Travel Review: Family Trip to Australia, Melbourne, Daintree, Sydney Harbour Sailing, Great Barrier Reef Dive, Uluru, Yarra Valley

Review by traveler

Marietheres M.

4.5.2017

General Info

Traveler Review

Which Country (Countries) did you visit on this trip?

Australia

Your overall comments on the trip and the travel company:

Our travel planner did a very good job. We were very satisfied. I asked for more outdoor activities as opposed to city tours and that is what we got. The activities were well organized and first class. The one or two activities that stick out were the restaurant tour of Melbourne and the sailboat tour of Sydney harbour which were more city oriented. We also really enjoyed the aboriginal tour of the mangrove swamp at Port Douglas. The accommodations were very good with special mention going to the lodge out of Mossman. We booked on short notice and our travel planner could not get us into the hotel he wanted at Ayers Rock. Other than that, the rooms were very good.

If we had a problem, our travel planner really tried to help us and got something organized for us. We were trapped by a flooded creek at our Mossman lodge and he helped to get us extracted as quickly as possible. Anyway the overall experience was awesome and people that I describe it to describe it as the trip of a lifetime. I have often mentioned Zicasso, as well, as providing exceptional value. We have been on numerous tours, both personal and corporate, and in my opinion what we were provided was comparable in quality and at a very good price. We were really taken with the rooms in the hotel in Melbourne however the food was very pricey and of a quality that did not match the accommodations. Fortunately we had the restaurant tour of the city the next day and had a choice of too many good eateries after that. Certainly enjoyed everything and will look back fondly on the experience.

I certainly would recommended this travel company, this travel planner, and Zicasso to anyone wanting to travel. I felt our travel planner was very conscious of costs and tried to provide us with a very good time at a reasonable cost.

What were the most enjoyable or memorable parts of your trip?

The iconic shot from the trip was the shot of us on the Sydney Harbour Bridge with the Sydney Opera House in the background. My description after showing it to my friends here it is, it was just another day in Australia. Virtually everyday was filled with something similar. I mean what do you want to pick out the Great Barrier Reef, a cassowary and crocodile in the Daintree Rainforest, holding a Koala at Kuranda, spear fishing mud crabs in the mangrove swamps in Port Douglas, Ayers rock, the Great Ocean Road, the Small Penquins, the Yarra Valley wineries and Chocolaterie and cheese and local produce, the restaurants in the alleys in Melbourne, the Blue Mountains, and probably I enjoyed as well as anything was the tour of Sydney Harbour on a sailboat with an absolutely five star lunch besides. I mean pick one and every one of them would have been worth the trip. And we live in Canada so the trip was anything but easy. I told our travel planner to be kind because when you come out of -20C and into Australia and the first place we went was Cairns at +40C, that is a brutal adjustment. Only to be exceeded by a trip from +40C to -20C because from personal experience that is even worse. Obviously I just can not say enough about how much we enjoyed the trip. I mean the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb was great and our guide was terrific but I expected that. It was places like the Blue Mountains which frankly I had no idea about that were just great too. Delightful, unexpected, fantastic, awesome and enjoyable. We started and ended in Brisbane because my daughter is attending a term at the University of Queensland. We were physically spent by the time we got there because we just had been on the go steady. We ended touring on the City Cats and the City Water Taxis. Australia has some of the most awesome well developed water fronts in the world. And Brisbane is never even mentioned for that.

If you could take your trip again, what would you do differently?

I had told our travel planner for North Americans coming in that I would send them south to Sydney and Melbourne to acclimatize instead of straight into the Daintree. Because of our late booking that might have been an issue but as I stated -20C to +40C is a little bit of a brutal adjustment. Other than that I can not think of a single thing to suggest. We liked the rooms at the hotel in Melbourne, as I stated the meals left quite a little to be desired. After we were shown around the following day, I was really disappointed at having wasted a couple of meals when there are so many fantastic restaurants in Melbourne. I guess you do not know the good meals unless you throw in a poor one once in awhile. Even there, the meals were not terrible just less than average at a ridiculously high prices. I would be more careful hiking around Uluru in the afternoon at +40C because my daughter and I almost ended up with heat stroke even though we carried copious amounts of water with us. We were rained out at the Field Of Lights but even that was good. Who ever gets rained out at the Field Of Lights? So even that was an experience. We were sitting at a table of really interesting people so it was disappointing not to be able to finish the evening with them and it was a little bit of a scramble to find a restaurant in the late evening there. So most of the experiences that were not as enjoyable centred on the weather which as a Canadians, we are fairly used to. I must say the host at the Mossman lodge brings customer service to an all new level when he brought in a helicopter to take us out during the flood. Send everybody there. I really can not say enough about how our travel planner read what we wanted and absolutely delivered on every aspect of the planning and the trip.

THANY YOU VERY MUCH. WE LOVED IT.

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Travel Review: Family Trip to Australia, Melbourne, Daintree, Sydney Harbour Sailing, Great Barrier Reef Dive, Uluru, Yarra Valley

General Info

Which Country (Countries) did you visit on this trip?

Your overall comments on the trip and the travel company:

What were the most enjoyable or memorable parts of your trip?

If you could take your trip again, what would you do differently?

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