our very last day in australia went a little like this:

  • nicolaus and i took a trip into the city to go to the jewish museum. it was an incredible experience and i also loved exploring darlinghurst road (which i think is the loveliest street name). we saw some of the coolest street art i had ever seen!
  • next, we headed over to the highest tower in sydney where we met up with my family. we mailed our friend, tanner, who's serving an lds mission in honduras a postcard from the "highest working post office in the southern hemisphere." then we went on skywalk! you get to walk around the tower on a glass ledge and enjoy one spectacular view (and, in my case, a few anxiety attacks from a fear of heights).
  • the photo snapping ended at about this point. mostly because we were all too interested in eating some of the best food of our entire trip. it was our last big family dinner and we went to some fancy three course meal on darling harbour. i had the most delicious bruschetta, salt & pepper calamari, and white chocolate panna cotta. 
  • on the way back to oupa's house, we stopped at a $2 japanese store. i had never experienced so much cuteness in one place before. haha i'm not exaggerating. and i loved every second of it.
  • then we made a trip to the grocery store to stock up on (i'm almost ashamed to admit it) $60 worth of sweets and tim tams. australian sweets puts our waxy excuse for chocolate to shame and in all honesty i am thrilled to have such a solid supply of deliciousness.
  • the rest of the evening was mostly spent packing and hanging out with oupa (grandpa in afrikaans). he even let us go through his enormous/amazing library and pick a few of our favorites to bring home with us! we got some real treasures including hardback copies of the pearl and sherlock holmes stories. oupa is one of the kindest, most generous & intelligent people i have ever known and i already miss him so much.

anyways, so after two and a half weeks spent in one of my favorite places in the world, a solid 25 hours of traveling and 13 glorious hours sleeping in my own bed, i am home and (somewhat) ready to tackle real life again. 
hope you all had a wonderful holiday break :)