Kimberley Coast Cruise of Australia, Part 1

 Our first day was a sea day so while we were busy and had fun, I will say no more.  Well I will point out to you that we will not visit a city or town until we get to Broome which is the end of the journey.  You cannot drive to any of the places we are going.  You can get relatively close to some of them, but never where we will be.  The next day was our first "port" day.  We went to the opening for King George River and its twin waterfalls.  

While it is remote, Seabourn keeps its reputation up and serves a glass of champagne when we get to the falls.

Kakadu National Park, "Top End" Australia

Lots of legs reveal Dad protecting these chicks, Comb Crested Jacana, aka Lotusbird

 It is easy to forget how big Australia is. Our flight from Sydney to Darwin will take around 5 hours so similiar to crossing the US from the East to the West Coasts.  Once we land, we get our stuff and our rental car and Jeff practices driving on the wrong side of the road for a minute and we are off.  We are ultimately heading for the Kakadu National Park, but want to pick up some provisions first so we are stopping at a shopping mall/center with a grocery store.  We are heading out to a big land of nothingness and it is hot like a southern US summer day so humid too.  The Aussies recommend 3 liters of water per person per day, we won't do that much but we do buy water and some fruit and granola bars for snacks.  Now we are off.  Off down a long straight 2 lane road for 3 hours till we hit the large thriving metropolis of Jabiru.

Sydney Australia

 

We landed in Sydney early in the morning after the airline crew was sure we knew we absolutely could not bring all sorts of food into the country and had us fill out declaration forms.  Once we were off the plane we wandered through parts of the airport until we hit customs and out into the main airport.  We are here for basically a long weekend and unfortunately it is supposed to be a rainy one.  We took a cab into the city, and I saw a sign about road closures due to Vivid Sydney, so I asked the cab driver what it was.  Seems we are here at the start of a big modern arts festival.  There will be lighting up of buildings and special performances and fireworks on select nights.  We are now looking forward to the lights show even though it is now raining hard when we get to our hotel.

World Figure Skating Championship in Boston

As many of you know, Cierra and I often go to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.  A couple of years ago it was announced that the World Figure Skating Championships would be held in Boston in 2025.  We immediately agreed we were going.  We usually go to the championship weekend of the US event but splurged and bought tickets for the whole event which meant I spent most of my time Wednesday through Sunday at the TD Garden Arena in Boston.  Since it was a full week this time, Jeff came along too and shared the 2nd ticket with Cierra while she worked some days.