Seeing Sydney (Part 1)

On our first night in Sydney, my parents offered to take the boys and get them into bed while Jay, Andrew and I went for a walk to see the Opera House and Harbour Bridge at night.

The boys ended up staying in their rooms for the rest of the trip. This was such a huge blessing for Andrew and I because it meant there was no one waking us up at 6am every morning, pulling the warm blankets off of us and demanding that we get up!

Our original plan was to walk through the Botanic Gardens to get to Circular Quay but by the time we got to the area, the gardens were closed so we walked along to Mrs. Macquarie's Point instead. 

In the morning, we went back to the same spot we had been the night before, this time with my parents and the boys. 

We walked along the water, and through the Royal Botanic Gardens. Of the three times I've been to Sydney, this is the first time I've walked through the gardens.

One of the good things about traveling with other people is that we have more opportunities to take family photos. 

We spent a lot of time watching the cockatoos. They were everywhere and my sister downloaded this app to help with research on the sulphur-crested cockatoos. Every time we found cockatoos with a wing tag, we had to report the colour and number. The researchers use this information to monitor movement and breeding patterns, and habitat preferences.

Nathan thought it was a ton of fun. Here he is reporting some cockatoos. When you report a cockatoo, the app gives you a bit of information on that bird. Some of them had very interesting names.

Two family photos in one day! This has to be some sort of record for us.

We exited the gardens right by the Opera House. It was a really warm day so it was nice to get out of the sun a bit when we went inside for a break.

Not bad for a candid panorama.

After walking all morning and into the afternoon, we barely made it to Chinatown in time for dim sum at Marigold. We had exactly one hour before they closed so we all dug in. Once we had filled our bellies, we strolled around Chinatown a little more before making the trek back to our hotel.

It's been a while since we've used the carrier with Caleb but since we couldn't fit the stroller into our car, we decided to bring the Ergo with us just in case he wanted to be carried. It's a good thing we had it. 

We realized that it takes a lot longer for 7 people to explore a city together, with people stopping to look at different things and taking pictures along the way, but wandering through a city by foot is still a fantastic way to a bit of everything.