Long-ass Road : Sydney and Royal National Park

For all its glory, the Sydney Opera House looks not unlike a bunch of bowls stacked in a dish rack

Royal National Park

We are at Royal National Park, a sprawling, expansive park with thick rainforests, rugged coastline, sheer cliffs, which provides ample hiding places for the elusive lyre bird. It looks like this if you are really lucky:

If you are not really lucky, it looks like this:

It's there trust me, you just have to look really, really hard

We did see it running across the trail but it's so fast it's nearly impossible to get a photo of it. After many attempts, we gave up and decided to have lunch.

The minute you sit down at a picnic table a couple of cockatoos will appear

Then five more will join their friends

Before you can say, "oh, they're so cool" you will have 20 of them jockeying for the best position to snatch your potato chips, sandwich or earrings

Sandstone escarpment, here there be rock warblers

Crimson rosella, just hanging out in the parking lot

That's a magpie, you know what his favorite thing to do with that beak is?

Attack kids and postal workers viciously by dive bombing their heads. To protect themselves they wear plastic buckets on their heads with big eyes drawn on them. This photo was taken at the Australian museum where there is an exhibit touting the virtues of wearing the bucket.

After the Royal National Park, we played tourists in the metro area of Sydney and explored the Botanic Garden which we visited three times because we are nerds like that.