I did most of my growing up in Minnesota, the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" they like to call it. However, come winter time no one was certainly taking any boats out on the lakes (maybe cars, but that's a whole other story).
Welcome to Sydney. We've taken two boat rides since winter officially started here. Both were a spectacular example of just how amazingly beautiful this city is. The first was a dinner cruise Steve and I took (sans Emma & Morgan!) to see the Vivid light display.
Vivid is an annual three week outdoor light festival that takes place all over the city. While the majority of the lights are close to the heavily touristed area of Circular Quay and downtown Sydney, in recent years the lights have spread to suburbs of the city as well. The festival was started in 2009 and last year reportedly drew over 1.5 million visitors to the city and obviously significantly contributed to the economy.
The Opera House lights were constantly changing.
Unfortunately the weekend we had booked cruise tickets for was one that was hit by a substantial rain storm. Fortunately, the rain obliged us for a couple hours while we were on the boat. However, unbeknownst to us at the time, a lot of the lights were actually turned off or shut down as a result. So while our experience was not near as impressive as we expected, I still can't complain as we had a Saturday date on a boat in the Sydney harbour. You don't need much anything extra to add to the already incredible beauty of the city from the view of a boat.
Luna Park lit up beautifully.
While we would have liked to gone back down to the city with Emma and Morgan to walk around some of the light displays at another time, we simply couldn't find the time, and were a bit turned off by how busy we heard it was on the weekends. We'll make sure to plan accordingly next year and not let the kids miss out.
The perfect angle to capture these two icons of Sydney in the same photo.
We even squeezed in dessert at the Lindt cafe following the cruise.
Our second winter boat ride was this past weekend in celebration of American Father's Day (Australian Father's Day is actually in September). I had booked a surprise whale watching cruise for Steve, but for all of us to go on together. Steve and I went on a cruise several years ago in Hawaii with my parents, but the boat failed to spot any whales as it was quite early in the season. So this year I jumped at the opportunity and knew we could time it right to be much closer to peak season.
Three tired, semi-happy faces at the early morning start.
And to our delight we were much more successful this go around! We used Oz Whale Watching (and a groupon as I have come to learn it seems like every tourist attraction runs groupon deals in this city, you just have to watch and time it right) and were very happy with our experience. We spotted one very early just on the fringe of the harbour and while we stayed for a few minutes to look at it the boat was very careful to move on as they didn't want to scare it and risk that it swam deeper into the harbour and would be unable to make it's way out. But from there it didn't take long for the boat to locate 4 or 5 others once we got out into the ocean and we were able to stay with a male & female pair for quite awhile.
Pictures don't do these beautiful creatures justice...
View of the city skyline as we re-entered the harbour.
It was beautiful to watch how majestic and enormous these animals really are. And it was so much fun to watch Emma's delight in spotting them too. Not to mention we were happy to report there was no sea sickness experienced by our family, a couple others on our boat were not so lucky despite relatively calm waves.
I certainly feel spoiled living in a city that has so many things to offer. While I occasionally find it difficult to live in such a big, heavily touristed city, there are also many days I find many benefits and enjoyment from it as well.
The whales put on a great show in front of a beautiful landscape.
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