We are back from our 11 days holiday to New South Wales (NSW). We decided to drive all day to get there on Good Friday, the trip took over 12 hours we left home at 4am, got stuck a bit in traffic trying to get for one side of Sydney to the other side and then from Sydney all the way the DH’s parents, even with tollways there were still a bit of traffic. We spent Easter weekend at my in-laws, they live about an hour or so north of Sydney. DH’s sister and her husband and toddler daughter also came up from Canberra to spend Easter weekend at there place. On Easter Saturday, we got invited to have lunch at DH’s brother’s place. We gave the kids (4 of them) Easter eggs and cash gifts since we haven’t seen them since Aug last year. So it was part of Christmas gift as well. Also the oldest just turned 21 late last month so we gave him $100. In total, we end up spending $253 on gifts. Easter Sunday, SIL and her husband celebrated their 1st year anniversary they went to the winery for the day while MIL looked after the little girl. We just relax a bit and helped FIL cut a tree down that has been causing issues with their plumbing, he is in mid 70’s and has hurt himself recently so DH did most of the heavy work, while FIL and I just helped cleaned it up. Luckily unlike our palm tree this tree was a lot easier to cut down it only took us less than 2 hours to get the job done. We also did some painting for him, we didn’t finish it but it at least got it started for him.

On Easter Monday we went to Sydney to celebrate my birthday, we spent two days there and stayed overnight at a fancy hotel with a great view of the Sydney Opera House from the bed. We bought a yearly pass to the Taronga Zoo, which we went on both days, it wasn’t too much out of the way to travel. We went there early before we checked in to our hotel and then we stopped there again on the way back to DH’s parents place. The zoo passes we will be able to use in our state zoos too (we got 3 here in Victoria). On the first day at the zoo we saw a baby pygmy hippopotamus (about 2 months old) and on the second day we saw a couple red pandas. And of course we saw other animals but those were my favourites at this zoo. We had a nice dinner at near Sydney Opera House and also has a great view of the Sydney Bridge and then walked back to our hotel to have cocktails at the bar there. All up my birthday celebration costs $664 including parking which was $67 for those 2 days. The zoo annual pass were $192 for both of us.

DH also got me a new kindle which I was not expecting at all since the Sydney trip was supposed to be the birthday present. On this trip I ended up finishing 3 books and have started on a couple. The long drives helped. We drove probably almost 3000 kilometres.

We went back to DH’s parents place for couple of nights and then we went camping father north of there to a place called Nelson’s Bay for couple of nights. $46 per night. This is a beautiful area - our camp site was only about 200 metres walk to the beach. In our camp sites there were a lot of wild rabbits and possums and birds of course. The possums were very friendly that DH actually ended up hand feeding a couple of them bananas. DH’s parents came by to have lunch with at our camp site on the first day, which was great to get them out of the house. On the way back to the in-laws we checked out other scenic sites, at one place we were lucky to see dolphins swimming there at least 20 of them.

We then spend another night at the in-laws and then on the 23rd we left to drive home. We stopped by at a small town called Gundagai, which is just over half way between in-laws place and our home. We camp over night by the river that cost us $25 for the camping site, fairly cheap. And then we got home and picked up our doggy from my mum’s place mid-afternoon on the 24thof Apr.

Overall cost for the Holiday/birthday:
Gas - $236.81
Food and Drinks - $416.19 (Grocery $148.84, Snacks 56.30, Restaurant/Takeaway $169.55 and Alcohol $41.50)
Souvenirs - $10.25 (Just fridge magnets)
Overall Birthday Cost – $664.00

I found that NSW is slightly more expensive that here in Melbourne. Gas for the car was around 10 cents more expensive and food is about the same. Even their zoo pass was more expensive, luckily DH thought about going online and buying it from Melbourne zoo instead, it would have cost us almost $80 more because not only it was dearer they also required and an extra $20 per ticket for first time buyers there.

The only expenses I haven’t accounted for yet are for the tolls we used to get across Sydney. I will be in the next CC bill or I think they might email at the end of the month.