Happy New Year!!

Hello and Happy New Year!

While most of you have just celebrated NYE, we are concluding New Year's Day here in Sydney.  

On New Year's Eve we spent our day exploring the Chinese Gardens in Darling Harbor and hanging out at our favorite spot, Darling Quarter.  The adirondack chairs in the grass are great for people watching... for hours.  We also decided to purchase tickets for the NYE party at the Hard Rock Cafe at Darling Harbor.  It was definitely a great decision!  We got to the restaurant around 7pm unsure of what to expect and were pleasantly surprised- it was all so organized!  The first part of our ticket was for a 3-course meal and open bar at the Hard Rock and a front row view of the 9pm firework show in the harbor.  The food was amazing.  We both ordered the exact same:  salad, salmon, and apple cobbler.  At 10pm the Hard Rock transformed from a restaurant to a nightclub.  There were a ton of people there and so many bars there was no wait for a drink.  We were also really surprised by the number of people willingly drinking Smirnoff Ice and our only complaint so far has to be the amount of people who smoke... it was really prevalent on NYE and disgusting.  We thought we were well adjusted to the time but around 11pm we were getting very tired.  Obviously, we pulled it off and brought in the new year on the balcony facing the harbor and awesome firework show!

We spent New Year's day at the beach soaking up the sun and being amazed by the killer waves.  I've never seen so many lifeguards actually having to pay attention and often going out to actually save people.  We also got to watch a lot of people legitimately surfing, which was awesome.  The beach had to be closed a couple times because the waves were so rough and people weren't listening when the lifeguards told them to not go past waist-deep water.  The nice thing about the beach was that there was an area that was naturally blocked off from the waves by big rocks and there was even a swimming pool off the ocean as well.  The water is really cold so naturally I made it ankle-deep for about 30 seconds and that was good enough.  The sun has us pretty wiped out so hopefully we'll sleep later than 7am but I doubt it!

Here are some highlights of the past 48 hours:

Daily food journal: Iced coffee with ice cream on top, banana and Nutella crepes, and eggs on toast... YUM. (p.s. these were not all eaten in one sitting!)

         

Selfie in front of the Dragon Friendship wall at the Chinese Gardens

New Year's Eve!

The swimming pool in the ocean...

An artsy picture I took of a girl about to go surfing...

And this guy, who, from our angle, looked like he had no clothes on... (he did)

Hope everyone is liking our blog so far!  If you are reading we'd really love it if you comment on this post and let us know that way we know who we're talking to!!

Also, here's another video of a few of the things we've done the past 2 days!!

Happy New Year!

Molly