We weren’t in any great rush to leave on Thursday morning, so we took our time packing up after saying goodbye to everyone at Felix and Erica’s house. We got away around 10am (I think??) after packing the car to the absolute MAX, and headed towards the Blue Mountains to catch up with Kelly! We drove through Bathurst and simply HAD to do a lap of the race track. It was actually so much fun! We needed another type of pit stop and found an awesome playground at Lithgow that we ended up staying at for a play.

We then made our way to a great playground in Blackheath to meet Kelly – it was freezing cold but the sun was shining and the kids were happy to have a run-around while Marty and Quinn went and grabbed us coffees and snacks, and Kelly and I caught up. We then went and joined the masses of tourists at The Three Sisters for some photos and breath-taking views.

We then made our way down the mountain to Sydney, on our way to the AirBNB we had booked. We arrived at 5pm to a pile of rubbish, including a dirty nappy, sitting next to the bins outside of the house. And it didn’t get any better from there. We tried to be positive and make the most of it, but it really was awful. The floors were sticky, everything was either dodgy or dirty or both, the toilet blocked, the carpets were grotty… To make a very long story short, after communicating with the manager of the property who insisted the place was basically “good enough for the price”, Marty and I decided to pack everything back into the car and leave. I made some calls and found two hotel rooms in Potts Point that were hopefully better than where we were (not likely to be worse!) and to the kids’ relief, we got the heck out of there before any of us contracted anything nasty!! We arrived completely exhausted, but relieved to have somewhere nice enough to stay. And the view was lovely!

We woke up and, after sending emails to AirBNB HQ with accompanying photos of the house, we were on our way for a day of sight-seeing! It was a most glorious day and we headed out to walk to the Opera house, then jumped on a ferry and headed around to Darling Harbour for playground fun!

Unfortunately Quinn thought she was stepping onto a bunch of bark under a swing which turned out to be a huge puddle, so her brand new shoes got absolutely drenched. And while she was taking shoes and socks off, she got stung by a bee! Not ideal! Marty found a nearby Big W and took a run to pick out some new (very cute) white sneakers and socks. Once we regrouped, we walked to Queen Vic Plaza for some amazing sushi, then headed up to the top of Centre Point Tower for some stunning views of the city.

We were all pretty exhausted by this point, so we sat down for milkshakes and coffee and afternoon tea, then slowly made our way to the train station for the much-anticipated ride on the double-decker trains they have in Sydney! Julius was thrilled 🙂 We got off at Kings Cross and thankfully it was only a short walk back to the Hotel where Marty’s younger brother, wife and three kids had arrived to have dinner with us. We went out for amazing pizza and brought home a lot of leftovers. Thomas and Quinn had started to feel a bit unwell with headaches and sore throat during the day, so we were dosing them up on Panadol and lots of water and hoped it didn’t get worse.

I might leave the last day of travel for its own blog post. One to go!