Australia, Wednesday Nov 28, 2012

Well this has been the longest day as a matter of fact it has been two days for us.  Hope that it slows down soon.  We started out Wednesday by having breakfast at Gloria Jean’s and tried to see off the rest of our crew but they had already left by 8 for the airport.  We then finished our packing and stored our luggage at the hotel in anticipation for our evening flight out of Sydney.  I had wanted to see the St. Mary’s cathedral so that was our goal before we left.  It was a beautiful cathedral built in the European style.  Unfortunately we could not take pictures inside of all the wonderful stained glass.  It had about four altars beside the main altar at the center of the church.  I lit two candles one for each of our parents and said my typical prayers as I do in all the old churches.  We even took a picture in front of the cathedral next to their Christmas tree.  After exploring the cathedral we went to the Australian museum which is a natural history museum and includes aboriginal artifacts and art.  That was a full day and we went back to the hotel to eat and wait for our shuttle which was arriving at 3:30.  Once we got to the airport we had several hours to wait so we ate dinner prior to boarding the plane and we did some internet chatting. 

Our second Wednesday began when we arrived at Honolulu airport early in the morning Wednesday again; It was a bit like grounds hog day.  We had another 8 hours to kill before flying to Dallas.  We rented a car and went for a drive to the north shore. We watched the turtles and the surfers at the Haleiwa Beach.  We then went to the Waimea valley and presumably the falls. We did a 60 minute walk to the falls and back unfortunately there were no falls today because there had been no rain for several days.  There was a trickle of water coming from the rocks and the pool was full but no swimming allowed because water was stagnant.  The river was also bone dry.  It seems that we have been following the travels of Captain Cook all trip because he was here in the Waimea valley as well as NZ and OZ.  We slowly made our way back to the airport following our Garmin guide.  She was quite good at pointing out points of interest and filling us in on the attraction of each sight.  Now we sit and wait for the plane and since there is no wifi I resort to finishing my blog which has gone undone for a few days, very busy days.