Travelog for: Berlin Bear

Hello!

Don't you know?? I've just been chosen to take part in ToyVoyagers Project and travel around the world!!! I'm happy and proud! To tell the truth I've already travelled a little - I was born in Berlin (Germany) and then came to Moscow (Russia). So I hope it wouldn't be very difficult for me to make other journeys. I'm already looking forvard for them!

And I'm very glad that I have this Travelog, cause I always wanted to have a diary, but I didn't know what to white there.. There was not many things in my life that are worth writing about.. But now everything has changed!!!

In the house where I live there are many other toys - they are my best friends, but I hope to find much more friends all over the world - this is one of my Missions, you see.

The other Missions.. Well, the thing is I am very curious: I want to see everyting I can and visit everything I can (that is why I wrote aboute continents and countries.. European - cause Europe is my native land). When I was small I heard a song:
The bear has gone to the mountains
The bear has gone to the mountains
The bear has gone to the mountains
To see what he could see

I want to do that too!!!

And Scotland.. Well, I think it is very beautiful country, I've read much about it

So, I think it's enough for the first post. Hope to meet you all some day!

And look! It's me on the foto! In my home - The Bookcase - with my favourite books))

Good night to you all! Hm.. It's almost night here))

Good morning! It's morning here where we are
I just write to show you my new Travel Tag! Kristl has just created it in photoshop She spent 2 hours (!!)
Here it is. Do you like it? Is it nice?

Well my journey is a bit delayed.. I decided to wait for Éireannach who travels to Vienna to ChristinaB and go to the post office with her. Hope that we'lldo it this Thursday. I'm looking forward for it!

By the way in Éireannach's Travelog there is a foto where we're together

Hi, it's Kristl here. Berlin asked me to post a foto of him, Éireannach and Snegovik. They leaved their home yesterday and here is the photo - they're prepared and wil start their journey in a couple of minutes!

Well I've arrived! It seems I might have been at the post office for a day or 2 before Bonnie and her mum came and got me, but that's ok, I was feeling very jet lagged and was enjoying a nice nap when they picked me up.

Bonnie's mum needed to charge her batteries so she could take some happy snaps of me and guess what?

..........

well .. have you guessed yet???

..........

ha ha .. no silly, Pamps arrived today! Bonnie took me with her to check the post office as she was hoping Pamps would be here before he had to sit in the post office all alone all weekend, and there he was, in all his moosey glory!

I can't stay and chat now, we're off to have some Sao biccies with Vegitmite on them, i'm told it's an Aussie thing and that i just have to try it ... it looks like tar   

I've had a pretty lazy time of it lately, but now that school holidays have begun it seems a trip or 2 is on the cards for us 

during the last week of school, chook, bonnie's 6yo sister, had a couple of things happening at school, and she invited us to come along.

On the tuesday we went and helped the yr1's do their reading, I was in charge of the books, Bonnie was in charge of the cards and Pamps was in charge of the stamps, the kids had a ball chatting with us and showing us the ropes

Afterwards we went to "mums" friends house for a little farewell morning tea for bonnie, we got to play with the other kids and then we had a ride in the big yellow giraffe!

On the wednesday we were invited to attend Dinosaur Day at chooks classroom, it was very exciting and very scary! we saw sooo many dinosaurs, all the kids had to design their own and then make it out of clay, there were some very very good dinosaurs!

The "Jackosaurus" is chooks dinosaur!

On the thursday, Dee took us for a walk down to the river front to see the giant Platypus and giant Frog - Tiddalik .. it was very exciting! We also stopped and climbed a giant tree, it was super windy so we had to be really careful too, i ended up getting stuck not very far up, thankfully, so Dee kindly helped me down again. Then wewatched the ducks swim lazily by and we almost got a pic of a blue tongued lizard but just as Dee snapped the pic the little critter took a run for it and she missed it

for the click disabled 

   

Hi
I've arrived safely in Sydney.

Here I was when I arrived. Luckily Pamplemoose and I have gotten to know each other quite well, so it wasn't a problem to share a ride!


Our host took us outside to enjoy the beautiful weather. It is spring here - but the weather goes from beautiful to wet and rainy very quickly and there have been lots of thunder storms.
Pamplemoose and I made use of the new decking and furniture to relax and get ready for our upcoming sightseeing expeditions.




See how beautiful and green everything is? Bec used have this pot plant in her flat, but she says she has black thumbs, so her mum has to look after it for her now.

Tonight we went to see Damien Leith in concert at Star City. Unfortunately Mario couldn't come with us as he was too big to fit in our host's bag!
Damien Leith won Australian Idol last year and recently won an ARIA (Australian Record Industry Award) for most record sales in the last 12 months. My host's sister is a big fan and talked my host into going to the concert with her. We had a lot of fun and even the support band was really good too.

Here we are outside the Casino. There are a lot of water falls out the front.




Across from the Casino is Pyrmont Bay. In the distance we could see the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The white shell type thing to the left of the bay is a floating stage. There were many of these around the Harbour during the Sydney Olympics for live performances and screening of important events.



And here is the City skyline. We meant to come back after the show to get a pic of the night skyline, but it was raining too heavily - and you know how bears are about getting their fur wet! The tall, skinny tower is Sydney Tower which has a observation deck and revolving restaurant.

We made a Sunday drive through the Royal National Park today.

The Royal National Park was established in 1879 and is the world's second oldest national park - after Yellowstone in the USA. In July 2006, this park was added to the National Heritage List, which are places with outstanding natural, Indigenous or historic heritage value to Australia.


We spent a lot of time driving along the road as we were headed to Bundeena, which is 23km in from the highway. We saw lots of native plants and trees.




We crossed the Audley Weir (which has a tendency to flood after heavy rains, but the sky was clear, so we knew we'd be ok getting back out!)


The road was so windy too. All those tight bends!




I thought the cyclists we passed were very brave - the road is very narrow!


At times it felt like we were never going to get there! The road just kept going on and on and on!


But then we came over a bend and I could see water. My hosts and travel guides had told me I could play on the beach at Bundeena, so I knew we must be getting close! (The excitement was a little too much for me!)

Bundeena is a tiny beach side village in the Royal National Park. It is quite isolated even though it is right on the edge of the city. You can only access it by the long, winding drive we took or by a ferry service from Cronulla. Sometimes it is cut off by flooding at Audley, bushfires in the National Park or bad weather that makes it impossible for the ferry to run.

The beach is very beautiful and a nice place to spend a Sunday afternoon relaxing.

PampleMoose, Mario and I had a lot of fun on the beach before having a late lunch and heading back 'home'


Don't you think this looks like the perfect place to live?


Check out the view from the ferry wharf!
up the river:

back to the beach:


Before we could go home, we just hadto experience life in a gum tree in honour of one of our hosts.


I was also intrigued by this tap. How do you get the water out of it with no handle?

My host explained that due to the water restrictions with the drought in Australia most taps in public places have had their handles removed so that people can't waste water.

Either the heat got to me (it was close to 30degree C) or I was just tired, but I found it hard to stay awake on the trip home!


Luckily, my host offered to share her watermelon, strawberry & apple juice, so that helped to perk me back up!

(Even if both of us are not sure we really enjoyed the flavour!)

Today is the first Tuesday in November, which means that it is Melbourne Cup Day!
Melbourne Cup Day is Australia's most famous Tuesday. At 3.00 pm AEST, on the first Tuesday in November, Australians everywhere stop for one of the world's most famous horse races - the Melbourne Cup.

It is called "The Race That Stops a Nation" and even those who don't usually bet try their luck with a small wager or entry into a 'sweep' - a lottery in which each ticket-holder is matched with a randomly drawn horse. (Our host had a small win in the $1 sweep at work, but doesn't know how much she's won yet!)

Us ToyVoyagers decided to get in on the action - one problem though, we had no money  so we just had to pick a horse to barrack for. I chose Purple Moon (#12).



Then it was time for the race to start. It was so exciting!




And, guess what! 
My horse came 2nd! I was so excited!!

Today I visited Nan Tien Temple at Wollongong with my host, her mum and cousins.
It was about a 1 hour drive down the coast but I enjoyed taking in the scenery. A lot of it is the same Royal National Park we visited last weekend. I also enjoyed the nice sunny day after a week of heavy rain! I tried very hard to stay upright for the whole trip this time. Didn’t want to make a bad impression on my hosts!


Our first stop was Sublime Point to take it the view of where we'd be going from the lookout.


Our eventual destination (for lunch) is on the 4th peninsula you can see in this photo. On a clearer day you get a much better view of the lighthouse on the point, but today was still a little hazy from the poor weather! Look at the view - you can see why they call it "Sublime"


The lookout had these really cool Morton Bay fig trees. The boys we were travelling with had the idea to climb them. I decided to join them. I really like this tree climbing thing!


Look at this pretty flower. It is an Australian native called a Grevillia. They don't have much of a fragrance, but birds enjoy eating the nectar the grevillia's produce.


Here I am at Nan Tien Temple near Wollongong.




"Nan Tien" in Chinese, literally means "Paradise of the South". This is the biggest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. It also has the largest terracotta tile roof of any building in the southern hemisphere. This is the "Great Hero Hall" which is the largest of the two shrines. We went inside and enjoyed the sense of peace that you can’t help but feel here.


Look at the size of the bell. The monks have to climb a ladder to ring it.


There are a lot of Buddhist statues around the beautiful gardens.
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It is such a nice place to just sit and relax and take in the natural surroundings (if you can ignore the sounds of the cars whizzing by on the highway!!)


Did I mention that they have a motel and convention centre if you want to stay and learn all about Buddhism?

It was getting late in the day and we were all hungry so we went into Wollongong to get fish and chips for lunch and watch the water.


Luckily, being so late in the afternoon (almost 3:30!) the fish and chip shop was not as busy as normal and we could get seats right out front (not a normal occurrence on such a nice day!)


Look at those seagulls. Would you believe that one of them had the audacity to steal a piece of fish directly out the hands of Bec's mum right when we all weren't looking!?!
That building at the end of the pier used to be a fish and chip co-op but is now an expensive seafood restaurant. Behind it is the lighthouse on Flagstaff Point Cassiopeia visited when she came to Wollongong with Bec & Kalli


Following lunch it was time to head home. We chose to take the older, more scenic route rather than the same expressway we'd travelled down on. The old highway follows the coast and winds through the old coal mining villages.