Final Day in Sydney

Although Kelly was up early for a 7:30 breakfast meeting, I got a much needed sleep in. Kelly even brought me some breakfast up to the room.
This mornings Companion program was The Rocks Walking Tour. The Rocks is a historical area very near our hotel which is actually the area where Sydney was first inhabited by the Europeans. Many of the first people who arrived here were actually convicts from England. At the time England had no room, so they were sent to Australia. The convicts were sentenced to work at developing Sydney into a colony. With hard work, their sentence was pardoned or reduced and then many contributed to the development of the city as architects, woodworkers, developers of the banking system, as well as other areas of expertise. Today, if one can trace their ancestry back to the First Fleet of convicts, it is quite prestigious. However, back in the day it was not. Our tour ended with lunch at Sydney’s oldest hotel - The Lord Nelson. Quite a drawn out lunch, but with a bunch of women, there was plenty of conversation. I sat with people from Cypress, Dubai, Auckland, and Charlotte, NC.

The Praxity conference concluded with a fun night beach party. We all were to dress on Aussie beach wear. We took the ferry across the harbour to an amusement park where we had drinks, dinner and a dance. One interesting that they do here for organized dinners is “ alternate drop”. They have 2 appetizers ( which they call entrees) and 2 main courses and they alternate drop the servings around the table. The same goes for the main course. So you end up trading with your neighbor if you don’t like what you were given.Read more