Arrival...

We caught up with Andrew and Julie Simpson on our last day in Sydney and went for a lovely walk around the Opera House and Farm Cove to Mrs Macquarie's chair. These photos show Fergus, Dougal, Angus and Max enjoying themselves (more or less..) during the walk.

Angus, Fergus, Max and Dougal in a
tree in the Sydney Botanical Gardens.  5 May 13

 
 

 

A magnificent final day in Australia: Fi, Fergus, Max
Angus, Dougal and Andrew Simpson.

The flight over was pretty uneventful...although you certainly couldn't fly with United Airlines for the service or the food.  The boys had held up pretty well and we were thankful both had taken John Doherty's advice to stay hydrated, get some sleep and time your run to the bathroom to avoid the rush at the end of the flight (as opposed to Leo Cusack's advice to get through at least 4 movies during the flight!).
We knew we had to keep moving after arriving at the hotel in Santa Monica around midday - so we hired some bikes (not all members of the family were impressed with this decision...) and set off down the beach bike path.  Doogs was quite taken with the tandem bike - never one to miss an opportunity for a bludge on the back seat while the rest of us laboured away on the pedals...
Gotta say, Venice Beach is looking a bit tired, with run down buildings, plenty of weed and 'pipe' shops and the general smell of stale beer all over the place.  We only saw a couple of old geezers lifting about 5 pounds in the gym on muscle beach where Arnie used to train.  They might need someone like Chopper there to get them sorted out, Ricco!!



Doogs takes a break from his hard work on the back seat
of the tandem at Muscle Beach, Santa Monica.