Visiting Australia and New Zealand was on my bucket list of places to travel for quite some time, and my husband and I thought our 40th wedding anniversary in 2020 would be a great excuse to go! We wanted to travel in December to enjoy their summer, so had to decide to go either six months before or after our anniversary. We were so fortunate that we chose to go December 2019 since the Covid pandemic started early 2020!<\/p>\nWe started the Australian part of our trip in Brisbane, then got a flight north to Cairns where we rented a car. We drove up the coast to Port Douglas where we stayed for five days. That was a great base location from where we were able to visit Daintree National Park, drive up the coast as far as Cape Tribulation, and take a boat trip to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef. We then flew to New Zealand to enjoy an 11-day cruise and ended up in Sydney where we spent our last couple of days.\n
– Click on any picture to enlarge –<\/p>\n\t
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n\t
We so totally enjoyed our time in Brisbane! We did not have a car, but Brisbane is such a great walking town plus there is a water ferry that you can hop on and off. We stayed only a few minutes walk from Eagle Street Pier which has lots of restaurants, shops and galleries, and is where I got my Eeny-Meeney-Greeny each morning!<\/p>\n
By following the River Walk, we saw the Maritime Museum, a mini rain forest, salt and fresh water pools, crossed bridges and walked through a botanical garden.<\/p>\n
The city was lit up beautifully at night. We saw some amazing trees, and birds were abundant (magpies everywhere)!<\/p>\n