wasn’t alone. Nicola would have taken hers off, but she was afraid she wouldn't get them back on again. haha!

Once at the Opera House we took a few pictures and then headed off to eat dinner.

Our restaurant of choice, GuyLian, Belgian Chocolate Café.

And we ate waffles with ice cream, fresh fruit and GuyLian chocolate dipping sauce. Heaven, that’s what that was.

After dinner we hobbled back to the Opera (1 minute walk away) and settled down to watch the Magic Flute. It was incredible. Our seats were right up close and center and it’s just an experience you can’t explain.

A real life Opera. So fantastic!

After the show we called a cab to get up back to the hotel, lesson learned.

At the hotel we stopped to grab some drinks from the Horizon Club and once we got back to our room saw that they had turn down service.

We took a picture of our feet, but it really doesn’t do it any justice, but we all had sores and blisters.

Even though we desperately wanted chocolate, we couldn’t stand the thought of walking around looking for a convenience store, and we sure weren’t going to pay $9 for a bar of chocolate from the mini fridge in the room. So we headed to bed, we had another big day in the city ahead of us tomorrow.

Comments

[Val Bailey]

Did you know that the bridge in Sydney, the one that you can see from the window in the hotel room, is the exact replica of our bridge here in Newcastle England. Our bridge was built first being finished in 1928 and spans the River Tyne.

[Amanda]

Great post... you leave out nothing! We knew one day we'd be laughing about the sore feet thing. And... I'm close to laughing :)

[Lynn]

Best post ever! ; ) What a glorious posh night. So fun!! {Minus the sore feet. Ouch! Who's feet are on the left? I think I see worse sore shoe marks on her feet the most. Ouch. Ouch.}