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We've been back in the US for about ten days and I wanted to take a moment to record, on this blog, what we appreciated about life in Sydney. We had such an amazing two years living there and feel grateful for every experience we had -- from day to day things like going to work and grocery shopping to making wonderful new friends and seeing beautiful places around Australia. As I think about the things we'll miss there's definitely a trend - it's not the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, but the little things like...

-Our friends

-Good coffee - at almost every cafe!

-The climate (especially warm evenings)

-The proximity of incredible beaches to the city (can you get that anywhere else in the world? I don't think so..)

-The hibiscus flowers that always seemed to be in bloom on our street

-No tipping!

-Tuesday trivia

-Really fresh and healthy food at cafes

-Delicious Thai food everywhere

-Cheap (usually) air travel

-Crazy cool bird calls (especially the kookaburra) and seeing parrots in the trees 

-Usage of the word 'mate'

-Outdoor movie theatres, especially the St. George Open Air Cinema - that is magical

-BYO

-Meat pies

-AFL (I actually liked watching that sport!)

-Friendly Aussie cab drivers 

-Work/life balance

-Coopers beer

-Botanic gardens in every city (seeminlgy)

-Seeing kangaroos - exciting every time!

Well, we won't miss the spiders, the shopping/prices and lack of wifi, but it's all outweighed by the positive I'd say. Thanks Sydney for such a wonderful life experience!

As part of an amazing month of travel, we went to Cairns to get certified to dive, Port Douglas and Margaret River. We feel so lucky to have seen these beautiful places..

We're both excited to be PADI certified, although we unfortunately didn't have the best experience on the reef. It was very stormy, the visibility was only about five meters (due to the cyclone I think) and Mike got a sinus cold right before the trip which made it painful for him to dive. But we made it through and passed the course, woohoo! We then went up to Port Douglas for a few days to relax. It was pretty rainy, but we got one beautiful day for driving up to Cape Tribulation and seeing the rainforest, Daintree River, beaches etc. The exotic fruit tasting was especially memorable! I would definitely recommend going up that direction in the winter though..given we were there during the "off" season many of the restaurants were closed certain days of the week and it just sort of felt like a ghost town. We were happy with the hotel we stayed at called Martinique on Marcrossan.

We're stoked that we made it to Western Australia. It seems like such a remote place..a place where we may not find ourselves ever again (but who knows). We flew into Perth, but pretty much bypassed the city and drove to Cottesloe Beach. We only made it for sunset since our flight had been delayed five hours, but it was very cool and a novelty to see the sun setting directly over the ocean after two years on Australia's east coast! Sculptures by the Sea was also going on and we actually saw some of the same sculptures from the Bondi event.

Then we drove to Fremantle and had dinner at Little Creatures. I'd definitely recommend this -- such a cool brewery/restaurant and space. The Little Creatures Pale Ale is delish! We spent the rest of the time in Margaret River, which is a stunning area..to have beautiful beaches so close to wonderful wineries seems like something you can't get many places in the world. We stayed at a cottage where we could relax and watch the kangaroos at dusk. I also loved seeing the different birds..tons of black cockatoos!

Well, I hope it's okay to take a honeymoon before the wedding because we just DID!

As we have about three weeks left in Australia (gasp!) we're working on taking care of our bucket list. One of the main things we'd been wanting to do was a sailing trip in the Whitsundays. My friend Chrissy was visiting from SF and since she and Mike know how to sail we figured it was the perfect time to have a bareboat adventure. Being low season and post cyclone Yasi I was a bit worried about the weather, but we got lucky..mostly sun with some clouds and several rain showers. And we did lots of swimming sans stinger suits with no jellyfish stings, phew.

We visited Hook Island, Hayman Island, Whitsunday Island, Lindeman Island and Hamilton Island - definitely covered some ground! We saw and heard some amazing wildlife including dolphins, turtles, rays, a dugong, fish and squid (one of which jumped onto our boat). Many of the islands had bush walks - we even got to see Aboriginal drawings during one hike. There was barely any boat traffic so our moorings and anchorages were so peaceful.. We got lots of use out of the BBQ and downed many a Corona. It was an unforgettable trip and we're already thinking about doing another bareboat charter at some point in the future.

We went through Whitsunday Escape and were really happy with the boat and the whole experience, would highly recommend them. 

Oh yeah, and we cuddled a BABY koala! His name was Elvis and he was adorable. We did this at the Wilderness Park on Hamilton Island (the one Oprah visited a few months ago). So worth it.

We headed up to Byron Bay the other weekend and had such a great time.. what an awesome beach town. I would highly recommend where we stayed - The Atlantic Guesthouses. It's a lovely set of cottages and an Airstream (where we stayed one night!) in a lush tropical garden that's near the beach and town centre. The most recently renovated building is called Coconut Cottage and it's so beautifully decorated..very beachy, clean and laid back Byron style. 

We took a surf lesson and hiked to the Cape Byron lighthouse, plus did lots of swimming and beach walks. The beaches are just stunning..one after another. Being only a 45 minute flight north of Sydney I was surprised at how much warmer the water was and how tropical it all felt. We even equated it to a small Hawaiian town..similar feel. 

Great food as well. We really enjoyed dinner at St. Elmo and breakfast at the Byron Beach Cafe, which has an unbeatable view!

LOVE Byron!

Let me start out by saying that in addition to Laura I also don't like to rant on this blog.  There are plenty of small inconveniences here that would be easy to complain about, but for every one there is generally an equal and opposite quality to balance it out.  That being said, there is one thing that has bothered me from day one, and it is the tolerance to littering.

Below is a picture of one of our neighborhood garbage piles snapped this morning.  These seem to appear every couple of weeks and generally start out with an abandoned piece of ikea furniture or a mattress.  Once this happens it seems to be fair game for all the neighbors to start dumping their junk in the pile along with passers by tossing out food and other random trash.  Eventually it becomes a public health hazard and at that point I assume the local council is obligated to deal with it.  As you can see, this rubbish pile has a nice assortment of couches, luggage, old bike parts, a vacuum cleaner, an old tv, and around 5 gallons of used motor oil (seriously people?).

It's not just dumping in neighborhoods that's the problem, what's even worse is the number of people who leave trash behind on trains, buses, parks, and beaches.  There have been numerous times where I've witnessed people blatantly leaving or tossing trash in public places with a crowd around and I've been the only one to say something.  This is not something I've ever seen in the past.  Maybe it's the places I've lived before, but most places I've been you would expect to see someone publicly shamed into picking up their garbage.  Below is a picture I took at Bondi on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks back.  Someone at least had the decency to gather some trash together, but still left it on the beach.  It's disguisting to see what the beach looks like sometimes after a busy weekend.

Don't get me wrong, Australia is still a pristine and incredibly beautiful place to live.  The water quality near Sydney is unbelievable for a large city, and there's almost no pollution to speak of.  It just makes me sad to see people disrespecting it in such an obvious way.