It was a great stay in Mudgee with our anniversary hot-air ballooning outing, some stunning walks in amazing scenery and great drives - not to forget the awesome shopping and coming home with a fair load of homemade country preserves, antique finds, new jewellery and whatnot. But jeez it was great to be home too. No dog responsibilities for one thing, no one to look after except us. Petite apartment vs massive house - and our super little neighbourhood - though pretty sure no one missed us. First order of business was a run to the post office as a couple of things sold in eBay during our time away. With that taken care of and unpacking done it was back to our old haunts.

We had a couple of outstanding outings during the second half of our stay in Sydney (with a bit more dosh, we'd be out every night - but even with rush tickets we had to reign it in and think of this year's probably excursion to the northern hemisphere). We were fortunate to finally be picked in a ballot for $20 tickets for a night at the opera at, of course, the Sydney Opera House. The show was Hamlet - more so known as a play, albeit one neither of us had seen. It was a stunning production, great seats, music - everything. We bought sushi and had a fabulous and early dinner at home, dressed up in honour of the occasion and even forsook shank's pony, taking a car to Circular Quay. We had sunset drinks at the waters edge at Whalebridge - honestly the strangest places have happy hours - $10 cocktails! With that view! There were very few patrons and we saw one woman ordering off the regular cocktail menu… hmmm. Cost of lifestyle crisis obviously not holding her back. Drinks were lovely and the sun setting behind the bridge was gorgeous - especially with a real chill in the air (a great excuse to wear one of my Parisian vintage leather coats) - then we strolled to the Opera House for the show.

It was certainly the season of 'Ham-' for us at least. The last time the musical extravaganza Hamilton was in Sydney I religiously entered us in the weekly lottery for $45 tickets - and just as religiously did not win. I could have fallen off my chair in shock when we got the email saying we'd finally won the opportunity for cheap tix and hustled to make the transaction before the system changed its mind. We were thoroughly overexcited with anticipation for the week and a half until the show. The day dawned, we had a late breakfast and decided not to risk a rideshare with all the road closures due to the City to Surf fun run. It wasn't a long walk to one of our local bus services that ended up being the ultimate budget option - free due to the massive route changes - and it dropped us in front of the Lyric Theatre at Star City.

What can I say, front row seats, outstanding view, any closer and we would have been in the band. One of the best musicals we've ever been to and undoubtedly the best seats we've ever had to anything, ever. We were on a high at the end of the show and no, it wasn't overhyped - the production deserves every award its been given. We visited our Pyrmont favourite, Jumbo Thai, and took chicken laksa and noodles home for dinner. Glorious walk home in the crisp air and sunshine and fittingly, banners advertising Hamilton were snapping in the stiff breeze as we crossed the bridge in Darling harbour and finally, finally, we can say we've seen it!

The Sydney section of the metro eventually opened and whilst we didn't go out of our way to try it on its first day, we did head out one Friday to test it out - the stations alone are temples to light, design and public transport. The trains were fabulous and we even ventured beyond the harbour bridge for an outing to Crows Nest and back to Barangaroo. All on a Friday of course - we love the weekend fare cap so much. Other outings were taking the ferry out to Watsons Bay and having lunch at a Thai restaurant - so good we did it twice. We even took the bus from Watsons over to Bondi Beach - really enjoying our weekly excursions.

So what's next for us? We reached out on the off chance to the owner we sat for in Paris back in April. Words to the effect of it's going to be a long, hot summer in Sydney, any chance you'll be heading away from September onwards? 'Lo and behold, fortune favours the bold, don't ask don't get, etc and she said if we fancied almost 4 weeks from late September, she'd love to see us again. Happy days. We'd been hoping to head north over summer but there was no point booking a flight to any old place without accommodation lined up.

With Paris in our sights, obviously we immediately hit the websites of every airline programme we have miles with to see if we could get ourselves up to Paris for the princely sum of taxes only. Our go-to programme with AA was not showing much joy (and we wouldn't have had enough points anyway), Qantas was showing barely any joy but with extortionate points demands and horrendous taxes on top - so we're saving those points for another Round the World adventure in the next year or so. Velocity points with Virgin? Only have enough points for one of us to go - so hanging on to those points for a bit longer. Lifemiles with Avianca - yes to flights being available, but only in Economy - quelle horreur! There's a high chance neither of us would survive the trip. Finally we checked with our long held (bought them 12 years ago when we had some dosh) Alaska airmiles. Why? because we can have a stopover - large or small and then carry on to our final destination. Practically speaking, this means we don't have to find two flights with a 'less than 24 hour transit' between them - which was why it was so difficult to get anything on our other programmes. So we initially booked the best we could get - up to Colombo on the 14th, spend time in Sri Lanka then onwards and upwards to Paris on the 27th - not ideal as our owner was heading off on the 27th - all a bit 'close to the wind' for everyones liking. But - booked anyway, paid our taxes and started researching Sri Lanka's business class product - all good, no surprises and obviously not Qatar… but only Qatar is Qatar afterall. Once we had the best we could get option booked, I put two daily calendar reminders in to check for availability to Paris on 25 September - it only took 10 days for 2 seats to come available - then it got all 'Hunger Games' and I went into the booking, changed the final leg from the 27th to the 25th, luckily snaffling the only two available seats. We had the confirmations through within 5 minutes - Go Alaska Airlines! Then we looked at the dosh-balance and even on a super cheap tour to keep us amused for the 10 days between our outgoing leg and our final leg… looked at DFAT who were warning of diabolical (possible) disruptions in the lead up to the Sri Lankan presidential elections and figured, let's delay our departure and just have a two day stopover - especially since changing the flights had proved surprisingly easy. We were back to keeping an eye on the flights and finally availability on the Sydney-Colombo flight appeared for 22 September and we had the Colombo to Paris leg locked in for the 25th, we called it a day, drew a line under the trip and booked a couple of nights at a hotel with full board next to the beach. All good. We could have made the whole trip in one go with only a 4 hour transit in Colombo, but we find a stopover really helps with jet lag - especially with two 11 hour+ flights. Then we kept packing - a long and arduous journey in itself. We packed light and took summer and winter options last time - didn't work - ended up buying proper winter coats all season to keep warm in Ireland and came back to Sydney with 2 checked bags each. This time we cut our summer gear down to just enough to look presentable for a couple of days at our hotel and on the off chance it's still a bit summery in Paris when we arrive. This time around most of our luggage is winter gear - primarily our big shearlings and also a leather jacket each for the Autumnal vibe in Paris.

The time of departure approached, we had a final run up to the Blue Mountains on a Friday for our last proper Chinese meal until we return. And a blast of wintry coldness which served well to remind us of why we focussed our packing on winter woollies. With everything done, Australian mobile service suspended, Irish service recharged, key holder bloke paid up til next May, everyone who needed to know we were going told, and with nerves, nervy, we laid our heads down for our final night at home for a while. The apartment has never looked so clean and tidy! Off to the airport mañana - let the adventures begin once more.

(Photo: Whalebridge Happy Hour at Circular Quay - on our way to Hamlet at the Opera House.)