On the third day of my trip to Sydney with Scoot, we made our way to Illawarra,Wollongong for a day trip hosted by Red Carpet Custom Tours, Tourism Wollongong and Destination New South Wales.
The managing director of Red Carpet Customs Tour, Don Rosenfeldt came to picked up us personally at our hotel and was our guide cum driver for the trip. You can find out more about Red Carpet via their official website.
Sydney to Illawarra takes around one hour. We headed south of Sydney along the Princes Highway and weaved through the scenic Royal National Park, the world’s second oldest park.
We made a stopover at Bald Hill Lookout to take in the spectacular 360 degree ocean views. The area is internationally renowned as a hang gliding mecca and we witnessed many hang-gliders in action when we arrived.
Next, we passed the Sea Cliff Bridge, which hugs the coastline between Coalcliff and Clifton. The bridge is an impressive 665m bridge that hangs out over the ocean. It offers a safe pedestrian walkway over the entire length of the bridge and offers a fantastic viewing point over the ocean. Coupled with the cool breeze blowing, I felt on top of this world!
We then met up with a group of Harley Davidson riders from Just Cruisin’ Motocycle Tours. We will be riding pillion with the lads, traveling along the Grand Pacific Drive which encompasses some of the most spectacular coastlines in New South Wales.
I chose to ride on a Victory bike instead of a Harley, having experienced a Harley bike tour at Bondi Beach during my previous Sydney trip.
After the fun bike ride, we were headed to Skydive the Beach for serious adventure – Skydiving!
I know I do not look like the adventure sort, but I really wanted to try skydiving. So much so I even rejected a hosted two weeks villa stay in Southern France to make this trip! I will cover my skydiving adventure as the final blog post to wrap up my Sydney with Scoot series. Stay tuned. 🙂
Meanwhile, as I was scheduled to skydive in the second group, I made my way to The Illawara Brewery for lunch with my group in a short coach ride. Located directly opposite Wollongong’s city beach, the brewery boasts ten local beers with no chemicals or preservatives. Sadly, none of us was game for beer before a skydive as we do not want to be flying “merlion”.
The fish and chip was good though. Initially, I did not want to eat too much to avoid getting sick up in the sky before my dive, but I ended up gobbling everything.
After a hearty lunch, we were driven back to Skydive the Beach. You have to read till my last blog post in this series to find out what happen on my first skydive attempt. 🙂
Read my other Sydney with Scoot blog posts:
Dinner and Theatre at The Star
Wild Life Sydney and Madame Tussauds Sydney at Darling Harbour
Sydney Harbour Bridge BridgeClimb and Lunch at Otto Ristorante
Opera House Tour and Dinner at Cruise Restaurant
Quarter Twenty One Cooking Class
Scooting to Sydney with HTC One X on Instagram
Alvinology is Going On Scoot’s Inaugural Flight to Sydney, Australia!
