This trip is a campaign in conjunction with Go Mighty, Tourism Australia and Air New Zealand. The concept was for us to choose things on our life lists that we’d always wanted to do and then we would go to Australia and make them happen, read about it here on Go Mighty! 

I don’t even know where to start with this post so I guess I’ll start off with this: Australia is amazing.

We returned home two weeks ago and all the experiences from our 10 days there have been swirling around in my head. We had a really great trip and feel super lucky we got to go. We started out at San Francisco where Paul and I took an Air New Zealand flight to Sydney. Flying Air New Zealand was a treat. During one meal Paul leaned over to me in disbelief and said, “this is the first time I’ve ever eaten airline food and it tasted good.” The plane was new and state of the art. It had a huge catalogue of tv and movies and plugs for your phone and laptop. I have never flown on an airline this nice before. When I mentioned to people in Australia we had flown with Air New Zealand everyone commented that it was their favorite airline. Apparently its a thing. The long flight was surprisingly easy, that might be because I can sleep just about anywhere but it felt quicker than a trip to Europe because of the distance and time of day.

We arrived in Sydney first and after checking into the fancy Langham Hotel and wasted no time to go shopping in Surrey Hills. We knew there were other activities planned so we decided to go exploring while we had a chance. I stopped in at Gorman and wanted to buy everything there, I’ll definitely be ordering from them online. Then we went to some thrift stores and walked all the way down Crown Street stopping into all the boutiques. We finished off the day with some ice cream at Messina Gelato.

The next morning we were jet lagged and woke up really early so we took advantage and jumped in a taxi that took us all the way to the Gap to watch the sunrise. The Gap are these gorgeous cliffs that look over the Pacific ocean. That morning was one of my favorite things we did. After a little hike around we seven we saw a Kookaburra! We took a bus back into town (the ferry wasn’t running that early) and had breakfast at Bills which several people had told us about. We loved it. After breakfast we headed over to The Society Inc. to meet with Sibella Court for shopping and lunch in Balmoral. (I tell the whole store over here on Go Mighty.) It was really fun. Afterwards we checked out some of the fancy shops in Woollahra before meeting up with Maybelle Imasa for dinner at Mr. Wong.

The next day after breakfast we stopped by Bourke Street Bakery before heading toward the beach. We did the famous Bronte to Bondi walk which lived up to the hype. I just have to say that the beaches in Australia are ridiculously beautiful. The sand is white and fine and the water beautiful. (I wrote about it right here on Go Mighty.) Sydney has such a great beach culture while still balancing it out with a cosmopolitan city. We hung out at Bondi for a while and then grabbed a taxi back to the Sydney Opera House for a tour. It was really impressive (Read about the experience here.) Afterwards we grabbed lunch and then wandered over to downtown to explore some shops before crashing early.

The next morning we woke up and took a Ferry over to Manly beach. We loved being out on the harbor and being able to see everything from a different point of view. Afterwards we made it over to Rose Bay where we took a Seaplane ride (see here, it was amazing.) We went up to the northern beaches and ate lunch at Jonah’s. It was a really cool experience. We stopped by the Mud store because I really wanted to see it in person, I even got a few pieces to start a collection. It was about 3pm and we knew it was our last few hours in Sydney. We both agreed we wanted more beach time so we headed back to Bondi for a few more hours in the sun.

Saturday morning we headed to the airport for a quick flight to Melbourne. We arrived at our hotel called The Cullen. It was an art series hotel that was beautiful and modern. I had heard a lot about the shops and artists in Melbourne so I was excited to check them out. (See my post on Go Mighty about it here.) After shopping we had a beautiful evening at a rooftop bar called Naked for Satan. It was really fun just hanging out overlooking the city.

The next morning we got up early to go Hot Air Ballooning over Melbourne. I loved it! We got back and spent some time preparing for the party the next day at West Elm (I’ll talk about this in another post.) We fit in a trip to the famous Chapel Street Bazaar (it was like a giant antique store) and another afternoon in Fitzroy with Amy before we bid farewell to Australia and caught our Air New Zealand flight back to San Francisco.