Last Few Pages of the Honeymoon Chapter

It's odd to be writing a travel post from the comfort of an oversized chair in the middle of my living room, but it didn't seem right to move on to real life without a few closing words about the trip.

The food that Kenny brought back was delicious. I tried to imitate a delicious fig, cheese, and prosciutto sandwich we had at Cafe Two Ants (which, by the way, if you're ever in Sydney, you need to go there), and I think I did a pretty good job. Still room for improvement, though.

We were a little exhausted from all of the adventuring, so we spent all day (and a bit of the night) playing Pandemic Legacy. Eventually, we broke for Thai food (delicious!), and then back to it.

The next day, we woke up early to seize the day! We bussed it (~45 minutes) over to the center of town for the BRIDGE CLIMB! There was a lot of back and forth in our decision to do it. It's not a cheap activity, and we weren't sure if it was just a tourist trap. But literally everyone we talked to on the ship or in Sydney said, "Oh, you're in Sydney? Are you doing the bridge climb?"

The online reviews essentially all said the same thing: It's a great experience, but it is pricey.

What was it that helped us make the final decision?

This little piece of my childhood that I probably saw. . . 30 times(?) growing up.

You guys, I'm serious. I was a major Mary Kate and Ashley fan (literally in their fan club, when that was a thing). I would bring pictures of them to get my hair cut like them or get clothes like them, and I would watch their movies, rewind, and watch again.

And I remember watching this way back in 2000 when Our Lips Are Sealed came out, thinking, "When I go to Sydney, I'm going to do that."

And when I finally admitted that it wasn't the logical, adult part of me that wanted to the the bridge climb, but the 10 year old inside of me that's been wanting to do this for 16 years, Ken said, "I didn't know this was a childhood dream - we have to do it." What a wonderful, caring man I'm married to!!!

So we did it, and it was awesome!

Our guide was hilarious, the views were amazing, and (despite not being able to bungee jump off the bridge), it was a truly awesome experience!

After that, we went shopping on George street, then took a ferry over to Manly Beach.

It was fun to be on a beach with waves and sand again. It felt like the beaches back home, except warm. I bounced around in the waves a bit with Ken, then went in to read while Ken body surfed. It was your standard fabulous day at the beach. Bonus: neither of us got stung by the jelly fish they had warnings about.

From there, we decided to go to the O-Bar. The O-Bar is a shmamzy bar that Ken had been recommended to check out. It's on the 47th story of a super nice building that we literally tracked sand into. Ya, we're classy. In the elevator up, we tried to look a little less like beach bums (not super successfully), by holding our backpack instead of carrying it - but that's about all we could do. After that, we were at the mercy of the employees who would decide if we were allowed in or not.

My guess is because we were early (it was about 5pm), they let us in. The circular building has glass walls nearly all the way around, except for about every 15 feet there's a 3 foot pillar (you know, to hold the building up). The hostess sat us down right behind a pillar.

"Ummm, would you mind if we sit in front of a window?" I asked. "Uh - that wall is going to move," the hostess said.

Oh ya - duh. That's the reason we came to the O-Bar. The whole bar rotates. I felt a little silly for forgetting the main reason we wanted to check out the bar, but oh well. The wall would move.

And it did! And it was great.

The view was fantastic. All the views were fantastic. It takes about an hour and forty five minutes to do the full circle, and we were there for about thirty minutes. Enough to get all the harbor views and and drink two fancy-pants drinks. Time and money well spent, I'd say.

It was very kind of them to let us in. We returned the kindness by wiping the sand off our seats as we left. . . That's like the same, right?

Then we went on a great quest to find Bills again! They were so good for breakfast, we wanted them to be our last meal in Australia. Especially since I am now the proud owner of one of their cookbooks, and I wanted to scope out what their dinner tastes like. So we bussed it over to a different, closer bills location. Then it took a lot of walking (some in the wrong direction - my fault) to finally find it. Then it was closed.

I felt bad, because I knew Ken was hungry and I had let us down with my bills plan. I threw a fit, and he had a lot of grace with me, and then an employee came to open the door. She said (in broken English) that bills isn't open for dinner, then she went into the building. This was extremely confusing to me, because I had checked the hours online. So we just stood there for awhile, trying to figure out what to do. When she came out, she suggested (again, in broken English, so we were kind of guessing), that we go to one of the other bills.

Huh, so this bills must not be open for dinner. Strange, but okay.

Riding on the hope that the other bills was open for dinner, we started walking.

And walking, and walking, and walking.

And eventually, we arrived at bills. Famished. And ecstatic that it was, in fact, open for dinner.

Huzzah!

So we ate lots of delicious food, then cabbed it home. Played one game of Pandemic, felt humorously tired for how early it was, and went to sleep.

In the morning, we woke up and I tried my hand at an Australian breke. Not bad, if I do say so myself. Especially given that my goal was to use up leftovers.

Then we packed up for the great journey home!

The trip back was fairly painless. A twelve hour flight is uncomfortable no matter what, but we had an aisle seat and plenty of good movies and I was able to sleep a few broken hours, so that was good. Poor Ken, though, didn't sleep at all.

But we made it!

That sign in the back says "Welcome to San Francisco"

And immigration and customs were manageable, and we eventually found our Uber driver on the departures floor (did you know they're not allowed to come to the arrivals floor at SFO?), and we thought we were almost home!

Except.

Except when we got home, there was a man painting our deck bright red. Our house has one way in (including potential windows to shimmy through), so this man painting the deck was extremely inconvenient. This was something that was supposed be done the first week of January, and we essentially said, "We don't care. As long as it's done before we get home and move in on February 12th, it's fine with us."

So. . . we couldn't get into our apartment. And we had all our stuff. But it worked out well that the painter guy was there, because they had also changed the locks on our apartment (we didn't know this was happening) and he had the new keys. Had he not been there, we would have been locked out. 

So we locked all our bags in Ken's car, and drove to lunch.

Lunch was yummy, but we still had two hours until the deck would be save to walk on.

It was at this moment I had my brilliant idea. A movie! I asked Ken, and he was down. Without telling him what movie we were seeing, I bought tickets and drove us to the theater. He was stoked when he saw what it was.

The movie had us laughing the whole time. Just what we needed! I highly recommend it (except if violence or crude humor is unpleasant). Oh my gosh, I'm smiling just thinking about it.

Then we (finally!) went home, and we spent the night eating pizza and playing Pandemic Legacy then went to sleep. 

On Saturday - admittedly exhausted - we had a low key day. We played a lot of Pandemic Legacy (WHICH WE BEAT AT THE LEGENDARY ACHIEVEMENT LEVEL!!!!), opened a few wedding presents, had Eric's Deli for dinner, and watched a lot of Downton Abbey (only just staring season 4 - no spoilers, please). I'm trying to think of if we did anything else. . . but that may honestly be it. I think it's fair for us to have a lazy day, though. There had been a lot going on. 

Then it was Sunday. What better way to end our honeymoon than with Valentine's Day. We woke up and immediately opened presents. I got Ken and awesome beer opener (you'll see it when you come over - it's awesome), and he spoiled me with opal jewelry from Australia. Then, since we were in the presents mood, we opened our remaining wedding presents. Totally, completely, totally spoiled. Thank you if you contributed!!!

Then, we spent the majority of the rest of the day setting up the house. We took a run to Target, I worked on setting up the kitchen, and Ken set to work on assembling the bed. This took the majority of the day until it was time for dinner, and Ken took us out to Ethiopian food near our house. Super delicious. Neither of us finished our meal, which was a bit shocking considering how much we were eating on the ship. . . there must be something in that cruise water. . .

Then we came up, finished off an episode of Downton, and called it a night. 

Then this morning, we woke up, I made breakfast while Ken showered, and then he headed off to work. 

I've been left unsupervised to continue in the effort of "apartment + boxes = home". Lots and lots of boxes, and still more to be moved over from both of our previous houses. But I'm up to the challenge! And I'm so thankful that Ken has given me the opportunity to not need to work right now so I can make this my priority. He's a really, really great man.

Okay, so this is it. I'm signing off on the honeymoon travels. I'm so curious and excited to see when the next time I break out this blog will be. . . I truly have no idea what the next adventure will be, but it's fun knowing who it will be with!

Being married is the best. This is the best. My life is the best. :-) :-) :-)

All smiles!!!

Until then!

:-) :-) :-)