25 posts tagged “australia”

I finally got all my posts written about our trip to Australia in November! I imagine I'll be adding more details to some of the posts from time to time as I recall them. So if you scroll back through all my posts tagged Australia, you'll get the whole trip.

Some general observations: 

We know we didn't spend the tiniest fraction of the time that needs to be spent in a country of that size and variety, but luckily Alex did get to see a good bit more during his previous 4 months, and we did actually do a good bit in our week: 2 major cities, beaches, rainforest, lots of good food, met new friends. And we didn't really feel rushed - everything in Australia seems to be at a nice relaxed pace, even in the cities.

Driving on the left wasn't too bad, but the car we got from Avis (a Holden Commodore) was no fun at all. I had reserved a compact, but when we got there they gave us a "free upgrade" to this POS barge. It had a built-in nav system, which meant we didn't have to pay a surprise one-way fee on a separate nav unit (I did appreciate the clerk telling us about that little tidbit before we would've gotten to Sydney and been stuck with it), but it was a pretty poor system.

We liked how all toilets, public and private, were of the dual flush variety. I don't see why ours aren't all like that.

Australia (at least the parts we were in) seemed to me very like the US, but just completely not. Things were arranged in much the same way, but they were all different things.

We loved the people - everyone was very friendly, and it is after all nice sometimes to be in a foreign country and be able to understand the language without too much trouble.

Hopefully you can tell by reading my posts, that we enjoyed our trip immensely! Despite the wet weather through much of it, we always found plenty of interesting things to do and see (as always...)

Now, on to writing about New Zealand before I forget all the details!

We took the train back to Newtown in the early evening, and walked down King Street looking for somewhere for dinner. The first couple places we tried didn't have any tables, but after some discussion they were able to seat us at an Italian restaurant called Cicciolina. That turned out to be a great choice anyway, because dinner was just great! Nice atmosphere and decor, and delicious food.

 

I had a mushroom "tower", over greens and parmesan shavings with balsamico - yummy!

 

 

 

It was especially bittersweet for Alex, who had been here for almost 5 months, and made so many good friends, and had so many great experiences.

Goodbye, Australia! We had a REALLY good time.

Since the rain had started up again while we were in The Rocks, we decided to visit the Aquarium rather than walk around the Botanical Gardens near the opera house. It's a very nice aquarium - here are some photos:

 

Part of it is called an Oceanarium, one of the things where you walk under the water, and can watch the larger sea creatures swim all around you...

 

After finishing our Rocks walk, we had hoped to do another walk I had cards for, which would take us through the Royal Botanic Gardens and around the Opera House, but it was raining pretty steadily at that point, so we decided instead to use our all-day transit passes some more, and took the ferry from Circular Quay (pronounced "key" here - those wacky Australians!) to Darling Harbour to see about going to the Aquarium.

More views from the ferry:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some photos from Darling Harbour itself, taken after we toured the aquarium and were waiting for the ferry back.

I had found a set of cards at the guesthouse that described walks one could take around Sydney, and before we went out I had chosen several that sounded interesting. One series showed a walk around "The Rocks", which is the oldest part of Sydney, including the oldest house, built in 1816. We figured we could find a good lunch, too, especially since Empress Nasi Goreng had mentioned something about a biergarten-type place in that area...

 

But we followed our designated "walk", which first took us past Cadman's Cottage, and then to the open-air art and crafts market, which we browsed a bit. A lot of the streets are pedestrian-only, cobbled and narrow, and our walk took us up and down several streets that were sets of steps. A very quaint and interesting area.

 

 

We saw several restaurants that looked good, but decided on the Gumnut Cafe for lunch, because it's in a historic old house, and has an outdoor area in the back.

We had some nice sandwiches and aranciatas while we listened to the classical guitarist. The desserts written on the board sounded really good, but we were pretty full after the sandwiches, and also the sky was looking like rain (which it then did), and also it was already around 2:00 and we were planning to have a big dinner out later for our final night in Australia.

Al bought a really good aboriginal music CD at a nice gift shop next door.

Saturday morning we walked down Australia St to a little cafe we'd spotted on our way home the night before. Great breakfast food and coffees, very busy, lots of women having coffees or food after exercising at a local center of some sort apparently. It was a beautiful morning, although there was a downpour while we ate, which caused everyone to rush back into the cafe from the sidewalk.

Then we walked to the train station on King St, and bought all-day transit passes for $16 each, as we had read about online from our rooms. We got off the double-decker train at King's Quay, which was a pretty major station in the city, with ferry docks right there. We were just in time to get a ferry to Watson's Bay, which we'd decided on just because it was one of the furthest out toward the ocean.

 

We walked up to The Gap Bluff National Park, and walked along the bluff for a while.

 

We caught the next ferry back to the city. Despite the chilly wind, we sat on the upper deck this time, so we could get some good photos of the city...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was sooo excited to meet in real life a couple of my Vox friends! Empress Nasi Goreng and Frumpy Gibbon met us for beers at the Courthouse Hotel on Australia St, and then they joined us for dinner at a little Thai restaurant on King St (the unfortunately-named Pornrat Tepparach - I'm sure it means something better than it sounds...)

We had a great dinner, with great company - talked Australian politics a bit, and got some good recommendations for things to do in Sydney on Saturday...

I agree with ENG that you do get to feel like you know someone from their blog, so it wasn't really like meeting for the very first time!

We stayed for two nights in Newtown, Sydney, at the Australia St Guest House. We again chose a room that had an extra bed, this time in a sort of suite arrangement. With the extra room it was A$160, which isn't bad for a major city. This is an older house, so the floorplan was rather odd. You went up the long stairs to a landing where there was a nice selection of books and brochures about Sydney. Straight ahead was a little common breakfast nook (an electric kettle, fridge, jar of cookies, packets of coffee etc), and through that a common bathroom. To the right at the top of the stair were some other rooms, in which some Asian visitors were just settling when we arrived, and to a sharp left was another short flight of steps to our "extra" room, shown here.

It had a foldout sofabed, and shelves full of interesting books. Around to the right in this picture you went up a step into the actual bedroom, and then you could also exit that room on the other side to get back to the landing and bathroom again. I think I may have some of that described wrong - it was a little confusing, as old houses usually are. There were lots of cool decorations from our hosts' trips around the world (she's a photojournalist). There was no breakfast here (other than the availability of biscuits and tea and so on), but there was free wireless internet, and I could use the laundry room downstairs in the hosts' living area. And the location was very good, just a few short blocks to King Street and the Newtown train station, and tons of shops and restaurants.

From Smith's Lake, it was about a 2.5 hour drive to Sydney, so not too bad. Our nav system took us right into the city, which seemed very tight with our stupid big car and driving on the left side - it kept feeling to me (as passenger) that we were going to graze the cars parked along the side of the street. Then I'm not sure, but I think we got into the wrong lane on the Harbour Bridge, and were dumped right into downtown. Luckily, Avis had given us a whole book of Sydney maps, so I was able to eventually coordinate the map with where we seemed to be and what the nav system was trying to get us to do. Once we made it to New Town (the neighborhood where our lodging was), the nav system had a good bit of difficulty with a park & cemetary that was in the middle of the area it wanted us to go through, and also the fact that the King St end of Australia St (the street we were trying to get to), is a little pedestrian-only area. After several trips around several blocks, and the nav system saying "Turn Right", "Turn Right", "Make a U-turn when possible", we shut her up and I went by the maps, and we finally got there.

After that very stressful end to the day's travels, we just relaxed in our rooms at the Australia Street Guesthouse for a while. We were able to get online, and followed the Steelers for a bit, since they were playing a Thursday night game. Also, I was able to finally get a load of laundry done and hung up on the line in the back yard. When it got within an hour of when we were to meet my Vox friends for drinks, we went out for a walk on King St to try to find a spot for dinner later. It's a cool street, with lots of restuarants, bookshops, and boutique-type shops. It's very near the Uni, so has a student vibe.

 

When we woke up Thursday morning, the sun was up and the weather looked great! After a breakfast of Nutri-Grain cereal (which was an interesting sort of ladder shape, quite tasty really, and we had it again several more times during our trip), eggs & homefries, and lattes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

.... Alex and I trekked down the switchback path below the deck, to see the lake. Then while the guys lounged around reading their books, I took a walk down the road to what sounded from the sign we'd seen, like a coffee shop, to see if perhaps they had internet access. It turned out to be a little cafe at a little dock area for the community, so I bought some fresh scones, but they didn't have internet. I walked back along the lake shore, which was a little quicker, and was luckily able to find the path up to our house...

 

 

 

 

 

We decided to try to go to the beach for real finally, so we donned our swimsuits, packed some lunch stuff, and drove to Seal Rocks, which sounded from the travel books to be relatively remote and not so touristy. We went to one beach first, and sat for a bit and walked in the surf, but decided it was a little too rough there for swimming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we drove a little further on, to the little village of Seal Rocks, and first decided to take a hike to the lighthouse...

 

 

... and then we went to the beach and actually went swimming and laid on a real beach in real sun...

and then after about 1/2 hour, the storm clouds gathered again, and we had to clear out!

So back we went to our lovely home, making a quick stop at the grocery and the butcher shop for fixins to grill out if the rain (which was then coming down in buckets) would stop. Which it eventually did, at least long enough for Al to grill some pork chops and steaks (I had put the boys in charge of going to the butcher shop, can you tell?). More coffees and cookies, and another movie - I talked them into watching "The Full Monty", which I really like - I think they did too.

Friday morning we headed out bright and early on our way to Sydney. I had found that the cafe next to the grocery store had internet access, so I got there when they opened at 8:30 and paid their $5 fee so I could send some files to the office that they needed for Friday. Then from that point on, I pretty much didn't look at work emails any more. Full vacation mode.