Around Christchurch...

After our thrilling experience of skydiving we toured the cathedral in the center of town. It was interesting to hear all the history around the church and how it was the actual center of town & it was planed that way. Our tour guide was quite interesting & he actually said “oh my god” in the church. Johnny picked up on that & found it to be funny. They had beautiful stained glass windows and the church was gorgeous.

SKYDIVING!

Johnny and I got our chance to sky dive the next morning of our trip. Because we already went through all the pre-dive information we went right up in the plane when we got there. The 30 minute plane ride was the worse part f it all. Johnny got in the plane first meaning I was jumping first. As we climbed in the plane I could see their altitude dials going up and I started to worry. I wasn’t terrified though until the door opened on the side of the plane. I didn’t even have time to think and we were out of the plane. The free fall was by far the best part of it all. It didn’t seem like 120mph (although they said that’s how fast we were going). It was awesome & I was so scared! I would do it again though…I don’t really know what would make someone want to jump out of a perfectly good plane, but we did it & it was AWESOME!

Oh, and we landed in a field of cows. For some reason, I thought that was hilarious!

New Zealand...City Tour

After a long day of travels the family arrived at our hotel in Christchurch, New Zealand. The following day we took a “city tour” around Christchurch. Although, here a city tour does not mean you’re only touring the actual city though. A “city” here includes the suburbs as well. We were only in the actual city for about 15 minutes of the 2 ½ hour tour. It was interesting to see all the different land around Christchurch and look out over the city. We walked through a park with beautiful roses. We then went to a small tour on the ocean & Johnny took a picture of the bee on the flower. There were also these odd green/purple flowers that felt like rubberish wax. We thought they were interesting.

We attempted to go skydiving but the wind picked up after we were suited up & weren’t able to go. My anxiety had already sky rocketed so I was a wreck & then they come out to tell us we won’t be going up.

Around Sydney & Manly Beach

In route to the look out points in Sydney we walked through the Sydney Botanic Gardens. We saw so many gorgeous flowers. I had too many pictures to add all of them. We also saw things that looked bats but they called them “flying foxes.” I don’t know what their exact name was, but they were defiantly bats. We also took the fairy over to Manly Beach and had dinner. We had pizza & it ended up being pretty good. Then, we headed back on the ferry into the city…The following day we were off to New Zealand.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

That afternoon the family went on our bridge climb of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I’m not a huge fan of heights so I was a little shaken up before climbing. Johnny wasn’t feeling well so it was a little concerning (but he made it ok…) We made it to the top and back with everyone safe. On our descend went down four ladders between the train tracks of the bridge...I was already shaken up from the climb and heights and I had two different trains go by. I don’t know how my legs were still on the ladder they were shaking so bad!

Opera House

Day two in Sydney started out with a tour of the Opera House where we saw three of the five theatres there. Everything was gorgeous and neatly laid out. The architect of the opera house passed away that day (weird…I know). We had a quick tour and then traveled to the Markets in the Rocks. These markets are set up on the weekends in the first settled area of Sydney. The Rocks represents were the convicts and first people came over from Britain. The Markets were really neat…selling about everything you could possibly imagine.

Sydney

After our travels in Cairns we went down to Sydney for the weekend. After arriving we went to the Barracks Museum to check out the history side of things. John and I laid in the hammocks the convicts stayed in and saw all different artifacts recovered.

These are random photos of our hotel lighting in the lobby. I thought the lights were neat.