When we awoke for our final morning on Celebrity Edge, the ship was docked at the Overseas Passenger Terminal. We had breakfast, complete with a stunning view of the Opera House, and then it was time to disembark.

The process was smooth (carrying our luggage ourselves saved a lot of time). We took the five-minute walk to the Circular Quay Railroad Terminal, bought our tickets, and were at the International Terminal about twenty minutes later.

We did a little last-minute shopping before going to the lounges. United doesn’t have a lounge in Sydney, so we had our choice between Singapore or Air New Zealand – we tried both. Singapore had much faster wifi and someone making coffee drinks to order (the mocha was great); Air New Zealand was a bit more open and modern and appeared to have a better bar. Both lounges were quite busy, probably because of Taylor Swift.

Our flight home arrived at SFO 30 minutes early, which was a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, seven other flights arrived at about the same time, and it took about an hour before we got our bag. After that, it was a quick ride home, followed by a trip to the Farmers’ Market and Lunardi’s to restock the fridge for the next week.

We were supposed to arrive in Sydney at about 8am, but that hour found us about 30 miles offshore. The weather and waves were above the limit for a ship of our size, so they basically put us in a holding pattern until conditions improved; we finally entered the harbour a few minutes before 10.

We were on a tender not long afterwards, and in front of the Opera House at 10:30.

We walked over to the Sir Stamford Hotel to meet our guide for the day, Terry Rogan of Picture Me Sydney, who was taking us to the Blue Mountains to enjoy the wildlife and scenery. Our first stop was Calmsley Hill City Farm, where we had a date with a koala!

The farm had lots of other wildlife, including wombats, wallabies, kangaroos, and emu.

We left the farm and drove into the Blue Mountains National Park, stopping at Wentworth Falls. The fog and mist were pretty thick, but we enjoyed walking through the area.

We left the Falls and drove further into the Blue Mountains, stopping at an area where kangaroo roam freely.

We stopped at the Three Sisters, but the fog was too dense to see them.

We got back to Sydney just in time to catch the last tender to the ship so we could do our final packing.