After being reunited with our bus in Fremantle, we continued on for a short visit to the Botanical Garden of Western Australia in Perth. I could have spent a few hours there, but we only had a few minutes available.

Our tour manager could tell that I was worried about making our 3:30 pm flight to Sydney because of all the delays, so she arranged a private transfer to the airport for us and another couple on the same flight instead of making us wait for the bus again. We had plenty of time at the airport – the Virgin Australia lounge was a pleasant place to wait, and their Wi-Fi was outstanding. :-)

The flight was fine (even if they didn’t have Wi-Fi, unlike Qantas and United); I even slept for an hour or so after dinner, much to my surprise. Our flight landed at the domestic terminal, but our hotel (Rydges Sydney Airport) was at the international terminal, and we had to take a city train to get there!

The hotel was pretty basic, but it was comfortable enough for one night, and it was only 181 steps from the closest international check-in counter. United was at the other end of the terminal, so our walk was a bit farther. :-)

We had our choice of lounges to wait for the flight – Singapore or Air New Zealand; we’d been in a Singapore lounge on our Asia trip in 2019, so we picked Air New Zealand. It was very nice, and I left with a pocketful of hard candies for later. :-). We saw a few other folks from our cruise, too – there are at least nine of us on this flight.

Next stop: SFO!

Our final morning on the ship dawned a bit early; the ride had improved a lot overnight, and we’d slept fairly well. We were greeted with a lovely rainbow at breakfast, too.

The first building we saw as we entered the port was a brewery, one whose product we won’t be able to sample. Oh, well.

We’re taking a little tour of Fremantle on our way to Perth and the airport; we made a brief stop at Fremantle Prison (now a major tourist attraction), which was built by the convicts themselves.

Today is ANZAC Day, which commemorates the Battle of Galipoli in World War I where Australian and New Zealand troops were basically slaughtered because of bad planning by the British High Command. It begins with dawn services and most towns have parades. We got to see Fremantle’s parade.

We tried to get a coffee after the parade but the service was so slow we had to leave to meet our bus…which wasn’t at the meeting place! We are waiting for them with four others from our group – we’ve talked to our tour manager and she says they’ll be back for us Real Soon Now!

ETA: we’re on the bus.