Last days in Australia

We spent our last days in Australia where we started - in Sydney. There's a lot of Christmas decorations and festivities through the city since it's coming up fast. It's strange to listen to a choir singing Christmas carols in the summer, when it's 30C outside and we're searching for shade. We explored parts of the city we hadn't seen when we first came. We saw "flying-foxes" which are Australia's largest bats. They come out at dusk and are so BIG, 3 ft wing span and weight up to 1kg, but they are gorgeous and, being fruit bats, no one is bothered by them flying around. On Saturday evening we went to an outdoor Christmas concert and fireworks at Darling Harbor. Sunday we went to the Sydney Opera House to hear the Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir perform Handel's Messiah (one of our favorites). It was very powerful to hear 600 voices sing together, especially Handel's Hallelujah chorus. The Opera House is as beautiful inside as it is outside. Today, our last day, we visited the Blue Mountains. It's a 2 hr train ride from Sydney and well worth the trip (saw wild kangaroos during the train ride). The mountains get their name from the eucalyptus oil that is released in the air creating a blue haze. We saw the 3 sisters (rock formations important in Aboriginal mythology), the Katoomba Falls and we walked through the rainforest. We saw lyrebirds (see David Attenborough's clip on the lyrebird, you won't believe the sounds it can me mimic https://youtu.be/VjE0Kdfos4Y?feature=shared).
Tomorrow we leave Australia and fly to Fiji.Read more