Excellent Australia Trip to Melbourne, Great Barrier Reef, & Sydney

Australia | Jan 15 - Jan 26, 2025

We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Australia. Kim-Kim's local travel agent, Vicky Steinhardt, did a great job working with us and our traveling companions, over an extended period, to plan our trip. I love planning travel but in the cases that we have used Kim-Kim they did a far better job than I could have done on my own. In this case Vicky had good suggestions which we would not have thought about. We were traveling with a second couple who participated in the trip planning. From our perspective the itinerary came together fairly easily. The hotels that Vicky selected were all well located and were ones that I would consider staying at in the future. I liked getting private car service from and to each airport. I was pleasantly surprised at how seamless that worked out.

Our Melbourne hotel was well located for walking to Victoria Market, the Australian Open, a laundromat, and restaurants. We had two small group tour daytrips while we were in Melbourne. One was a drive along the Great Ocean Road to see the beaches and the 12 Apostles. It was a very long day and while the scenery is spectacular it similar to what we have in California. The second tour to Phillips Island, to see the penguins march ashore, was more fun.

Aside from seeing the Australian Open, snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, was the other major highlight of our trip. The Crystalbook Flynn Hotel was great and really close to the Cairns marina. The Seastar dive boat was also really good. There are only about 45 passengers and the crew is very attentive and personable. The underwater scenery is, of course, great. We also took a worthwhile small van daytrip to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Rain Forest.

Our Sydney hotel was conveniently located next to Chinatown and Darling Harbor. There are a lot of restaurants, and a shopping mall nearby and it's close to a tram stop. We enjoyed our full day daytrip to the Blue Mountains and Leura. We were skeptical of touring the Sydney Opera House but it turned out to be a good call by Vicky. Our wives also enjoyed shopping at the weekend market at the Rocks. I'm also glad we got a half day tour of the highlights of Sydney.

The only travel problems that we had were pretty trivial. We had gone through multiple itineraries before arriving at the final one. Before we arrived in Sydney, Vicky caught the fact that our itinerary listed the wrong hotel. One of our domestic flights was on Jetstar. I would try to avoid them if I was traveling within Australia. Their maximum luggage weight limit is less than that of the international carrier and their check-in and boarding are chaotic if you're flying with them for the first time. We were dinged with a $120 hit for having overweight bags, however their gate agents were so disorganized and harried that they let us fly without collecting it. We had breakfast included at each of our hotels. This worked out well in Melbourne and Cairns but not so well in the Sydney Darling Harbor Vibe Hotel. To catch our tours we had to be out the door before 7:30 AM but they don't open their dining area until 7 AM and they only serve prepared meals and not a buffet.

Overall a very good trip and we expect to use KimKim in the future.