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Perth, Western Australia (May 2018)

Perth, Western Australia (May 2018)

JJ in PER (31st May – 5th Jun 2018)

Type: Free & Easy (Self Drive)

Day -1

Daddy J comes in with the usual “LIGHTS-OUT-kids-please-sleep-since-you-have-a-long-day-ahead-tomorrow-no-story-time-tonight” yadda yadda; and we try hard to fall asleep, thinking what movies might be screening in the IFE tomorrow (hopefully no more Frozen or Peppa Pig, though Paw Patrol, PJ Masks or Ninjago would be fun) and soon dozing off with Mommy Koa and Elsa.

 

Day1 – Caversham Wildlife Park

We arrive on time in PER and remember the Q at immigration builds up very quickly given the short interval between SQ213 and MH flight. We clear immigration in a jiffy and get the go ahead to clear customs without the cute little beagle sniffing our bags this time. Onward to the car rental counter (this time we opted to go with Enterprise* whose counter was located at the far right end of the terminal in the car park as we were exiting the secondary clearance area).

*Good thing Daddy bought a separate insurance cover from Rental Cover as we did encounter bit of an incident towards the end of our trip! We were so scared! See write up here.

It was a relatively quick(er) process versus the more-than-an-hour-wait at Hertz the previous trip and soon we were all strapped in and headed to Caversham!

   

Day2 – Perth Hop On/Hop Off (Perth Explorer Bus)

We get up early (surprising how JJ get up early during holidays!) and head down for breakkie (free breakkie for HH Gold. See separate write up on HH Gold fast-track. We also got upgraded to a family suite this time!).

We then drive to Murray Street and park somewhere in between ‘The Explorer Stops 2 and 6″ (refer below map) since we want to take the bus only around the City to Northbridge, onward to Optus Stadium, Crown Casino (where we pitstop for Macker’s hash browns!) and alight at Perth Mint – this circuit takes only 20 mins tops. We alight outside the Perth Mint and walk 5mins back to the car neatly parked on Murray.

Refer to the Perth Explorer Website for latest routes and timing (Map/photo credit to Perth Explorer).

We end the day with the welcome drinks…

 

[Disclaimer: Kids did not partake of any alcoholic beverage(s), its just one of the signs of cranky and tired kids after a long day out!]

Day3 – Cicerello’s @ Freo

Voted by the JJ Twins as #1 Fish and Chips in Australia 🙂

Very kid-friendly as they have lotsa crayons and colouring pages to keep the kids occupied while waiting for the food!

(yummy chilly mussels!)

 

 

Day4 – Busselton Jetty

After breakkie we make our way down south towards Busselton, past Bunbury.

All in we take about 2 hours for a leisurely drive on Freeway South.

Highlight here was the train ride towards the ocean along the Longest Jetty in the Southern Hemisphere.

There’s an Ocean Observatory at the end (10min train ride, which you need tickets for! Make sure you pre-book it lest you wait an hour or two for next available slots). Caution if you are rushing to the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse (about 1.5hrs further down south-west from Busselton) you really need to prebook the train ride.

After grabbing some Jester’s Pie (yum!), we rush off towards the Lighthouse at Naturaliste (past Dunsborough).

Unfortunately we arrived just past 5pm where the last tour had departured. Fortunately the groundskeeper was kind enough to allow us to our self-guided walk around the vicinity!

We hurried off just before 6, as the final few cars to roll out of the car park, with the sunset behind us and make our way back to Perth City. Needless to say kids (including Daddy J and Mummy J) were super exhausted by the time we arrived back at the hotel…

 

Day5 – Swan Valley/Mini Golf

After an exhausting day the day before, we decide to take the day slow.

We went on the Perth Explorer Bus again, then drove north to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory @ Swan Valley (30min) [not to be mistaken with the original Margaret River Chocolate Company in Margaret River (3 hours drive down south).

After stuffing ourselves silly with choc and ice-cream, we decided to head over to X-treme Ice Rink at Mirabooka to burn it off with ice-skating (we had prebook family passes from Groupon the night before).

Ice Skating at X-treme Ice, Mirabooka

Day6 – Perth Carnival Fever!

While at Westfield Carousell the day before, we noticed a carnival going on at the Showgrounds Claremont.

Did some check over the internet and found tix which we then bought. Everyone loves a carnival! 🙂

 

The even had a petting zoo with small farm animals (Old MacDonald’s petting zoo!)…

Face Painting for the girls…

And more rides!!!

  

Summary of May 2018 Perth Accommodation:

We were at the Hilton Parmelia Perth this time. It was on par with the Pan Pacific Perth we stayed at the year before but note that parking at the Parmelia is by valet only and costs AUD$50/night. We found it obviously more cost effective to go with the street parking. Note that there are also strict timings by when you need to observe clearway (strictly no stopping), and maximum duration allowable (1P denoting 1-hour/2P for example is for 2 hours).

Honors Flash Sale Pricing:

Price breakdown
Room price AU$695.50
5 nights: AU$139.10 /night including taxes
Total AU$695.50

 

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Perth, Western Australia (May/Jun 2017)

Perth, Western Australia (May/Jun 2017)

JJ in PER (29th May – 2nd Jun 2017)

Type: Free & Easy (Self Drive)

 

The JJ kids are up early this morning as we scurry to get ready for our flight! We catch some quick shut-eye on the way to the airport but nothing’s stopping us from posing for the cam at T3!

The J Twins posing with Mummy Koa (who’s headed back to Aussieland) and Elsa.

It wasn’t long before we hop onto to plane.

Daddy says its 5 hours to get to PER, but…

JJ: How long is that Daddy?

Daddy J: Thats the equivalent to 2 runs of Frozen kids… you can watch it twice, or once and have a little shut eye after your CHML before we get in.

How’dy Mate! Sure enough we soon land in Western Australia, the new Aussie Sunshine State (with officially more hours of light that Queensland, with an annual average of 8.8hours of sunshine/day).  Anyways… we disembark, and make our way to the immigration clearance. Wow, the queue builds up really quickly, we think there was another flight (guessing its MH) which arrives into the gate within minutes from ours.

No trouble… we clear immigration after a 20-min-ish Q without any hassle, pick up our bags, and our Kiddy-booster seats.

Note Australia has stringent legal requirements on child seats – Disclaimer on below requirements. Please CHECK the current legislations and latest requirements online via www.transport.wa.gov.au for Western Australia (RTA for New South Wales), or log on to the AusGov Roads and Transport Authority site since different AU states have different local governing bodies which manage licensing and regulations within their jurisdiction – https://www.australia.gov.au/information-and-services/transport-and-regional/roads-and-road-transport/authorities

What we had when we were there though we noted as below:

  1. < 6M – Babies less than 6 months need to be put in an approved rear-facing seat (baby capsule or convertible child car seat)
  2. 6M – 6Y – Toddlers in this age bracket to be in a forward-facing child seat with inbuilt harness.
  3. Kids > 145cm in height can use the regular fitted seat-belts.

After collecting our bags we were randomly selected for a secondary customs inspection where we were instructed to stand still in a line when Mr-Customs-Officer a cute waggly beagle comes along to sniff our bags. He takes a little extra sniff on ours maybe because of Rex’s scent but then trods along soon enough. Too bad we couldn’t snap pix… he was really adorable.

When we get out the sliding doors, we make a left turn towards the car rental desks. Daddy told us to wait as he queued at the yellow Hertz‘s counter with what appeared to be like 5 others folks ahead of him. And boy did we wait. We found out subsequently there was only 1 guy on shift that day, and was probably out at lunch. Daddy must have been in Q > an hour since during this time we had gotten his Aussie Optus SIM card from the local telco store, and had bought us a quick something to eat and drink while Mummy stood in line on his behalf! FINALLY we get our keys, Daddy manages to secure our trusty Safe’n’Sound seats into the rental and on we go all strapped up and ready to rock’n’roll! Despite the multiple delays we have every reason to smile from ear to ear!

We make our way to Caversham Wildlife Park in Swan Valley to see our favourite Aussie marsupials.

For the record – Jiejie (T1) was so tired (she’d refuse to sleep on the flight – ended up maxing out 2 movies with the endless request for more snacks and OJ) she falls asleep on Mummy’s lap for most of what we recall at Caversham. Daddy hurries around with Jon to see the other animals (we tried tirelessly to track the croc but only find a measly baby hidden behind some shrubs in the enslosure but were happy to find the family of baby penguins happily swimming away). That of course was after the standard Koala and Kangaroo trail.

Funnily though when we were about to leave, Jo wakes up feeling all fresh! *we remember Daddy nagging away about us having enough sleep before the holiday so we don’t sleep our holiday away…”.

Daddy says we’re a stone’s throw away from the Margaret River Chocolate Company also in the Swan Region. We get there soon enough and perk ourselves up after stuffing ourselves silly with chocolate!

The next day we get on the Perth Explorer (aka the Hop-on-Hop-off) bus…. we basically just do a little circuit and hop off at almost the same spot we left our car. We do spot SHREK along the way apparently at a Shrek Show in at Burswood Convention/Entertainment Centre. *Whee!*

We alight the bus at the Hay Street stop, right outside the Perth Mint. Daddy got us discounted tix from the Perth Explorer bus captain to go into the Mint. Seems there was a fixed timing so we play around the outside while waiting for our slot. We recall there was this interesting display of melting what looked like a gold brick. We thought Daddy seemed to be getting some ideas at one stage staring wide-eyed at the gold bar the whole time…. 🙂

After we whack him in the bum to wake up his silly ideas and he was sober enough to get behind the wheels again, he drives southwards to Cicerello’s @ Freo (Fremantle) for the best fish’n’chips in town!

On the way, we chance upon a nice big toy store called ToyWorld (what caught our eye was the yellow banner with the familiar while-emblazoned-on-red LEGO fonts claiming to be “Western Australia’s Largest independent Lego Store”. We make a pitstop and check out the Lego there to validate that claim!

Turns out to be pretty extensive a range, but the lineup wasn’t the newest… we did enjoy the giant trampoline and made ourselves pretty much at home in the basement though!

Soon it was munch time at Cicerello’s! Great food, some nice colouring sheets we helped ourselves to with some crayons while waiting for our lunch! We really liked the fish tanks with marine sea life around the restaurant (even in the little boy’s room!).

After a hearty lunch we head to Fremantle Prison.

We’re in luck, next tour leaves in 5mins so we quickly sign up and jump into our Orange Prison jumpsuits for our prison tour (just kidding on the jumpsuits!).

 

All in we took >2hrs to complete the prison tour. Daddy really liked it, Mummy we thought was too tired from chasing us around the sprawling outdoor grounds…

The next day we went shopping Westfield Carousell…. we enjoy the twin shopping cart at Coles. From Cannington we drive to X-treme Ice @ Mirabooka for some ice-skating. This is our first attempt on the rink, and Daddy says the cute little Penguins would come in handy. As there were absolutely no other people that day the staff were nice enough to offer us the Penguins at no additional cost – thanks heaps again guys from the JJ Twins! You guys rock! We will be sure to come back again soon!

 

At the University of Western Australia (UWA) grounds the next day. Surprise surprise who do we bump into there but our BSF teacher who was on holiday with her family.

At King’s Park with the picturesque backdrop of the beautiful Perth City!

At the Synergy Parkland King’s Park, where kids play like KINGS!

All in 5 days seemed pretty short. Soon we were packin’ up and Mummy got us to do our usual stuff sitting on the suitcases so we could pull the zipper together to close it shut…

Daddy says there’s so much more we weren’t able to see this time, and we should come back soon – if only we eat our veggies and continue to be the vegetable heroes we are, hope to see you soon Perth!

Summary of May/Jun 2017 Perth Accommodation:

We split the accommodation at different properties based on the best available rates (BAR) at each establishment.

Jo developed a fever towards the end of the trip so we had extended by 1 day (SQ was kind enough to waive the cancellation/rebooking fee and had rebooked us to another flight at no additional cost!).

  1. First 2 nights at the Mercure Hotel Perth (10 Irwin Street, Perth, WA, 6000 Australia).
    Price breakdown
    Room price AU$265.52
    2 nights: AU$121.51 /night
    Taxes : AU$22.50
    Total AU$265.52
  2. Subsequent 2 nights at the Pan Pacific Perth (207 Adelaide Terrace, East Perth, WA, 6000 Australia)
    Price breakdown
    Room price AU$351.01
    2 nights: AU$160.44 /night
    Taxes : AU$30.13
    Total AU$351.01