We are off to Santiago today after a wonderful stay in Sydney, yesterday we did Pilates and then went swimming at the Olympic pool before walking across Sydney harbour bridge. We have now swum underneath it, taken boats underneath, climbed it, taken the train across and driven across so there is nothing left for us to do! We took Lucy out for dinner down town at a Greek restaurant called Medusa which was excellent and #1 on Tripadvisor. We then took the ferry ba...

We spent today at the beach in Manly with great surf. The beach has strong rip tides so swimming is at one end only which is where all the seaweed ends shredded by the waves. When I got home I found large amounts in my swimming trunks!

A busy day today started with an early morning walk to Cremone point through the woodland walk way to great views. We then went to Darling Harbour and went to the maritime museum which includes a submarine and a warship. Life on board a submarine suits midgets with the maximum height anywhere being less than 6 feet. The day finished at the Olympic Pool with Sue and Lucy doing aqua aerobics and me doing lengths in the outside pool. We crawled home and slept well!

We spent the day at Palm Bay which is an hours drive north of Sydney on the coast. Palm Bay is a peninsula which sticks out into the ocean, one side of which is a huge tranquil bay and the other side has the ocean rollers. I went body surfing in the ocean, which was great fun but the water gets into every orifice! Certainly water was coming out of my sinuses several hours later. Lunch was in a popular waterside cafe with a huge queue, we ended up sharing our tab...

The three of us drove up to the Blue Mountains yesterday, their name comes from the blue haze generated by the eucalyptus trees. It was cooler in the mountains which are about 50 miles west of Sydney. We hiked along various trails to Wentworth falls, Echo point and the three sisters, enjoying the spectacular views of the large valleys and the sandstone and basalt rock faces. At the end of the afternoon we stopped for tea and a thunderstorm passed overhead obscuri...