Back From Vacation

Hey Everyone,

We just got back from a week on vacation (or in Mere's case, a typical week) with Mere's mom and aunt.

We spent a couple of days in the Great Barrier Reef on Hamilton Island where we got to snorkel and scuba dive. The second part of the week we drove (without dying) to Hunter Valley which is the wine country in New South Wales. I'll post about these this weekend with a bunch of photos.

Before we left, Mere took time out of her busy schedule to play tour guide and show her mom and aunt around Sydney. They got on one of those hop on hop off buses that take you around different parts of the city and you can explore on foot and just jump on the next bus. They easily saw more of the city in 3 hours than we have in our 4-5 months living here.

We spent a day at the Taronga Zoo, which is right across the harbor from Circular Quay.

You can see the opera house behind the Giraffe's head.

The zoo is located in a suburb of Sydney called Mosman, which is Mere's mom's maiden name, so naturally we spent some time walking around. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a T-shirt shop for Mere's mom since Mosman is a pretty expensive upscale suburb with only boutique fashion shops. We did find a place where Mere fit in: