Stage 4 - Coffs Harbour/Raleigh to Sydney/Rozelle = 516km, 6 1/2 hours including 1 stop
We started out today with a sad farewell to Kath and Jeff Porter and a promise to return soon on our way back home. It was easy driving into Sydney thanks to Mic’s suggestion we leave early to avoid the Friday afternoon traffic. We started out a little past 7am and made it to Sydney by 130pm. The Fur Babies were amazing travelers again! We made a short stop Off the highway at an Olivers for a bite and some coffee. It’s supposed to be a healthy food choice, but yuck the food had no flavor! We found our next AirBnB easily thanks to Miss Google Maps and happily found “The Artists’s Cottage” in Rozelle exactly as it was presented online. Check in was easy with a lock box key.
Our host left us amazing chocolates and fresh baked olive bread as a welcome gift 💝. We are starting to see the differences between AirBnb homes that are used strictly as vacation rentals and those that are truly sharing their homes with you and actually live there in between traveler visits. Chantal, The French Artist’s home was exactly that, her home. It was incredibly charming multi level vintage cottage equipped with everything we could possibly have wanted/needed including a big fenced back yard and beautiful little breakfast deck off the kitchen all perfect for Kobi and Lani.
We had never stayed in this part of Sydney before and were pleasantly surprised on how quiet, clean, and safe the neighborhood was. We had really nice neighbors and there were a million cafes, restaurants, pubs and grocery stores within easy walking distance.
There were also some great parks along the harbour that we could walk the kids too and many had off leash areas too. Lani even went swimming in the harbour preferring to swim along the side of the path we were walking on. She had a blast!! Kobi, our scary baby, is getting braver by the day and barely gets spooked anymore by the loud noises, traffic and men in high vis with hats, lol 😂.
This area of Sydney, just 4km from the city center, was pretty hilly. We choose not to ride our bikes in Sydney for obvious reasons but did run everyday. We definitely got our hill training in!!
Our main reason for stopping in Sydney was for the Scorpions/Def Leppard concert on Saturday night. We had bought tickets back in April for this concert as we love the Scorpions. We didn’t much care about Def Leppard even though they were the headliners. Just as I was telling Mic how excited I was about seeing the Scorpions again after over 20 years (Mic had never seen them and I last saw them in LA at the Greek Theatre, outdoors with Foghat and Deep Purple)
Mic reads me a post on FB from Klaus, the lead singer of Scorpions, that he is so sorry but they are cancelling their performance tonight because he has been sick and his voice is not up to the performance. I/We were devastated!! Hoping is was a hoax or maybe he would feel better, we went off to Darling Harbour to the ICC Sydney for the concert only to have confirmed the bad news :-( What to do? We asked if they were giving refunds but were told we had to contact a mirage of other ticket vendors associated with the concert and no one seemed to know for sure. We decided to go check out Def Leppard anyway. Glad we did as they put on an awesome performance!! They really rocked and brought the house down!! These guys are between 56 and 60 y/o and most still have their long rocker hair and the 60 y/o lead guitarist and the most ripped abs!! Sans hair though, lol 😝. We had amazing seats 5 rows back from the right side of the stage. You can check out Mic’s FB posts with lots of live recording of some of the concert. Still sad no Scorps but happy we still went.
Our last day we finally made it to the Zoo! Mic and I have been talking about going to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney since his first visit to Australia to see me after we met at Hawaii Ironman in 2008. Mic arrived on NYE 2008 :-) Ok, I’ve digressed down memory lane for a moment......
Anyway we walked from our cottage to the Darling St Wharf to take the ferry to Circular Quay and then onto the Zoo. We did the famous gondola ride up the hillside to the Zoo entry. We have always heard amazing things about the Zoo here but were a bit disappointed. There was a lot under construction/renovation which is apparently always the case. Overall it did not seem well kept. The routes for viewing the animals was very disjointed and did not have a flow to it, making for a lot of back tracking to see the animals you wanted. Our visit did get better as we winded our way back down the hillside to the ferry. We saw the giraffes, Pygmy hippos, tigers, sun bears, elephants and more. We definitely need to start planning that African Safari on our bucket list :-) We made it to the ferry just in time to run on for the 430pm departure.
We stopped in Balmain on the way walking home from the ferry at this cute little sidewalk cafe and had an early dinner before returning home to our Fur Babies. It’s just a really cute area with really nice people.
We packed up the next morning, went for a short run and doggy walk and waited for the morning traffic to subside before starting our journey to our next destination, Palmula Beach, NSW on the Far South Coast of NSW.
We started out today with a sad farewell to Kath and Jeff Porter and a promise to return soon on our way back home. It was easy driving into Sydney thanks to Mic’s suggestion we leave early to avoid the Friday afternoon traffic. We started out a little past 7am and made it to Sydney by 130pm. The Fur Babies were amazing travelers again! We made a short stop Off the highway at an Olivers for a bite and some coffee. It’s supposed to be a healthy food choice, but yuck the food had no flavor! We found our next AirBnB easily thanks to Miss Google Maps and happily found “The Artists’s Cottage” in Rozelle exactly as it was presented online. Check in was easy with a lock box key.
We had never stayed in this part of Sydney before and were pleasantly surprised on how quiet, clean, and safe the neighborhood was. We had really nice neighbors and there were a million cafes, restaurants, pubs and grocery stores within easy walking distance.
There were also some great parks along the harbour that we could walk the kids too and many had off leash areas too. Lani even went swimming in the harbour preferring to swim along the side of the path we were walking on. She had a blast!! Kobi, our scary baby, is getting braver by the day and barely gets spooked anymore by the loud noises, traffic and men in high vis with hats, lol 😂.
This area of Sydney, just 4km from the city center, was pretty hilly. We choose not to ride our bikes in Sydney for obvious reasons but did run everyday. We definitely got our hill training in!!
Our main reason for stopping in Sydney was for the Scorpions/Def Leppard concert on Saturday night. We had bought tickets back in April for this concert as we love the Scorpions. We didn’t much care about Def Leppard even though they were the headliners. Just as I was telling Mic how excited I was about seeing the Scorpions again after over 20 years (Mic had never seen them and I last saw them in LA at the Greek Theatre, outdoors with Foghat and Deep Purple)
Mic reads me a post on FB from Klaus, the lead singer of Scorpions, that he is so sorry but they are cancelling their performance tonight because he has been sick and his voice is not up to the performance. I/We were devastated!! Hoping is was a hoax or maybe he would feel better, we went off to Darling Harbour to the ICC Sydney for the concert only to have confirmed the bad news :-( What to do? We asked if they were giving refunds but were told we had to contact a mirage of other ticket vendors associated with the concert and no one seemed to know for sure. We decided to go check out Def Leppard anyway. Glad we did as they put on an awesome performance!! They really rocked and brought the house down!! These guys are between 56 and 60 y/o and most still have their long rocker hair and the 60 y/o lead guitarist and the most ripped abs!! Sans hair though, lol 😝. We had amazing seats 5 rows back from the right side of the stage. You can check out Mic’s FB posts with lots of live recording of some of the concert. Still sad no Scorps but happy we still went.Our last day we finally made it to the Zoo! Mic and I have been talking about going to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney since his first visit to Australia to see me after we met at Hawaii Ironman in 2008. Mic arrived on NYE 2008 :-) Ok, I’ve digressed down memory lane for a moment......
Anyway we walked from our cottage to the Darling St Wharf to take the ferry to Circular Quay and then onto the Zoo. We did the famous gondola ride up the hillside to the Zoo entry. We have always heard amazing things about the Zoo here but were a bit disappointed. There was a lot under construction/renovation which is apparently always the case. Overall it did not seem well kept. The routes for viewing the animals was very disjointed and did not have a flow to it, making for a lot of back tracking to see the animals you wanted. Our visit did get better as we winded our way back down the hillside to the ferry. We saw the giraffes, Pygmy hippos, tigers, sun bears, elephants and more. We definitely need to start planning that African Safari on our bucket list :-) We made it to the ferry just in time to run on for the 430pm departure.
We stopped in Balmain on the way walking home from the ferry at this cute little sidewalk cafe and had an early dinner before returning home to our Fur Babies. It’s just a really cute area with really nice people.
We packed up the next morning, went for a short run and doggy walk and waited for the morning traffic to subside before starting our journey to our next destination, Palmula Beach, NSW on the Far South Coast of NSW.
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