the daily(ish)

Our last night in Oz…

We had a great time on our little dinner cruise around Sydney Harbor.

Oz

 

Our time in Australia is coming to an end tomorrow.  We’ve had a great time exploring the country/continent and were so happy to have El Diablo with us before he left the department and to have Pablo come to visit. 

Our weekends took us to the Great Barrier Reef (one more Natural Wonder off the list- just 4 more to go) and to the Outback.  We drank wonderful Aussie wines in Hunter Valley and spent an entire day riding along the gorgeous Great Ocean Road.  It is a beautiful and vast country with so much to offer- far too much to see in 8 weeks.

We were lucky enough to get sent to New Zealand where I fell in love with the Maori culture and where we were both in awe of glowing maggot butts.

Sydney itself didn’t really win me over, but I think that’s because it reminded me so much of an American city, albeit a pretty one.  I don’t know what I was expecting- Kangaroos hopping down the street? Men wrestling crocodiles in the alleys? Koalas noshing on blooming onions before their main course of eucalyptus?  I don’t know.  I liked it here, I just didn’t fall in love the way I expected.

Sydney really has a lot to offer, but I think it’s just missing a distinct vibe and that is what I’m always looking for in a city- something in the air that just makes you want to be a part of everything.  Maybe if I were a surfer or sailor I would have felt differently.

We’re capping off our time here tonight with a dinner cruise around the harbor which I think will be a lovely end to our trip.

Tomorrow we trade in kangaroos for lions.

Well, not immediately as we’re taking a few days to ourselves, but by Tuesday night we’ll be in South Africa.

Melbourne

Pablo arrived in Australia on Thursday morning and by Friday evening we had him on yet another flight.  We seem to be unable to help ourselves from doing that, but he seems to be the master or jet lag so it works out.

We had a great little dinner at a local spot in Melbourne Friday night and were up early for an entire day on the Great Ocean Road.  I mean the “entire” day.  It was an over 13 hour tour but totally worth it…

 

The Great Ocean Road is just a gorgeous stretch of costal highway with breathtaking views at every turn.  We also got to see koalas in the wild, feed some wild although extremely friendly parrots and take a brisk little jaunt into a lovely rainforest…

Awesome day.

Since we packed it all in on Saturday we chose to have a leisurely Sunday in Melbourne… had a great brunch, walked about, caught a street performance from the comedy festival, took a streetcar ride around the city  and ended our time with a couple of beers on a rooftop bar.  Oh, how I love those kinds of Sundays. 

Thanks to a national holiday and Easter colliding we’ve got a 5 day weekend ahead of us and we’re heading out on a road trip to the Hunter Valley wine region and the Blue Mountains.  Should be so much fun!

Pics from our Melbourne weekend…

the daily(ish)

Jules feeding a piggy little kangaroo...
We had all three fed her numerous times, but she was carrying around a rather large joey in her pouch, so she deserved the extra helpings.

the daily(ish)

Darling Harbour...



Yes, they spell harbor with a "u". They also drive on the left side of the road and although I haven't confirmed this, I'm guessing they also pronouce the "h" in herb.

the daily(ish)

Water feature that guides you from a park into Darling Harbour...

Reefs, Rainforests and Roos

Our first real weekend in Australia and I think we covered the basics…we snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, fed kangaroos, saw crocodiles, pet some wallabies, ran from an emu, watched koalas sleep and eat eucalyptus and drank a few Tooheys (this is “Australian for beer”, I haven’t even seen Fosters here).

We had a hellacious flight on Friday night.  It was probably the worst of my life and I pray it holds onto that title. We were dropping and slamming from side to side on and off through the entire 2 1/2 hour flight.  Not cool.  I was shaking and seriously thought I was going to throw up out of fear.  Thankfully our flight back was smooth because otherwise you’d need to travel to Sydney if you ever wanted to see me again. 

We landed late and all went straight to bed since we had an early morning ahead of us to get out to the Great Barrier Reef. 

About 2 hours out to sea and we were there…

We hit three different dive/snorkel sites and each was better than the last.  We saw literally hundreds of different tropical fish, a sea turtle, massive clams, gorgeous coral gardens, hordes of f-ing jelly fish (thank God for ‘stinger suits” otherwise we would have been toast) and I even spotted a reef shark.  Needless to say, no one had mentioned anything about sharks to me, reef or otherwise, so I was pretty freaked out for a while, but apparently they don’t dine of humans so I could enter the water again.

It was a long glorious day and afterwards we were beat.  After some much needed showers we hung in the lounge and had a couple cocktails and watched thousands of giant bats take to the city at sunset…

(yeah those are bats!) before heading to the harbor for some local seafood.

With El Diablo going back to the reef the next day, us 3 Georgia girls decided to stay on land and spent the day hiking the Daintree Rainforest…

floating down the Daintree River looking for crocs…

driving along the beautiful Aussie coast…

checking out some Aussie natives…

and actually petting and feeding kangaroos and wallabies…

Which, as you can see from the ridiculous grin on my face,  I obviously thought was the pièce de résistance of the entire weekend. 

Great Barrier Reef, yeah it’s one of the world’s 7 natural wonders, but is it a cute as a wallaby? 

I didn’t think so.

 

Pictures from this weekend...

Grrrrrrrreat

Barrier Reef!

That's where we are off to this weekend! Did you know the Great Barrier Reef is the largest structure in the world built by living organisms? Me either, but I'm researching today in preparation, so I thought I'd share.

Packing up makes me realize that we're officially back on the road again. It's weird knowing this is one of our last rounds. Granted, we may be on the road for the entirety of 2012, but even so, there are only 4 more rounds after this one! 4! 4 more possible places to live before we press the "play" button on our life back home. Crazy.

But...until then I'm just going to keep enjoying this opportunity to the absolute fullest, because we're not promised another minute, much less another day.

where the women glow and the men thunder

We've arrived in Australia!! 20+ hours of travel is never easy, but we decided to pay the piper and use miles to move up to the front of the plane so, it could have been worse. I didn't get a ton of sleep due to the incredible amount of turbulence that plagued almost our entire flight from LAX --> SYD, but I did catch up on 4 movies, so not a total loss.

We arrived around 8:30am and ended up having to wait almost 4 hours before our room was ready. Not exactly cool when you'd give your right arm (your stinky, funky, "been in a plane for 20+ hours" arm) for a shower. We did see Chuy from Chelsea Lately getting in a cab when we arrived though, so that was cool. I would have asked for a picture, but I didn't want him telling some story about a greasy American girl who smelled like a goat approaching him in Australia. According to the bellman, Chelsea had just left the day before.

dang. it.

After we got into a room and freshened up, we met up with El Diablo's friend from Spain who's lived in Sydney for a year. He graciously played tour guide and took us down to the harbor to see the bridge and famous Opera House...





We then made our way to "the Rocks" neighbohood and found a table at a German beer garden to enjoy the glorious Sydney sunshine.

We'd only been out for 4 or so hours, but we were all hitting the wall and decided to head back to the hotel. We popped up to the lounge to hang with the rest of the team and have a couple of nightcaps before crashing.

Amazingly enough, the Wife and I stayed up until 9pm and only woke up once at 5am before sleeping until a more Godly hour. This is a HUGE jet lag accomplishment. Or I was just wiped from only sleeping a whopping 3 hours (in 20-30 minute increments) on the way over. We're currently 15 hours ahead due to you guys springing forward this weekend. Apparently, we'll be 16 again when Sydney does their daylight savings in April. I'm sure we'll struggle for a couple of weeks getting on track, but I'm feeling pretty human-like today and that's better than I expected.

Australia has always been the Wife's #1 location she wanted to visit in all the world and from the moment the landing gear dropped out of the bottom of the plane, she's been estatic...



which in turn makes me estatic. We've got some pretty high expectations this round and so far we're thinking it is going to live up to the hype.

Photos from the day...




p.s.- I've got a lot of catching up to do and had all but abandoned the blog while working at home. Sorry!! I promise to get caught up!!

ch.ch.changes

Very excited to announce we're now headed down under instead of to cold Poland this week. We literally just found out today. I have to say I'm pretty sad to be missing a weekend with our dear friend in Paris and seeing our other European friends and even a little sad not to be going to Argentina...but I'm so flippin' excited to be going to Australia!