Mum and Dad arrived first thing on 15th, and after a bit of trauma getting to the airport we made it back to our hotel, which you can almost see in the photo! Right on the harbour - amazing location and great views.

We've had a great few days, luckily the weather has really perked up, which has allowed Mum and Dad to fall completely in love with the city, and me to decide it's not such a bad place after all - it's a little unfair to a harbour city like this to arrive straight after Sydney, as nowhere really compares! Anyway, we've been up the Skytower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, taken a harbour cruise - which was great fun and took us past the bungee jumpers on (or off?!) the bridge, and might have whetted my appetite for a bit of a bungee, something I swore I'd never do! - and spent a few hours in the suburb of Devonport, just across the bay. Devonport's gorgeous, a chocolate-box-style town, with amazing views across the harbour from the old fort on top of a hill. Blue-green water, blue sky and green islands as far as the eye can see! We also took a trip out to Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic World, which is an aquarium as well as a sort of museum of the early Antarctic expeditions and was a lot of fun - we got to see penguins very close up, some HUGE stingrays and walk through an underwater tunnel with 360 views of the aquarium - the first in the world.

Today we're heading up north to the Bay of Islands, where I get to do more diving (yay!) and we all get a bit of seaside therapy.