Somehow or other, don’t ask me how, I managed to find myself the best au pair family going. Not only are they all lush, but one set of grandparents own a farm and the others have a share in a yacht!
As mentioned in a previous post, The Parentals had come to visit! We met in Melbourne, where they spent five days exploring before flying to New Zealand to spend 10 days hiking the south island. They then returned to Australia, but this time to Sydney where I am based with my au pair family, who had very kindly offered to take The Parentals and I out for a trip around Sydney Harbour one day that they were here!
Which is exactly what we did!
Now, once again, as this is something family specific I cannot give links or prices regarding doing this yourself as this is definitely not something open and available to the public! What I can say is that if you get a chance to tour Sydney Harbour by boat then do it! It’s such a great way to see Sydney and one I can’t recommend enough!
Our day began by all meeting at the yacht in Cremorne at 9.45am so we could be perfectly poised to get through the 10.15am bridge. This is a commonly used commuter bridge to get in and out of central Sydney, but has a height restriction, so those boats that are a bit to tall have to wait for it to part at certain times. In a way it’s a bit like Tower Bridge in London, only a little less grand! Once through we passed many of Sydney’s notorious beaches such as Balmoral, sailed passed the Sydney Opera House and then went under the Harbour Bridge.
My au pair family had gone to town with snacks, morning tea and lunch so while we made our way to the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge we feasted on all sorts of homemade goodies, dips and crackers whilst admiring the views the harbour had to offer. We did have the slight threat of rain all morning, but thankfully managed to avoid the worst of it! It did mean our pictures were a little cloudy and grey, but this just made them a bit more atmospheric don’t you think?!
The sun did actually grace us with its presence just in time for lunch, so we parked (technical term!) ourselves just by Taronga Zoo and all indulged in yummy salads, sandwiches, crisps and even some white wine whilst getting to know each other a bit more and thoroughly enjoying each others company. In typically British style The Parentals and I then agreed we were very happy the sun hadn’t been out for most of the morning as it was now a bit too warm! There’s just no pleasing us, right?!
After lunch we made our way back to our original starting point, through the not-so-Tower-Bridge bridge once more and went our separate ways for the rest of the day. It had turned into a gloriously sunny day, so The Parentals and I took a walk over Harbour Bridge to The Rocks where we found scrummy ice creams and had a good old catch up! 🙂
The Naive Traveller 