I read in an article that the best thing to do to help with jet lag is to get "earthed" within 30 minutes or something of when you land. So we took Carina to Bondi beach as soon as she landed. It was cloudy and chilly so not the ideal beach experience. Nevertheless it was a nice intro to Australia complete with a bacon and egg roll.
Her second day we went to Narabeen Lake to go kayaking with friends including Rachael and David Laugery as well as Michael & Erika Barnett. Carina and I shared a kayak and we put everyones dry stuff including phones and books in our dry bag. As we headed off Carina and I were really struggling to steer and were starting to fall behind. Then we started to take in water. I looked behind me and Carina was basically sitting in the water. Naturally a few seconds later we flipped over with Carina trying to hold her phone in the air. The rest of the group helped us flip it back over and we had to back to shore. Unfortunately, some books got wet in the "dry" bag and my phone took some time before it was working properly again. We finished off the day with some awesome meat pies and an amazing lookout.
The following night we went to our favourite Chinese restaurant with some friends. Chinese is great with a large group as you can get a round table which makes it easy to converse with everyone and share dishes.
Later we had the opportunity to go kayaking again with the Barnett's. We bought a rack for Matt's car so we could take two Kayaks to join the Barnett's and some others kayaking in the harbour to see the fireworks behind the harbour bridge. It was an AMAZING experience! We all had our own kayaks, but Matt's was a small one specifically designed for rivers. Basically Matt had to do two times the work to be able to maneuver it and any time there was a current his kayak would spin. Although we all had a good experience overall, Matt missed the best set of fireworks at midnight. (Carina still hasn't sent me the pics from that night)
The following day Carina and I visited the botanical gardens in Sydney. I found a nice little place to sit that led to us getting eaten by mosquitos.
Saturday was quite eventful. We spent the majority of the day at Featherdale Wildlife Park. Apparently it was a popular idea as there were tons of people there. I thought it to be the best place where Carina could pet a koala and a kangaroo.
We had a surprise as we got back to the car. There was a female pit bull that had clearly recently had puppies and followed Matt straight into the car. We couldn't find the owner so we took the dog to the nearest pound only to find it closed. The next closest animal shelter was a bit of a drive, but we were glad we found a place that could check her microchip and help her get home.
That night we decided to go to a local restaurant called Ribs and Rumps. The ribs are supposedly amazing so we tried just an appetizer of short ribs to share. They literally melted in your mouth. Unfortunately we discovered later that the normal ribs weren't as tasty as the appetiser.
Monday and Tuesday I worked. Unfortunately for Carina, the weather was quite rainy so she stayed at home reading her books. Tuesday was awesome though because Matt and I got Permanent Residency! After lots of money and time all of our work finally paid off! This was such a blessing!
Carina and I spent the next few days exploring and shopping. We had brunch, toured the city, visited the opera house and more. By this time Carina had already tried Max Brenner and San Churro, two popular chocolate places, so we decided to add a third by visiting the Lindt Cafe.
Friday we went to Taronga Zoo and also tried out the Wild Ropes course! It was a lot of fun to try the different obstacles. I'd like to do the other courses that we hadn't tried another time. The zoo was nice and Carina enjoyed the bird show the most. She arranged with one of the workers to get a sneak peak behind the scenes. Mostly it was just so she could see the facilites and possibly apply some of the same ideas with the birds she works with back home. I didn't know that falconry is illegal here in Australia so I don't think Carina would ever move here.
We had dinner at Italian on the Rocks which is a nice little outdoor restaurant in the city. That night we also picked up the digeridoo that we had reserved the previous day. My cousin really wanted an authentic digeridoo so we found the best shop that sells instruments instead of decorations. We even got the guy there to play the one he helped us pick.
For Carina's last day we went to the Blue Mountains. We did the Wentworth falls hike in a loop where we took the long way back alongside the cliffs. It was nice but there was definitely a lot of people at all the main lookouts and we didn't actually see any really good wildlife. The views were great at least.
Carina left the following morning. We had a blast while she was here and we made some really good memories.
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