Australia the first couple days!

Saturday..
Hello all!
As many of you all know – absolute photography (me) is currently travelling Australia! I landed in Sydney yesterday at 9ish am.. after approx 26 hours of travelling from Vancouver. Sad part is I left GP Tuesday afternoon and got here FRIDAY – thanks to the international date line! CRAZY.. poof the week was gone.
We immediately left Sydney and headed to Berrima to our first quilt store (did I mention I am on a quilting tour?). This is a little historical town with totally fun stores such as pottery, antiques (the most organized antique store I have EVER seen), jams, soaps, candy, and kids stuff – as well as little cafes. We had two hours to just roam around and browse – I took some pictures of the local landscape and enjoyed some ice cream. On to Canberra from there and straight to the hotel. Mom and I walked to the grocery store and stocked up on water and some food to eat in the room. I was literally asleep by 7:30 Aussie time due to jet lag! (that’s 3:30 am GP time.. so I guess that’s ok!)
Today we went to a suburb of Canberra called Gold Creek and found many more cutesy stores, galleries, etc – and ofcourse a quilt store! I even bought fabric.
I saw some kangaroos too! About as close as some deer in the field – looking much the same from the distance cept for sitting on their bums! We then went to their parliament building – Canberra is the capital. We went on a tour there which sounds incredibly boring.. but it was great! This lady had been leading tours around for 15 years and she made it all incredibly interesting. The building is really new.. it opened in 1988 and it is beautiful (for a big building). They also had really great art inside and our tour guide made sure to specialize the tour around tapestries, quilts, etc.. This one massive painting was duplicated for their great hall.. as a tapestry – it literally weighs a ton and from across the room you cant tell its even woven. HUGE.
While outside taking pics.. I made a complete ass of myself and fell on my face.. I had decided to get mom to take a picture of me on the roof (which isn’t high and scary sounding cause the building is built mostly underground).. and I hopped up onto these concrete stool things – cept for I didn’t actually make it.. I ended up banging my knee, landing on the ground with all these old ladies around asking if I was ok – who’d a thunk that me the youngest most agile person here would be the first to fall on my face! Lol.. how embarrassing!
From the parliament building we went to the War memorial. I recommend that if Trevor or Uncle Al are ever here.. you guys should check it out.. and give yourselves all day! I spent about an hour checking it out – but all I could think was “Trevor would be here all day!”.. and then I got to the part where the actual planes were hanging and sitting and thought “Uncle Al would love this!”.. My excitement was outside – there were two weddings getting photographed.. so I snuck a few shots.. haha.. oh and I found some(possible) Australian ancestors of ours.. there were Mason’s and Cameron’s listed on the memorial – even a F. Mason! Maybe the Fred’s travel further up the ancestry line than we even know!
This evening we went up “Black Mountain” and up a tower that is like a small version of the stratosphere.. or the CN tower? We had a great view of the sunset and mom and I shared $6 worth of cookies.. seriously $3 a cookie! So much for Mom’s rule of 3 cookies at a time..lol 
Well – its now 8:30 and past my bedtime! Lol it sure takes a bit to get used to being just about an entire day ahead.
Monday..
Well! Right when I went to post my blog on Saturday night.. we had a little computer issue..
The power here is 240 volts.. and there are little “silly” switches on all the sockets that you have to turn on.. Turns out they aren’t so silly.. apparently you have to turn OFF the switch before unplugging. Mom has no recollection of this from her last two trips – but what essentially happens is it messes up your stuff.. sooo it literally killed the adapter for my laptop and unknown to me I was running on battery when I was typing Saturday’s entry. Then poof.. 2 min til the battery was dead and my blog DIDN’T get posted. We also didn’t send as many emails as we would have liked either!
Soo.. on Sunday after waking up at 4 am and not being able to get back to sleep (I felt like grandma!).. we went to this really big farmers market thing - without the farmers.. jewelry, fresh bread, photography, artists, neat clothing, etc.. then we went to a quilt store. This was my favorite quilt store so far by far. They had all the more fun and hip fabric from younger designers! I even bought some 
After the quilt store we went to their national museum – kinda boring.. but the building was HUGE and with very creative architecture.. maybe futuristic looking? Mom and I walked through there fairly quickly and then went for a walk by the lake just outside..
Back to the hotel.. and out for our first REAL supper – Italian.. it was really good. Prior to dinner Mom and I went for a walk to a trail with “nice big trees down either side that would make a good photo op, and is only a couple blocks away” (mom) – WELL.. more like 2 km.. I was literally sweating and it was to dark to take a picture once we got there!
Today we got up and drove to Mittagong. There were two quilt stores there within 3 blocks of each other.. and a computer store where I managed to buy a universal plug in for the computer. After browsing the cute but not so bountiful quilt stores we went for lunch at this “sturt” café. Sturt is a arts school – teaching things like creative woodworking, jewelry making, basket weaving, and even photoshop. They had a really nice gallery with things for sale as well. I almost bought a very cute ring..
Then we drove back into Sydney and found the hotel - it is right downtown. Mom and I walked to this “arcade” which is a MALL not a video games place (sorta like Edmonton City Center). All the stores are as expensive as “coach” and similar.. we wandered around and checked out a few places (Oakley, quicksilver, coach, and some unfamiliar named places), and then off to the foodcourt for dinner.

Tomorrow will be BUSY.. a tour of the Sydney Opera house, ferry ride over to an island to take pictures of the opera house from.. a quilt store.. a dinner cruise in the harbor.. and a visit to this lady’s house (she wrote a book about Australian quilt history).
These pics are from Saturday.. enjoy!
Miss everyone :)