Today we said goodbye to downtown Sydney and headed for the suburbs. Our friends, Ian & Wendy arrived just after 09:00 a.m. to pick us up from the hotel. They were fantastic tour guides, they whisked us back and forth to a number of places before we stopped for lunch in Manly Bay. The "club" concept is strong here in Australia, whether it be a sailing club, surf club, sports club or whatever, it was very, very nice. We had to "sign in" to the local yacht cl...

We had an amazing day and covered so much ground. Again we started off early today. We needed to get on the HOHO bus before 11:00 a.m. because that's when our 24 hour ticket expired. We made it. We headed downtown to Circular Quay as a starting point. I just needed to touch the Opera House at Bennelong Point (Architect Louis Kahn) and climb the 72 stairs up to the massive sails. Since the time this opened in 1973 this has always been an icon for me - there are ...

I thought this day would never come for me. I'm 62 and I'm just now getting to Australia. Many years ago I worked for a company, TNT - Thomas Nationwide Transport based in Sydney. We used to get copies of the monthly newsletter and it was always a dream of mine to get here one day. Well that day has happened. We schlepped our bags off the Volendam this morning at 8:30. Actually very reasonable disembarkation, no lines, plenty of taxi's. We had him take us direct...