Honeymoon Part II: AUSTRALIA
Australia is everything!! It is stunningly gorgeous with city, beach, mountains, wildlife, and everything in between. I went to Sydney for a women's conference once before and knew that I had to go back. I was so excited that Zach and I decided to go as a part II of our honeymoon! As I mentioned previously, we have several mutual friends who live in sydney and are a part of our church, Hillsong. We decided to save money and stay with our friends Gabe and Shannon for the majority of our stay in Sydney. They were so generous to allow us to crash at their cozy cottage in Balmain. It was the perfect home base for our adventures in Australia!! Not to mention, spending any amount of time with them is something we both truly loved, cherished, and really looked forward to. Starting our marriage off with spending time with a couple like these two was an incredible gift!
Even though we were sad to leave Thailand, we were so excited to start another new adventure together! We hadn't really planned out our schedule in Australia, but we knew we wanted to explore as much as possible in our 10-day stay 'down under.' We ended up doing A LOT. We borrowed a friend's car, which was an adventure in itself because we had to drive on the opposite side of the road AND car! It took a little bit of getting used to, and it was a true test of our patience with each other, but we made it. We spent a lot of time downtown Sydney at Darling Harbour, seeing the Harbour Bridge, and hanging out by the Opera House, we took a road trip to Jervis Bay, we stayed at a cute little hotel in Hunter Valley and visited several vineyards, we went surfing in Cronulla, we went to Bondi Beach and did the classic walk from Bondi to Coogee at sunrise... we seriously got a lot in! Also, Vivid Sydney just so happened to be going on while we were there, which was amazing to see! If you don't know, Vivid is an 18-day festival of light, music and ideas in downtown Sydney, lighting up everything from the Harbor Bridge to the Opera House! (Check it out here.) We got to attend Hillsong Sydney at both the hills and city campus, and we met a lot of great people. We also see friends that we hadn't seen in a while! Side note: we got lots (and lots) of coffee and candy. I swear Australia has some of the greatest candy bars I've ever had! We basically lived off of them to the point that we would skip lunch sometimes to have the chocolate bars instead- ha! We are ridiculous.
All in all, Australia was incredible and couldn't have been a more perfect part II to our honeymoon! Sydney is one of my all-time favorite cities, and I hope you all get the chance to experience it for yourself! :)
Xo- Tara
PS-- Check out 'Honeymoon Part II: Australia' in the gallery for more pics!
