Neil and Megan's World Travels

Home at Last

2008-08-08T10:49:00.002+01:00

So, we've been back home now for 2 and a half weeks and most people have asked, how does it feel to be home? It's honestly not that bad, it's good to be back in our own bed, with lots more clothes to choose from, it's nice to see everyone again and it's just comfortable being back in normality. We both did say though that it would be great to stay home for just a few days and then go away for another 6 months! We definitely aren't tired or bored of travelling, how could we be when we were so busy and when there is so much more out there to see?!

Yesterday I visited Portsmouth to see yet more friends and family (and in the process clocking up 1000 miles since we've been back!!) and I was asked by my cousin Janet, "What was the worst thing that you saw?". Her theory being that I must be bored telling people what was best so she'd give me a challenge and a challenge it was! I struggled and struggled but I really couldn't come up with an answer for her. I'm sure we must have done or seen something we really didn't like but all the good memories completely blocked everything else out. This made me think last night of the experience as a whole and how much I've enjoyed it, how much we've seen and big a part of our lives the last 6 months will be. Even from the very early stages of planning where we wanted to go, working out routes and places we really wanted to see. Through to going into the travel agents and seeing our initial plans change but coming up with new ones on the spot. The excellent STA Travel agent, Matt, in Kingston who was so helpful giving us advice, recommendations, ideas and not rushing us even though there were others waiting. He didn't just want our money like some other places probably would but he actually wanted us happy and going away with the trip we wanted, not the one he wanted to sell! All the planning that we put in really paid off as the whole trip went off without a hitch really. There is only one thing I would have changed about planning and going on the trip.....getting a NEW Lonely Planet guide. I didn't realise until we were away that the one I had was about 4 years old, no problem when going around sightseeing but it was a problem in terms of budgeting!! Due to some levels of inflation we had underestimated the costs of hostels so ended up spending quite a bit more per night than we had expected. My advice to anyone else budgeting for a trip: Make sure your info is up to date!!

The best thing on the trip was either standing on top of Sydney Harbour Bridge at sunset or watching the dramatic colour changing light show of Uluru at sunrise (better than sunset!). The worst thing about the trip: I still can't think of one!!
The best thing about being home is seeing all our friends and family, if it wasn't for them we would have wanted to stay away forever! The worst thing about being home is the fact that it feels like we've only been away for 2 weeks! (But then I realise I've written over 35,000 words in my journal, I'd never have done THAT in 2 weeks!)

Being back, there are lots of exciting developments, we're soon moving to Bath into a gorgeous flat, we're both starting new jobs and we're going to be proper adults. It doesn't mean we can't continue our world travels though! The next place on the agenda is Europe (most of the Australians we spoke to have seen more of it than us), especially Paris as Megan has never been. We also hope to go skiing and one day we'll be looking into Arctic/Antarctic cruises!!

I seriously recommend a gigantic holiday to everyone, it's the best thing we've ever done. As long as it's well planned there won't be a day that you will regret.

Trip by numbers

2008-07-19T14:47:00.005+01:00

So, we are finally returning home after:

173 days

5 countries

23 destinations

14 hostels

3 hotels

7 family homes

7 train journeys

6 coach journeys

13 flights

1 really bad bike ride

a lot of ferry rides (Sydney!)

60,000+ km

40,000 (almost) miles

80 bed bug bites

1 lost iPod

2 really bad cases of sunburn

And I'll leave the last number up to your imagination (I don't like to think about it!)

...... pounds sterling!!!

Coming To The End

2008-07-19T14:12:00.002+01:00

From Sunday morning it rained non-stop all the way through to Wednesday evening, meaning we couldn't go down to the pool pr beach and there definitely wasn't much chance of going for a sail! We still enjoyed our time indoors, nice and relaxing, just watching movies, reading and going out to really nice places for lunch.

On Thursday the sun came back and we were very excited. We spent the morning down by the pool, enjoying the heat and the general happiness the sun brings! For lunch we all went out to a local Chinese, P.F. Changs, to meet with one of Gemmas good friends. This is one of the best Chinese restaurants in Naples and I can certainly agree with that, it was fantastic! On arriving back, the wind had picked up and I was itching to go for a sail and luckily Megan and Antonio were willing to come along and give it a try for the first time. Antonio came out first and really enjoyed blasting up and down, after about 15 minutes we swapped and Megan came on board. At first she didn't like it but it was just a new feeling and after a couple of minutes she was used to it and enjoyed it loads, especially when the wind picked up more and we were speeding along. Once I dropped Megan off, Antonio came on again and we decided to sail down to the pier which is about a mile or so away, we got there fine but as soon as we turned around to come back the wind completely died and we were left sitting there. We could also see a massive band of rain coming towards us so we raced as fast as we could (not fast at all!!!!) for home, it took us 40 minutes or so to get back and we just beat the rain, as soon as we beached the cat, the rain hit!

Yesterday the wind was really light all day so we didn't bother going out, instead we stayed by the water and relaxed again! We also sorted out our bags so we're pretty much packed to leave now that our time is running out. Tomorrow we will be leaving here and on Monday morning we'll be touching down in the UK for the first time in 5 and a bit months. It is sad that the trip is coming to an end because we've enjoyed it so so much and the time has absolutely flown by, but all good things must come to an end eventually. There are now other things to look forward to, a new adventure is beginning. Unfortunately for us it won;t keep that travel bug inside us satisfied for long (just means we'll have to plan lots of smaller adventures!) as it is the "real world" that awaits!!

Relaxation in the sun

2008-07-12T08:07:00.004+01:00

We've been in Naples for pretty much a week now and we've kept ourselves busy doing nothing! This final fortnight was always going to be the 'Summer Vacation' part, more of a beach holiday than we've had the rest of the time. Everywhere else we've been there has been so much to see and visit that we didn't want to waste time sunbathing, that's what our visit here was for! We've definitely enjoyed our week, mostly messing around by the pool, reading, throwing the American Football around on the beach and sunbathing.

On Wednesday we went to the Ritz Hotel for a few hours. Whilst Gemma had a personal training session we all relaxed on the beach in the searing heat. In the afternoon Antonio had a tennis lesson and Megan treated me to a pedicure in the Ritz Spa! I wasn't sure if I would like it or not but it was surprisingly pleasant. I did, however, still have to make myself feel more manly by reading 'Sports Illustrated' and other manly magazines whilst having my feet done!

On Thursday after jumping into the pool . . . . a lot, we went to the local mall where there are a variety of great shops which are so much cheaper than the UK. Here I got challenged on the topic of my manhood again as I drank a 'girly' pink drink (in my defense it was very fattening therefore not girly) and bought 'perfume' (aftershave actually!), not great since I'd only just had a pedicure!!

Yesterday we visited the Ritz again but this time for 'Para-Sailing'. This was excellent fun, Antonio was really worried but went up first and really enjoyed it, he claims he saw lots of sharks from up high but we didn't see any!

Megan and I went up together in a 'tandem' and it was really cool to be up so high and moving really fast because it really doesn't feel like you are at all. You just seem to float up there nice and gently and quietly. I was enjoying myself right up until the point that Megan thought it would be a good idea to ask me; "Do you think you'd survive a fall from all the way up here??", that freaked me out slightly as I pondered the answer!!

For the rest of the holiday I think we're on for more of the same with the addition of more water-sports. Mark is hopefully showing me how to rig his boat today so that I can take it out next week and teach Megan to sail (if she likes it!).

Dolphin

2008-07-09T14:38:00.002+01:00

Just went for an early morning walk along the beach and I saw a dolphin about 20 ft off shore. There was no-one else around on the beach and it was like it was there just for me!

Fireworks and Alligators (not at the same time though!)

2008-07-06T17:52:00.003+01:00

After our exploration into space (well, almost) we took the next few days to enjoy the peace and quiet before the kids were back. We went to the beach, played golf and a little more baseball as well as continuing to watch the tennis and football.

On Tuesday morning our 2 weeks alone were up and we went off to Miami International to pick up Lisette and the boys. We left with plenty of time to spare but by the time we'd eventually found a parking space and got lost in the maze that is Miami Airport they had arrived. It at least meant that we didn't have to wait around for ages! Everyone was very tired by the time we got them home meaning an early night for all.

For our last 2 days with the boys we had planned to take them to the cinema to see the newly

released "WALL-E" on Wednesday which we all really enjoyed and on Thursday we went to the 'Rapids' water park again. The 'Rapids' was a slight wash out, we managed to get about 4 or 5 rides in before the lightning came and everything was closed. We thought that maybe we could wait it out but there was no such luck there and after about 2 hours of sitting, waiting and hoping we decided to call it a day. It was a shame but there was nothing we could do about it!

This gave us one last day before we left and it was 4th July, Independence Day this is one of the biggest days of the American calendar so there is always a lot going on. During the day we all went to a place called 'Peanut Island' where there are beaches all the way round the small island which can only be reached by boat. To begin with the weather was beautiful, we decided to leave our stuff and go for a walk round the island. When we got pretty much as far away as possible it started to rain, heavily! Unfortunately, both Megan and I had left our towels, t-shirts, books and bags out on the beach meaning they were absolutely and horribly soaked by the time we got back to them. The storm didn't seem to be going away so after some lunch we decided to call it a day early for the second day in a row!

After eventually drying out and getting ourselves sorted we

headed out for the evening celebrations. We were taxi for the

night so dropped Lucien off at his friends sleep-over, then took

Lisette and Rene to one of her colleagues houses (mansion, more like!) before heading to downtown West Palm Beach

where we had decided to spend our evening. The celebrations here were good but I think there weren't as many people as there might have been due to the crummy weather earlier. There were lots of stalls here and a band on stage, followed by the excellent local youth orchestra who finished their set with an 'American Compilation' culminating in the National Anthem whilst a four storey high flag was unfurled on a local building by the fire department. At 9pm the

fireworks began and went on for at least 30 mins, these were as excellent as we had hoped from the 'biggest celebration in South Florida'. The traffic was relatively busy getting out of town but nowhere near as bad as we'd expected meaning we made great time doing the rounds to collect everyone again.

We had an early start on Saturday as we had a busy day planned. We were driving all the way across Florida to the west coast town of Naples which is a 3-4 hour drive in itself but we were making a detour halfway across the state to go deeper into the Everglades and go on a safari.

The area we stopped was a 'Seminole Indian Reserve' where our first port of call was the Ah-Tah-Tee-Kee Museum which gave us an interesting insight into the history of native Americans in Florida. We then went on to the 'Billie Swamp Safari' where they offer air-boat rides, swamp buggy rides and other animal shows. We went on an air boat ride first, this lasted about 20 minutes and we saw loads of alligators. At one point we went in towards some trees where there were a few hiding out but unfortunately as air boats don't have brakes we didn't exactly stop in time and got stuck in an overgrown area surrounded by about 10 'gators! The driver had to get out and try and push us away with a big pole but this was proving difficult as there were alligators apparently holding us. Eventually we got ourselves free and headed back to the jetty after being so close to the alligators that I could have leaned out and touched one, probably not recommended though!

Next up was the swamp buggy ride which took us right through the swamp and showed us a whole variety of animals including bison, water buffalo, lots of deer, pigs, wild horses and ostriches. This lasted about an hour and was really quite interesting. We were very lucky because on our return all the tours were stopped due to lightning (it's becoming quite a theme here!). We continued our drive towards Naples, eventually arriving at Gemma and Marks at about 5pm. We had a nice relaxing evening sitting out on the balcony, eating, drinking and chatting whilst overlooking the beautiful sandy beach and the Gulf of Mexico. The apartment itself is absolutely gorgeous wit lots of large windows to enjoy the amazing views, it definitely won't be a problem spending our last 2 weeks here.

Today was spent mostly watching the long, classic Wimbledon final which was made even more interesting by Megan's Spanish cousin, Antonio, being here cheering on Nadal. Unfortunately we couldn't watch all the match but "Tivo" is a great invention so we were able to record it whilst we were having a beautiful Sunday lunch with Marks brother, Steven and his wife, Claire and their (almost) 1 yr old always smiling daughter Annabel. We eventually finished watching the final at about 6pm, it really was a whole day of tennis! We finished off the day with a quick visit to the gym and swimming pool followed by some American Football on the beach with a beautiful sunset in one direction and a sea-based thunderstorm in the other!

Space Exploration

2008-06-28T09:36:00.003+01:00

This week has gone really quickly but I'm not sure how, we've not actually done that much really. Well, we've done a fair amount but only bits and pieces, not many whole day activities. We have played golf at the driving range, gone to the mall, played baseball in the practice batting cages, gone to downtown West Palm Beach, been on Safari, been to Kennedy Space Center and filled the gaps watching Wimbledon and Euro 2008!

The baseball was pretty fun, hard at first to get used to but eventually we moved up from slow speed softballs (which, by the way, are in no way soft!) to medium speed baseballs. We were pretty happy with ourselves as we both managed to hit quite a few of them. It was definitely worth trying out one of America's favourite sports, if only to find out it's harder than it looks, giving us a new found respect for baseball players!!
On Wednesday we finally went to 'Lion Country Safari', the worlds first purpose built drive through safari park. It was a nice day (not raining for once) so the animals were all out in force. We got to see many animals up close including Emus, Zebras, Giraffes, Rhinos, lots of different deer, Lions (all sleeping!), Elephants, Chimps and a cool White-Handed Gibbon who was showing off on the monkey bars!
On Thursday we went to check out downtown West Palm Beach and visited the area called City Place. It was really nice with lots of shops, restaurants and cafés in a very nice setting. It really reminded me of Dubai as it was just off a big motorway, it was all very new and very clean and looked slightly out of place. Nothing wrong with it though as overall it was a really nice area to spend the afternoon. We also checked out West Palm Beach itself and it seemed really nice, we'll probably head down there today if the weather holds up.

The main attraction this week, however, was our visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. This is only about 40 miles east of Orlando so we knew we were in for another long drive, luckily it was definitely worth the trip. The main part of our visit there was taken up by the bus tour. This has 3 stops around the huge site where you are dropped off to have a look around. Cape Canaveral itself is and island 8 times the size on Manhattan Island and it is also a wildlife reserve so it's pretty nice to drive around. We saw a few Alligators and even a Manatee whilst going between points of interest.
The first stop was at the Launch Pad Observation Gantry from where you can see Launch Pads 39A and 39B. It was pad 39A that every single Apollo mission was launched from along with most of the recent shuttle launches. The observation deck was about a mile away from the launch pad. The reason for this is safety, within 400 yards of liftoff you would be killed by the heat, within 800 yards you would still be killed . . . . by the sound! A mile is really the closest they can guarantee safety although all the family, press and V.I.P's watch from over 3 miles back.
The next stop was at the Apollo/Saturn V center where we saw some information about the original 'Space Race'. the failed attempts and how the Americans changed their mission to actually getting on the moon. Here we also saw the actual launch control room used in the Apollo missions. It wasn't even a mock up, they've actually left the original there! After watching a 'liftoff' from launch control we left and went into a big hangar containing the Saturn V rocket. It is HUUUUUUGGGGGGE, and even that is an understatement! In this room was the entire rocket, a lunar rover that they trained with and a lunar lander for moon landings. They also had information about every Apollo mission with a quote from each one including Apollo 11 - "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" and Apollo 13 - "Houston . . . . . . . We have a problem". But my favourite was from Apollo 17 as the astronaut stepped onto the moon - "Yippee, this is fun!!".
The last stop was at the International Space Station Center where anything and everything going up to the ISS is processed, sterilised and readied for its trip into space. We also got to walk through the habitation module and a laboratory that are exact replicas of what is in space right now.

Back at the visitors centre after a 4 and a bit hour tour we went on the 'Shuttle Launch Experience' which is apparently one of the most realistic simulators of a launch that you can go on without leaving the ground, pretty cool! We finished our trip off by going to the 3D IMAX and watching a film about going to and walking on the moon. This was really interesting and amazing to know that only 12 men have ever stepped foot on the moon and the most recent of these was over 30 years ago. NASA are planning to go back to the moon though in 2020 as part of their new program, the constellation program which will also involve trying to put man on Mars!

Fun Times In Orlando

2008-06-21T09:09:00.004+01:00

On Monday we thought about going to the Lion Country Safari but then had second thoughts when we realised that this meant the kids sitting in the car for a couple of hours driving slowly and not fighting. We thought this might be a bit of a push and didn't really want to test our nerves too much so instead we went and played adventure golf again! We went on the hard course this time which was pretty fun but we were held up by a few bus loads of kids on 'summer camp' programs. There weren't too many shaded places either so we spent most of our time standing in the baking sun watching a load of kids randomly smacking golf balls about! The kids enjoyed it though and that's the main thing.

Tuesday morning was spent staying out of the way as the final packing was done for Lisette and the boys' 2 weeks trip to England. Everything was OK and we got away on time to get the to the train station just before the heavens opened again! After dropping them off we headed for a quick stop at the mall for a haircut for Megan before coming back to an empty house for the next 2 weeks. As soon as we entered I thought something seemed odd and then I realised there was no dog about. I had a look around the house and eventually found him in the boys room wedged behind their bed and a toy chest. I have no idea how he got in there but he was facing the wall with not enough room to turn and it was too high behind him to back out! He'd gone in there probably because of the thunderstorm. He had also looked for other places to hide though as the computer had been knocked over and was subsequently not working. I spent the rest of the evening going around computer shops to try and fix it but to no avail. (Finally it is now working again but not all the time, stupid dog!)

Last Sunday I spoke to Mum and Dad (Fathers Day too, so good timing!) and had a good chat. I also told them about how we were thinking of going to Orlando but weren't sure because of cost. They then said that they would pay as a birthday present to me. That was awesome news and I got straight on the case trying to find the best bargains and deals. Eventually it was decided that we would go to Universal Studios and Universal's Islands of Adventure for 2 days and 1 night staying on-site at the fabulous 'Loews Royal Pacific Resort'. The hotel was a lot more expensive than some places but being on-site meant that our room key worked as an express pass for all the rides. We were going to buy some anyway so we ended up saving money by staying in a hotel more expensive and with more stars!!

We decided to go on Thursday and Friday so that we wouldn't miss any of our dancing classes (we're onto Level 3 now!). We arranged for neighbours to look after the dog, got up early and set off for Orlando at 7.30am on Thursday. The drive was about 200 miles and pretty boring but we got there sooner than we expected, arriving at just about 10am. The hotel itself was magnificent, decorated entirely as a south pacific tropical style resort. After checking in we walked through the statues, fountains and gardens down to the complimentary water taxi service to the theme parks. It was about a 5 minute ride or alternatively a 10 minute walk, proving how close we really were!

As Megan has been before we knew what we were doing and where we were going, for our first day we decided to go to 'Islands of Adventure', the more rides based of the two parks. We headed straight for 'Marvel Superhero Island' and went straight for one of the major attractions, 'The Incredible Hulk' roller coaster. We got straight on without queuing (with our room keys!) and it was fantastic, just so different from all the normal roller coasters, you're shot out at an incredible (get it?!) speed whilst you're still going up to the top, very unexpected and very cool! We were so happy with that ride that we ended up going another 4 times throughout the day. Also on the superhero island, apart from all the cool superhero shops, was 'The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman'. This was a really well done 3D ride following Spiderman around the streets of New York. In some points you really do feel like you're falling or flying, even though you're just sitting on a cart!

Onwards from here we headed through the funky looking 'Toon Lagoon', home to Betty Boop, Marmaduke and Popeye, to 'Jurassic Park'. The entrance to this area is excellent, just like the film with big arches and flames. As soon as you are in here everything changes, there are fossils and footprints on the floor, deep vegetation and animal noises all around you and of course the music playing! The actual ride is a log flume style water ride. You are taken on a ride through primeval dinosaur habitats on a nice gentle raft ride until suddenly you enter the velociraptor enclosure where the raptors have escaped and gone a bit mad. From there you go inside a building where more dinosaurs are on the loose until eventually with a T-Rex looming over you, you escape via a massive and really steep drop!

Again moving on we went to 'The Lost Continent' where the main attraction is the roller coaster called 'The Dueling Dragons'. This is two separate coasters that ride simultaneously and come within 12 inches of each other at some points, pretty scary seeing the other coaster right underneath you, especially with your feet hanging loose! After riding this one we got some lunch. It took us a long time to find somewhere that wasn't selling just hot-dogs, pizza, burgers and turkey legs. We eventually found a café in Jurassic Park where they sold some healthy stuff along with the usual crap! After lunch we thought it wouldn't be such a good idea to get straight on a ride so instead we went to a stunt show. It was aimed mainly at kids but was fairly amusing and let us sit in the shade for 45 minutes or so, always a welcome opportunity! Eventually we continued around and ended up back at the start ready to go round to the things we liked for a second time. One thing we saw that we had missed the first time was 'Popeye and Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges'. We thought it looked like a nice gentle raft ride but we were wrong . . . . . . . . very wrong! We ended up getting soaked through to the bone, lucky it was a nice hot day really!

On leaving the park at 5.30pm (just as a storm started) we went back to the hotel, checked into our gorgeous and massive room, sorted ourselves out and headed straight back out to 'City Walk', the bar/club/restaurant area of Universal. Megan took me for dinner at the Hard Rock Café which is always good, and then we found a bar called 'Rising Star', which is a karaoke bar. It sounds dodgy but this is karaoke with a difference, mainly the full live band and backing singers! It was a fun night but we were absolutely shattered after a long day, eventually getting back at about 11.30pm, full to the brim with food, drink and happiness!

Yesterday we were off to Universal Studios, the main park. We thought we'd get breakfast at about 9am and get to the parks for 9.30ish, earlier than previously. This plan backfired when it took the restaurant about 45 minutes to pour a single bowl of cereal, shocking service, we were really disappointed, this was the only bad thing about the whole hotel experience which was otherwise amazing. Eventually we got to Universal Studios for about 10.30am to start our second day of adventure! Here there are more shows and smaller rides rather than big roller coasters. The first thing we did here was go to the Shrek 4-D show which continues the story from the original Shrek film. It was pretty good with 3-D vision along with wind, water and vibration effects. From here we went to 'New York' which was really cool, you really feel like you are in old style New York streets. It was here that we stopped and watched a 'Blues Brothers' performance live on the streets. It is in New York that the 'Revenge of the Mummy' ride is located. This was a great ride, not at all what you expect, started very sedately then launching into a full on, blacked out, backwards, forwards, sideways, everywhichway roller coaster! Just a short walk from here was San Fransisco and the town of Amity where the main draw is the 'Jaws' ride . This is really old but it's a classic and quite funny to see the old and slightly rusty Jaws come and try to attack you!

The big draw at Universal Studios at the moment, at least the one they are advertising most heavily, is the new 'Simpson's Ride'. Unfortunately it didn't really live up to all the hype. It was a 'Motion Simulator' ride, ie: you sit in a car that shakes around a bit whilst you watch a big screen. It was OK but definitely not as good as we had hoped. It replaced the 'Back To The Future' ride and Megan (who has now been on both) says it was exactly the same ride, just re-themed. The outside of the ride was pretty cool though, they even had a Kwik-E-Mart and a Squishee stand!

We finished our rides off on the E.T. ride, like Jaws it is really old but pretty funny so we enjoyed that! After walking through 'Hollywood' and 'Rodeo Drive' we went to the giant 'Universal Studios Store', had a look around, waited out a 45 minute down pour and then headed back home, eventually back at 9.30pm. A good two days had by both of us, a great birthday present!

P.S. Sorry it's such a long blog!

Stormy Weather

2008-06-15T16:03:00.003+01:00

I can't believe we've been in America for almost 2 weeks now, it's gone so quickly but I guess that's what happens when you're looking after kids! The American way of life isn't too different from the English and therefore pretty easy to adapt to. The main difference here is in terms of money and also different names for things. Everything here is so cheap for us compared to the UK, the food, the clothes, even activities and attractions. It;s great but to start with I kept forgetting about the exchange rate and assuming everything was the same as sterling. The depressing thing was that most things are the same price in dollars as they would be in pounds (ie: something that's 10 pounds in the UK is probably around $10 over here!). This has been good for us as we haven't had to worry too much about what we do or buy.

As I mentioned, the other major difference is the different names for things. We played a game with Réné where we tried to come up with as many as possible and there are quite a few everyday words that change. It's pretty bad but both of us are already using some of them as it;s just easier than explaining ourselves to the kids every time! One of the best ones though happened on Friday as we were driving with Lisette. As they're going away soon I wanted to make sure I knew where the nearest petrol station was, so I asked. She told us where it was but Réné shouted that there was one just by the house. He was adamant that there was a petrol station by the house. Lisette laughed and asked him if he knew what a petrol station was and he eventually admitted that he didn't. When I asked him what he thought petrol might be the answer was a classic; "A type of dog??", not quite!

Since I last wrote, the weather has been very unpredictable making it hard to plan stuff to do. On Wednesday we were just going to stay home and play but Lisette needed the car on Thursday so we decided to change plans and go to the Lion Country Safari. We got most of the way there and hit a massive storm, the rain was so hard I had windscreen wipers on full and I had slowed right down but still couldn't see a lot. We made the executive decision that the animals wouldn't be out in that sort of weather so we'd be better off going another day. We headed back home (where it wasn't raining) and stuck with our original plan of staying there all day.

Thursday morning we got the news that my Aunt, Martine had finally succumbed to the cancer she had been fighting for the last few months and had dies overnight at the age of 44. This obviously meant an emotional day and left us not wanting to do anything at all. Lisette had taken the car to work anyway and luckily we didn't have any plans.
To cheer ourselves up on Friday we took the boys to a waterpark near here, 'Rapids Waterpark'. We arrived at about 11am and we could see huge amounts of rain in the distance as we went on our first slide. We hoped it wouldn't come our way but it did just that, with a couple of lightning bolts just as we got to the front of the queue for our first big ride. All water attractions were closed meaning pretty much everyone went and got lunch at the same time. Just as we finished our meals we heard that staff were watching the storm on radar and had to wait until it was 5 miles away but that would be in 10 minutes time. We decided that was a good time to head to the rides and they all opened just as we put our towels back on the beds, perfect timing! The rest of the day until about 5pm was spent enjoying all the rides and the sunshine. We had a really good day and 2 very tired boys by the end!

Yesterday we planned to go to the beach but once again the weather had plans of its own, raining hard from about 8am right through to the afternoon. The boys were both off with their "Mentors" (kind of like adult friends, someone to talk to and hang out with that isn't a parent or teacher) so the house was quiet and we enjoyed some time off. Megan by reading and me by watching Euro 2008 on ESPN!!

Another relatively quiet day is planned today as they're all getting ready to go to the UK on Tuesday but tomorrow we're going to try the Lion Country Safari again! We're also now trying to think of things to do whilst we're on our own here. We're thinking of visiting the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral and we're also toying with the idea of a visit to a theme park in Orlando. A long way for a day trip but I think it could be worth it. (Just after writing this Mum and Dad have said that they will reimburse me for a trip to Orlando, 2 days theme parks and an overnight stay as my birthday present!! YAY!!! Thanks!!!)

Florida

2008-06-10T14:49:00.003+01:00

For the second time in 2 days, Wednesday saw us cross a country from West to East, in fact it is the second time in 2 days that we have actually crossed a continent! We got up nice and early to get to the airport in time to get through all the rigorous security checks that are now commonplace in America. We got through with plenty of time and went to 'Chili's' for breakfast. Only in America could I have a choice of burritos or tacos for breakfast! The 5 hour flight was pretty turbulent but passed easily enough, we're so used to long journeys now! On arriving early at Miami we eventually managed to find my Aunt Lisette and her two boys (Lucien, 11 and Réné, 8) outside and drove to their place near West Palm Beach which is about an hour or so north of Miami itself. Wednesday evening Lisette took us for a little drive around the local area of Lake Worth, showing us the lake, shops and the beach where we were just in time for a nice sunset, complete with cool pink clouds!

For the next 2 days we had some time to ourselves as the boys were still at school and Lisette was working. We took the opportunity to chill out after all our travelling and check out the local mall and cinema ("Sex and the City" if you must know!!). On Saturday Lisette had a wedding to go to so we had our first day looking after the boys and I had my first time driving a car in America! Lisette has a massive Ford 4x4 which is automatic and real easy to drive so I was pretty happy driving around. We went off to a local swimming pool where some of Lucien's friends were celebrating the end of school for summer. It was a nice day, the sun was out in force and the kids enjoyed the pool, we ended up getting back at about 3pm when the heat got a little bit too much for itself and the clouds started to look ominous as is typical for Florida!

Exactly the same happened the next day when we were at the beach, the clouds started to build up out at see and you can see them moving in. We got off the beach just as they came overhead but this wasn't until about 4pm so we still had a pretty long day of sun, sand and sea!

On Monday Lucien and Lisette were visiting Lucien's new middle school, a specialised (ridiculously hard to get into) performing arts school where Lucien is part of the "Band School" playing the flute. This meant that we looked after Réné, spending most of the day playing games, throwing a ball about and going for a ride around the lake which he didn't want to do because it's "boring" but he actually enjoyed in the end!

When Lisette got back we took the car and took Réné to the cinema, the only possible way to shut him up talking about "Kung Fu Panda"! It wasn't too bad actually but I'm sure he enjoyed it more than us. In the evening we went and joined Lisette on a night of dancing, one of her hobbies. It was a salsa class, Cuban style, which we both really enjoyed passing our Level 1. There are 10 levels (which Lisette has completed!) so now we can go back and continue up the ladder which hopefully we'll do over the next couple of weeks.

Today we took the boys to play mini-golf just up the road which was pretty fun. Megan and I drew with joint top scores of 1 over par. Today has been the worst weather-wise and we are currently sitting in a tornado-warning! This came on pretty suddenly as only 30 minutes ago I was outside in the sun playing basketball with Réné! I'm not sure what we're doing tomorrow but hopefully Thursday we'll go to the Lion Country Safari which is a drive through safari park and on Friday we're going to the local water park which the boys love and are very excited about!

Goodbye Australia, Hello America!!

2008-06-03T21:02:00.005+01:00

To say goodbye to Perth and Australia in general, Megan decided she wanted to take me out for an 'Australian Meal'. After looking around for a while we decided there was nowhere really typically Australian so we went for a 'Swedish' instead! It was a really good restaurant and I was happy to see that they offered a 'Smorgasbord', buffet style meal. We both wholeheartedly took them up on this offer, it's not everyday that you leave Australia! After dinner, a few drinks and a chat about what we liked in Australia, we headed back to the hostel and set the alarm for the stupid hour of 1.45am and went to sleep.

Not too many hours later we were woken up ready for our marathon day of journeying across continents. As we were connecting from our Perth-Sydney flight straight onto a Sydney-L.A. flight we had to check in internationally to begin with in Perth. This meant us arriving 2 hours before the flight (as instructed by Qantas only a couple of days ago), but when we turned up no-one had even got to work yet! We were left sitting around for a while wondering why exactly it is that you have to check in earlier for internationals than domestics . . . . . . we still haven't come up with a good answer. We both managed to fill our time though, Megan by labelling every single one of our bags and me by helping a lady download files from her laptop to her phone. She'd been trying for 6 hours and I did it in about 10 minutes!

The flight itself was fairly short at just over 4 hours, 3 of which Megan slept soundly through whilst I sat and watched films . . . . . again! On arrival in Sydney we were lucky enough to be on the correct side (again!) to see a good view out the window. We flew in with a spectacular view of Sydney Harbour and the city. The weather was crap but at least there was a good (final) view of Australia. We didn't have to wait long at Sydney Airport before we boarded the jumbo that would be hauling us across to America.

One of the strangest things about our trip was that we crossed the International Date Line going from west to east. This meant that we were transported back in time to start the day all over again. We were in the strange scenario of simultaneously having the shortest and the longest day of our lives! It was the shortest because we boarded and took off from Perth in the dark and saw sunrise well on our way to Sydney, then promptly jumped on an even faster plane to try and get back to the darkness as quickly as possible (for us on Perth time it was dark by about 1pm!). And it was the longest day because we crossed the International Date Line therefore making us start over again pretty much. In theory (sorry if this confuses you, I'm incredibly tired and jet lagged writing this, it might not be true but it's how I'm seeing it at the moment!!!) we left the comfort of our beds at 2am 3rd June and are now going to bed at 9pm 3rd June (not such a long day) but in reality it is now 10am, maybe even later, 4th June for us. A confusingly long day!

The best thing about our flight was the people watching opportunity. People watching is great normally but in a confined space for 13 hours it can be pretty funny. For example the guy across the aisle from me who went for the tactic of sleeping for the entire journey aided by no less than 6 mini bottles of wine (they have almost 2 glasses in each!). This made it quite comical when the girl sitting next to him needed to go to the loo which, unfortunately for her, was quite often. He wouldn't wake up and she had to use immense gymnastic skills to get past without booting him in the face. The guy next to Megan slept the whole way but with really loud jazz music playing through his headphones, plus he looked dead. But the real winners were the 2 in the row behind us. They didn't know each other at the start of the journey but boy did they by the end!! There was a spare seat between them but that didn't last for long as they got chatting and the guy invited the girl across for a drink. Long story short, the both got incredibly pissed and snogged the rest of the flight away in a very unattractive, noisy manner. Most amusing!

When we had arrived in L.A. and cleared security we got to our airport hotel, the Radisson LAX and checked in. It;s a bit special here. We have an amazing room with 2 double beds, en-suite obviously and loads of space. Not quite like the rooms we're used to, it got us imagining how our trip would have been if we stayed somewhere like that the whole time! We decided that we had time to do one thing whilst in L.A. so we made that a trip to Hollywood! A taxi there cost us $50, it wasn't as close as we had thought, but it was worth it. We walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard, saw the "Walk of Fame" stars and the sign on the Hollywood Hills. We even got in a bit of shopping. For our trip back we decided against the $50 cab and instead got $2.50 train tickets! It took ages longer but it was definitely worth it to save the money. We're up early again tomorrow as our flight has been moved 45 minutes earlier and also because LAX are so fussy we have to check in 90 minutes before a domestic flight. The alarm is set for 5am, fun times!!

Torchlight Prison Tour

2008-05-31T09:01:00.003+01:00

Yesterday we went back to Fremantle and after sampling some fresh seafood for dinner we went to Fremantle Prison which sells itself as one of Western Australia's most fascinating and significant cultural attractions. Convicts first came to the Swan Valley in 1850 to help build the infrastructure for the Swan River Colony. They built lots of local road, bridges and government buildings but their first task was to construct the 'Convict Establishment' in which they would be held, Fremantle Prison. The impressive limestone building was completed in the late 1800's and was used as a maximum security prison all the way up to 1991.

We were going on a night-time 'torchlight tour' so were met by our guide, Matthew, at 7.45pm. He was an excellent guide and could really tell a good story, always handy on a spooky tour! We started off in the prisoner registration and processing area before turning on our torches, walking through the shower block and out into the main parade ground. From here you can see the hundreds of windows where over a thousand prisoners were once held. After a couple of stories we went into the first cell block. It is a really spooky feeling being inside, it was very dark and looking up there were 3 levels of thick doors, railings and netting. Matthew then told us a story about how a woman had been in there on her own one night and had looked up and seen the figure of a man standing on the very top balcony looking like he was screaming. She ran straight outside and through her tears told the tour guide what she had seen. The guide told her about a convict in the 1800's that couldn't take being in the prison any longer and had thrown himself off that very balcony. All the way through this story I was expecting something to jump out at us or a weird noise to make us jump but there was nothing. As Matthew finished his story I let my guard down just as he said "and if we all look up there" pointing his torch towards the top balcony. Just then there was a massive bang, a piercing scream and a body came tumbling down from the balcony. Obviously I almost crapped myself, screamed like a girl and shoved my head into Megan's shoulder! Looking back up I could clearly see that it was just a dummy but even though I had been expecting something all the way through I definitely wasn't ready for that! Luckily I wasn't the only one that jumped, Megan thought for a split second that someone had actually tripped and gone over the edge and the other 20 or so people in our group must have thought the same!

From then on we were slightly more on our guard and weren't quite as shocked (I still jumped and shouted) when a man jumped out of one of the solitary confinement cells we were being shown. These were tiny cells with 2 lots of doors, extra thick walls and only the tiniest holes as windows. Prisoners would spend 23 hours a day in here, alone.
We were then shown the gallows where 44 people were executed in the time that the prison was operating. This was quite weird to know that 44 lives were ended in that one small room. We also heard the last sound that each of those people would have ever heard, the trapdoor opening. A horrible noise.

It was about the gallows that we heard possibly the scariest, spookiest story of the night. It was a daytime tour and a mother was going round with a very young child in a pram. All the way round the baby had been screaming and crying, definitely not enjoying it. When they eventually got to the gallows she waited outside so as not to disrupt everyone and when most people had left the room she went in with the tour guide to have a quick look. On entering, the baby quietened down for the first time that day and as she pushed the pram right in the baby even started smiling. It reached its little hand up towards the rope with a hangman's noose on the end and still smiling said its first ever words. "Bye bye, Bye bye."

Now that is probably the spookiest, most weird, scary story I've heard in a long time. Made even spookier by it being told to us whilst sitting in a darkened chapel with only torchlight around the place! All in all it was a fantastic tour. It wasn't just scary stories but also interesting historical facts about the prison, the convicts and the general area. They do other tours during the day but I'm glad that as we were only going to do one tour, we did this one.

Perth and "The Valley of Taste"

2008-05-29T04:15:00.003+01:00

On Saturday we continued our westward journey and travelled another 3,725 km from Alice to Perth. This means that in the space of 4 days we travelled around 7,000 km by plane, coach and 4WD (plus about 15 km on foot!!). It's amazing to think that's all in one country, it's the equivalent of driving from London to Edinburgh and back 5 and a bit times!! It was the fourth day in a row that we'd been up before sunrise too, I thought this was meant to be a holiday?!!

The reception staff at the Heavitree Lodge had been pretty useless most of the time we were there and they proved in perfectly on Saturday morning. I had booked our airport shuttle bus through them on Friday evening but they forgot to send a fax through so the bus never arrived to pick us up, meaning we had to wait even longer for a taxi to turn up. Luckily we still arrived with enough time to get our flight and they paid for it for us which is fair enough because it was their fault. Our flight was nice and easy, we flew over Uluru which was really great to see from the only angle we hadn't already seen on our walk! We were even on the correct side of the plane to see it from.

When we arrived in Perth (in the rain!) we checked into our new hostel, the Perth City YHA. It is our first YHA experience and we were pleasantly surprised, it's very nice and not too expensive. We were pretty tired so didn't want to do anything major, instead finding the nearest cinema and crashing out in front of the newly released 'Indiana Jones'! A nice chilled start to Perth.

Sunday saw us head off on the 30 minute train ride to the local town of Fremantle, or Freo as the locals call it (why must the Australians shorten EVERYTHING? They don't even call the MCG its full name, they call it 'The G'!! Seriously, if anyone knows please let me in on that one!!), which is a harbour side town with lots of fishing boats still working from there. On the weekends they run markets here so we spent most of the day just wandering around enjoying the town, the stalls and the fresh local produce. When we were down by the waterfront there were lots of people standing by the waters edge obviously all watching something. Not being ones to turn down a free show we headed down to see what was going on and it turned out that there were a few dolphins just frolicking in the water a matter of metres from the shore!

Monday was a nice, sunny day which we enjoyed whilst not doing anything in particular. We strolled around the city and headed for King's Park, to get to it we had to climb 300 or so steps but it was worth it. From the top there is a great view of the city and the Swan River which was made even better by the sun being out. We spent a while in the park just relaxing, reading and chatting before heading to an outlet shopping centre, 'Harbour Town'. There were lots of shops here and quite a few sales, not wanting to miss out I ended up buying 3 polo shirts for $15, bargain!

One of the main things Western Australia is famous for is its superb wines and this was what we had in mind for Tuesday. We booked ourselves onto a cruise and Swan Valley tour. The day was beautiful , really warm and only a few clouds, perfect for a morning cruise up the river towards "The Valley of Taste". We left at 9.45 and started our day with tea, coffee, muffins and great views of the city before the wine was brought out at about 10.30. After 'modelling' one of the 4 bottles for everyone on the boat we got a short class in wine tasting, learning the 6 S's.

1. Size (what the wine looks like)
2. Swirl
3. Sniff
4. Sip
5. Swish (around in your mouth)
6. Swallow (you could spit if you want but where's the fun in that?)

Once we'd tried these 4 wines we were definitely getting into the spirit of things and ready to visit some wineries.

When we got off the boat we were met by our jolly guide, Gerry who took us off to four family run wineries. First stop was 'Garbin Estate Wines' where we tried about 12 different wines. This was great as I now know which wines are my favourite. In the whites, Chenin Blanc and Verdelho were my favourite grapes and from the reds the Cabernet-Merlot was beautiful. At least in restaurants now I can have some idea of what to choose rather than just asking for 'House White'! Leaving here we walked through the vineyards to the largest producer of sparkling wine in Australia, 'Jane Brook Estate Wines' where we had a lovely lunch platter with cheeses, hams, veg and oven baked fresh bread. We had time to sample a couple more wines here including the unusual white port. After a brief visit to a nougat factory we went to 'Jarrah Ridge Wines' where we had some of the best Port I've ever tasted. We bought 2 bottles at a special cellar door price it was that good. Our last winery was the 'Edgecombe Bros Winery' where we tried a few more wines and had a cheese platter. This wasn't an amazingly special winery but I'm not going to complain! Our last stop was a brief one at the 'Margaret River Chocolate Company' with some free tastings here too.
The whole day was great fun and pretty good value at $120 each (around 60 pounds). I'm very glad we went and sampled the local produce and I even learnt a little bit about wine!

This morning we took ourselves off to Australias oldest working Mint, Perth Mint, and saw a gold pouring demonstration as well as lots of samples of gold nuggets, bars, bullions and coins! It was pretty cool to see all that gold, we even got to see what our weight in gold is at today's market price. Next time someone says that I'm "worth my weight in gold" (which doesn't happen very often!) I can tell them that is around $3,200,000, almost a million dollars more expensive than Megan. I was very happy with this until she said that she could just feed me up and trade me in for a nice little sum!!

Tomorrow we're off to Fremantle again for a 'nice seafood dinner' (that quote is for you Adam. . . . . ) and a night-time tour of the Fremantle Prison, Saturday we're going to a science exhibition and then after that we only have 2 days left in Australia!! NOOOOOOO!!!!

Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park

2008-05-23T11:46:00.004+01:00

Whilst in England we booked our outback tour through STA Travel so this is something that has been planned and we've been looking forward to for a long time. We chose to go on a 2 day Uluru and Kata-Tjuta Camping Safari. We were picked up yesterday morning at 6.30 from the hostel and we joined the 11 other people that were on our tour. Uluru is situated 440km south-west (ish) of Alice Springs so we were in for quite a drive. After a stop at a camel farm and a couple of roadhouses on the long straight desert roads we arrived at the permanent campsite at 'Yulara', the Ayers Rock Resort. From a distance we could see the mighty Uluru and the impressive Kata-Tjuta and we couldn't wait to get closer and have a proper look. (If you don't know Kata-Tjuta, it used to be called the 'Olgas', have a look on the net, its really something special).

We didn't have to wait long as after lunch we jumped back in our 4WD coach and drove the 50km to Kata-Tjuta. Kata-Tjuta means 'many heads' in the local language and we could see why, we got some great views of the 32 domed rocks as we drove around to a parking spot. From here we walked into the Walpa Gorge, formed between the largest dome, Mt. Olga and a neighbouring dome. We walked this with our tour guide, Nick, who gave us some informative little talks along the way about how it was formed, wildlife and aboriginal beliefs. It was a beautiful day with the temperature sitting at around 27C in the sun but dropping dramatically in the shade. This massive heat change is one of the reasons for the massive erosion, the rocks crack after such strains over long periods, eventually forming the incredible shapes and formations we see today. It was really great to be in amongst the huge rocks, all around you are just massive red walks and then looking out and seeing nothing but arid land as far as the eye could see was really strange. After coming out from the middle of the rocks we retreated to a lookout point to see the whole formation together. We left here at about 5.15pm and made our way to the Uluru sunset lookout point.

Here, some nibbles and wine were laid out for us ready to watch the amazing changing colour display on the massive rock. What we saw is difficult to put into words but it was an incredible sight. The colour changing from an ochre brown through to a red then bright orange. The sort of sight that most have seen in pictures but now having seen it for myself, those pictures don't do it justice! It was an incredible feeling to stand and watch something so famous across the world for myself. Once the sun had set and it actually got dark we went back to Yulara and had a BBQ under the stars and around the campfire. After a few glasses of wine and a really long chat with our tour guide (we've made ourselves a friend there!) it was definitely time for bed!!

This morning we were off to get close up to Uluru and see the sun rise. We were leaving camp at 6.20am so had to get up at around 5am (again!!) to make sure that everything was ready and we were all fed and watered. We had three options this morning;

1. Climb the rock
2. Watch the sunrise from the dedicated viewing area
3. Walk around the entire base of Uluru whilst the sun comes up.

We decided to go for option 3 and started the 8km walk at 7am. The sun rose at 7.20am and was absolutely spectacular. This was much better than sunset, partly because we were now so close to the rock, but also the way we went from darkness with stars, the moon and a big black rock to the brightest, most vivid orange imaginable in the space of just a few minutes. Once again, a very difficult thing to put into words, especially for someone so inarticulate as me, but in a word incredible. We continued our walk and loved it, we got to see that it isn't smooth at all, there are so many different features and different types of rock. We got to see that it is also nowhere near the uniform shape that we had imagined. There are massive gulleys and valleys present, it's not just round. We eventually completed our walk at 9am at the start of the climb. We took the decision not to climb as the Anangu (the local traditional owners) request that people don't. This site is sacred to them (and I can now really see why) and only certain initiated men are meant to climb and even then only on very special occasions. Over 35 people have died and many more have been injured on the climb yet people still do it. I think this is incredibly disrespectful. If you went to someones home and they asked you to take your shoes off before you came in you'd do it straight away as it is they're home, they're the boss and it's just polite. It is the same situation here. The Anangu own the rock officially (it was handed back by the government in the 80's), they ask people not to climb it yet some still do. After a few more stories about aboriginal beliefs of how the landscape was formed and a final short walk with Nick we headed to the cultural centre (which was really interesting) and then back to camp.

From here we had a 6 hour trip back to Alice but it went very quickly and easily. It is a shame that our trip here was so short but we did and saw everything we wanted to and had the best time. Also, our beds were comfy, all our food was sorted for us and it was brilliantly organised and guided by Nick. I'm glad we paid a little extra and went on a proper tour than a cheap, budget backpacker one. We didn't have to worry about anything but enjoying the amazing experience of exploring Uluru and Kata-Tjuta.

Melbourne to Alice Springs

2008-05-21T12:17:00.001+01:00

For our last day in Melbourne we had decided that we had to do the incredibly 'english backpacker' thing of going on the 'Neighbours' tour. We didnt really know what to expect but thought it would probably be quite tacky. We were not mistaken, it was very cheesy and the most horribly touristy thing we've done so far on the trip! We aren't complaining though as it was actually quite fun. First off we went to 'Erinsborough High School' (otherwise known as Blackburn English Language School) which neither of us actually recognised at all. We then went on to 'Ramsay Street' (Pin Oak Court in real life) which was a lot smaller looking in real life! This is a real street with real people living in all the houses (most of the have been there since the start) and because of this there is a security guard posted there 24/7 to keep tourists off their private property. The official tour takes 35,000 people there every year and an estimated 10,000 or more people visit on their own too!
The final part of the tour was going to the studios and meeting a star. Unfortunately they were filming so we didn't get to see around the studios which could have been interesting. Instead we met Jackie Woodburne who plays Susan Kennedy, in the car park . . . . . . classy! After a short while taking photos and signing autographs it was the end of the tour. Quite a fun, but very cheesy afternoon and finish to our stay in Melbourne.

Today we got up nice and early and got to the airport for our 2,500 km journey into the centre of the country (almost exactly), Alice Springs. Only one piece of drama at the airport . . . . . . Megan got caught trying to smuggle a knife onto the plane! She had accidentally left a butter knife in the front pouch of her bag from the picnic we had way back in the Blue Mountains!! It was the first time she has taken that bag on a plane since Dubai so hadn't needed to check it for things like that before, unlucky!

After checking into the 'Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge' we went into town and had a look around. For a town with a population of almost 30,000 it still has a very small town feel and that is definitely a good thing. There is just one main mall here which doesn't take long to walk up, we spent most of our time in the traditional aboriginal art galleries (that's the art that is traditional, not the galleries!!) and even bought 3 original pieces.

Alice Springs sits surrounded by the Macdonnell Ranges and our hostel is right at the bottom of the ranges in the only gap through them (you guessed it, the 'Heavitree' Gap) with a great rocky outlook. One of the local animals is the Black-Footed Rock Wallaby and lots of these come out in the evening into the hostel car park. We bought a bag of wallaby food and went down and hand fed them. None of them were shy and within seconds we were surrounded by wallabies all trying to get the food! It was a really weird experience as they'd grab your hand and pull it towards them to get food. We also saw a few wallabies with Joey's sticking their little heads (and occasionally arms too!) out of the pouches. That was really cool to see and a good start to our few short days in the outback!

A Perfect Day in Melbourne

2008-05-20T07:24:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was one of the best complete days we have had on the trip so far, we both really really enjoyed ourselves. Yes, the BridgeClimb was better but we didn't do anything in the morning and obviously watching turtles hatch was so unique and special but we spent all day waiting. Yesterday was about the whole day as an experience.

The hostel has been advertising a free walking tour of the city and we thought we might as well go along even though we've walked around a lot and if it was no good we would have just left, but it was great!! There was a group of 9 of us and the tour guide and she took us round town showing us all the main sights but also the little alleys and lanes, the hidden bars and shops, the graffiti and quirky artwork, and the free views of the city. There are so many hidden gems in the city, you just have to know where to look! If you are ever going to Melbourne, I would say that you HAVE to do a walking tour, it's got to be the only way to see the real city.

Our tour started in the dirty looking alleyway directly opposite our hostel which we've waked past several times and we were shown a piece of graffiti here by the famous graffiti artist, Banksy. It is one of the only pieces he's done in Australia and it was so close to us! (If you don't know who Banksy is then look him up, he's very interesting and a bit of a legend!!) The council are so proud of it and want to keep it so much that they have now added the building it is on into the National Trust, they have also added the alleyway to the National Trust! We were then taken down some more graffitied lanes that we would have usually walked past without a second thought. These are lanes that people are actually encouraged to graffiti on and there is some amazing art there! When there are special events in Melbourne the council goes to these lanes and whitewashes over all the graffiti then specially commissions graffiti artists to do some really good stuff as they know it is a tourist attraction and they want it to look good! I think this is a good idea, definitely better than trying to ban it altogether.

After this we saw some more great stuff including the smallest café in Melbourne and the smallest gallery in Melbourne. We also saw some fantastic old buildings displaying mosaic floors and ceilings painted with gold. We saw the largest and second largest mosaic floors in all of Australia, the first shopping mall in Melbourne and the most hidden bar in Melbourne. The last thing we were shown on the tour before we had to leave was the view from the 35th floor toilets in the Sofitel Hotel. The loo's have floor to ceiling glass walls and you can see all the sports stadiums and in the distance the 'Great Dividing Range'. The main room with a view is a members only area but the toilets are public, a great tip for a free view for backpackers!!

After our tour it was time for my special treat to Megan. Whilst in Tasmania I booked and paid for a special dinner on the 'Colonial Tramcar Restaurant'. This is a really fancy, nice meal on a modified tramcar, whilst travelling around the city. It was great food, all inclusive wine and drinks and all in all a very odd, but great experience! This left at 5.45pm and got back at about 7.15pm. We were dropped off right by the Crown Casino in South Melbourne and as Megan hadn't been in a casino before we thought we'd take a look. It was absolutely massive inside with 3 floors of casino, loads of bars and restaurants and hundreds of 'pokies' (slot machines). It was great to have a look round and what was even better was that we found and acoustic duo playing in one of the bars. They were great and were playing lots of songs that people requested so we decided to shout out a few ourselves. If one of them knew it they would play and the other one would just pick it up and strum along. After their second set they came over to us and thanked us for our good requesting, they seemed to enjoy playing what we kept shouting out, we were apparently their 'creative consultants' for the evening! We got chatting them for quite a while and they were really nice guys and great musicians. We had got there at about 8pm and didn't leave until about 11.15pm, if they were playing longer then we probably would have stayed! It was a really great end to one of the best days.

Sport and Video Games - A Mans Heaven?

2008-05-18T20:04:00.003+01:00

Our entire weekend was spent watching sport and playing video games, does it get any better? Saturday morning was horrible weather, grey and raining, and it didn't look like stopping. This obviously wasn't going to change our plans (we're British for goodness sake!!) but it did 'dampen' our spirits (see what i did there?!) slightly. By early afternoon it was still raining so we donned our warm clothes, took out the umbrella, readied ourselves with our 'emergency travelling ponchos' and off we went. It was definitely, without a doubt, the coldest weather we've been in since we left the UK in January. It was that cold that we could see our breath! We were very worried on our way to the MCG that we would be sitting in the rain but it seems we were very lucky as we were one of the few rows that was covered. All the people who were meant to be sitting in the rain ended up standing at the back undercover! The constant rain made the match interesting and quite amusing with both sides dropping the ball, falling over and sliding around the pitch. I started the match as a complete neutral, not supporting either Richmond Tigers or Geelong Cats, applauding all plays and generally enjoying the Aussie Rules. But by the second quarter I had chosen my allegiance. Not by who was playing better, not by which colour I liked best but because I had a really, really annoying Geelong Cats fan next to me!! She was the screechiest woman I've ever heard, screaming (literally, screaming) at everything and I decided; 'I don't want to be associated with her!'. From then on we supported the Richmond Tigers who, after a good start, got smashed by Geelong! I'm glad we went to a match again, it was a completely different experience to when we watched in Sydney, especially the weather! The MCG was great too, it looked really empty with fans scattered about everywhere but it turned out there were 35,000 people there! It is just odd as the stadium can hold over 100,000 so it is very difficult to make it look busy!

In the evening we headed off at about 10pm to the Turf Bar to get ourselves settled in and ready to watch the FA Cup Final, Pompey vs Cardiff. The closer it got to kick off the more nervous I got, sinking my drinks quicker and quicker to try and calm my nerves! By midnight (kick off time here) the pub was surprisingly full but most in there were supporting Cardiff. The game itself wasn't great, the goal was a bit crappy and we missed some good chances but I think that sums up our FA Cup run this year so it was only fitting that's how we won it! I was obviously very happy, slightly tipsy and definitely ready for bed by the time we got back at 2.30am!

After a lazy start on Sunday we eventually got ourselves up and out and went and explored a couple of Melbournes laneways in search of a café for brunch. This wasn't a hard challenge, there are loads of cafés, the challenge was finding one that wasn't heaving! We eventually found a nice little one still serving breakfast, just what we needed. The main attraction of the day was an exhibition at the ACMI, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, in Federation Square called 'Game On'. This was an exhibition charting the development and progression of video games and consoles through the years from 1951 when it first began up to the present day. This is in Lonely Planets Top 10 things to do in Melbourne and for good reason, it was really good fun and cheap too! Megan enjoyed it too and was in no way dragged along! They had over 125 playable games including classics like Pong, Pacman and Space Invaders and Megan shamed me by beating me on every single game we played (except Ms. Pacman!!)! We spent a good few hours here playing on every console imaginable. All of them were working, even the original space invaders machines that are older than both of us, the only console that wasn't working was the PS3, the newest and apparently best of the lot!!

Leaving Tassie

2008-05-17T06:56:00.001+01:00

On Tuesday we visited the third oldest city in Australia, Launceston, and its surrounds. Just 10 minutes outside the city is the Cataract Gorge which is where two smaller rivers come together to form the larger Tamar River. Having been to Low Head and seen the end of the Tamar it was only fitting that we went to Cataract Gorge to see the start! It was a gorgeous day and the gorge looked beautiful, especially now as the leaves are all turning amazing colours and just about falling off. Autumn is definitely a good time of year here. We went for a walk around the gorge and across the very wobbly suspension bridge, an odd experience! We then took a chairlift ride across the water to see the view from on high. It was so nice, also really silent, a great way to see the Tasmanian nature. This chairlift is also the worlds longest single span chairlift, i.e: the longest gap between two supporting poles, so that's pretty cool too! When we left here we had a quick look around Launceston but there wasn't a great deal there to interest us, except Australia's oldest sweet shop! You can easily tell that the buildings are very old if you look up but down at street-level they've all been made into normal shops with no regard to the heritage of the building, a shame really.

On Wednesday and Thursday we just chilled out and packed our bags before our Thursday flight. Thursday was really foggy in the morning and it delayed a lot of flights, but luckily not ours! The flight that was meant to leave 2.5 hours before us ended up leaving after us instead!

Once we were back in Melbourne we made our way into the city and found the 'Greenhouse Backpackers' where we were booked. It is a pretty big hostel with good communal areas but the rooms are very basic. The only really bad thing is that the walls are really thin (earplugs essential!) and there is no window in our room meaning that you don't wake up slowly with the light coming in. If I left Megan she'd probably sleep all day its so dark! We spent Thursday afternoon getting our bearings and sorting ourselves out with food for the entire time we're here.

Yesterday, Friday, saw us get stuck into what Melbourne is good for, shopping!! We walked a long way round the city, taking in big department stores, small independent stores and other in between before eventually getting to a Melbourne institution, the Queen Victoria Markets. These were massive and had pretty much everything you could imagine. There were all varieties of cooked foods and deli goods through to amazing fruit and veg stalls ending up with the rows upon rows of general retail. They were selling everything from tacky souvenirs to designer goods. This kept us out of trouble for a couple of hours before we carried on our trek of the city to go to the DFO which is the Direct Factory Outlet to continue our Melbourne shopping experience! We walked a fair few miles around town which definitely can't be bad for us.

Today is our day of sport, we are going to the famous MCG to watch some AFL and then going to the 'Turf Bar' (where we have actually been the last 2 nights) to watch Portsmouth vs Cardiff in the FA Cup Final which kicks off at midnight! Unfortunately I've just looked outside and its grey, horrible and hacking down with rain, not good to be sitting outside and watching sport!!

STA Explorer

2008-05-17T01:13:00.003+01:00

I have been approached by a new STA Travel website, www.STAtravelbuzz.com, to become an STA Explorer. Basically its a site which is great for getting to hear other peoples travel stories and what places are really like and they want to feature my blog so that other people can see what we're getting up to. It's great for me because now I feel like I'm helping people along with enjoying myself!

So if you are reading this blog for the first time and you've been redirected from the new STA site, welcome!! Enjoy reading about our experiences and I hope that you find some of our information enjoyable as well as useful. Use the tools on the right to search for specific places or dates or just scroll through the site and browse away.

Enjoy!

Tassie Devils and Glowing Caves

2008-05-12T15:07:00.003+01:00

After the foggy start to Saturday, the weather cleared up nicely and we were told that we were being taken to Mole Creek to see some Tasmanian Devils. We had only seen one before at Australia Zoo and that was only for a short while before it decided that it was time for another nap. This time we saw lots, they are very strange animals, a weird cross between dogs, cats and bears! They're also nothing at all like the cartoon character, I have no idea where they got that from! The wildlife park we were in was actually very poor and in shocking condition. Happily the animals were all fine and looked very healthy, active and well fed but the place itself looked pretty run-down and disorganised.

On leaving here we went to the incredible Marakoopa Caves, in the shadow of the famous Cradle Mountain. There are 2 cave tours here and the one we went on was a 45-minute tour of the lower chamber featuring 2 underground rivers, reflecting pools of crystals and thousands upon thousands of stalactites and stalagmites. The final part of the tour involved switching off all the lights in the main chamber. Pretty cool in itself as it was pitch black (I mean, cant see your hand in front of your face, real darkness!) but also because after a few seconds you could start to see hundreds of glow-worms on the ceiling! The glow comes from their abdomen to attract food, the more hungry they are, the brighter they are. Megan reckoned that if she was a glow-worm then she'd be the brightest in the cave, always hungry! The whole cave experience was really incredible, the sort of thing that we wouldn't have generally thought of doing by ourselves but we're really glad that it was suggested to us. It was also the first time that Anna-Marie and Des had been there so a good experience all round. Driving back home we passed through lots of English-sounding places; Sheffield, Exeter, Launceston and many others taken straight from an A-to-Z of Britain, very weird!

On Sunday we had a nice lazy start to the day but eventually kicked ourselves into gear and went for a long drive to discover the Tasmanian landscape. We went across the Tamar River (another British one!) and went to one of the most northerly parts of Tasmania, Low Head, where the Tamar River opens out into the sea. From here, the next land is Melbourne! Later in the afternoon we went to the point directly opposite Low Head on the other side of the river mouth, Greens Beach. I'm glad we managed to get out and see some of the fantastic landscape here. It really is a beautiful island which is very sparsely populated giving it a very rugged and natural feel to it. There are only about 493,000 people living here, the same number of people living in all of Tasmania (26,410 sq miles) as live in Portsmouth in the UK (about 30-60 sq miles). That sort of statistic really brings it home how crowded our country really is!

Today, after a morning swim in the spa (attached to the ceiling by a rope so I could swim without going anywhere, weird!) we went out and saw the view from a place called Brady's Lookout. From here we could see lots of the huge Tamar River, rugged landscape, surrounding small towns and vineyards too. Luckily the sun decided to make an appearance for us meaning that although it was cold (we're very far south now, I have realised!) it was at least nice weather!

St. Kilda

2008-05-10T09:12:00.002+01:00

We left the house with all our stuff at 6.20am on Monday morning and we eventually got to our next hostel at about 8pm! A long day spent on the train made bearable by the fact that I had a really good book! When we arrived in Melbourne we grabbed a taxi and headed down to St. Kilda. I think I had slightly overestimated St.Kilda, I had read that it was the 'beach part of Melbourne' and that there were great shops and cafes. With this in mind we booked to stay for 3 days before heading to Tasmania. Unfortunately there wasn't a great deal to do here and once we'd walked along the beach, the pier and the main shopping street we had done pretty much everything St. Kilda had to offer! This wasn't too much of a problem as we wanted to relax anyway which was easy to do in the hostel/guesthouse we stayed in. 'Olembia' was brilliant and very cosy with a 'drawing room' full of big armchairs, a fire, lots of magazines and books and a cat called Alex! It was easy to sit inside (away from the cloud and drizzle) and relax, reading, chatting and doing crosswords (not necessarily finishing them, but trying!!)

I think it was a mistake to stay so long as it would have been a nice day trip away from the city but not to worry. Yesterday morning we got the airport bus and got ourselves checked in for our flight to Launceston. Our bags were literally full to bursting point and this was shown in the fact that they were all overweight! We were only allowed 20kg for this flight but we're allowed more for the rest so I think we'll be ok.

The flight was nice and easy, once we'd been at cruising altitude for about 10 minutes we started to come down again, it's not very far at all! On arrival we were met by Anna-Marie (my friend Dan's mum) and taken to her new home. It really is a lovely place, and huge too. 3 double bedroom, a gym, a spa, massive open plan kitchen/lounge/dining room, a study, front and back verandas and 3 acres of land with 7 alpacas, 3 dogs and a load of chickens! There are also beautiful views of the hills and the Tamar River from the front (although not as I'm writing this, there is a nice thick covering of fog!!). I'm sure we'll easily be able to pass our short stay here, going round and seeing the beautiful countryside that Tasmania has to offer.

Sydney Summary

2008-05-04T15:05:00.004+01:00

For our final day in Sydney we went and did something we've wanted to do since we were in Surfers Paradise, we saw a live AFL game! Zahra kindly got us some tickets to watch the Sydney Swans (our new team to follow) vs the Western Bulldogs at the Sydney Cricket Ground. We met up at about midday at Central Station and all went together to the ground. We got to our seats about 5 seconds after the first bounce (we're pros now, know all the technical terms!!) so pretty good timing. The sun was out, the footy was in full flow and there were 29,000 people all enjoying it along with us making for a great afternoon. The Swans were playing pretty poorly, missing lots of chances and seemed to have completely lost any will to win by the third quarter. In the final quarter, however, after a lucky goal their heads came up and they realised they were still in with a chance. This made the final few minutes really exciting and fast paced, with the Swans only needing 2 goals in 4 minutes to tie it up. Unfortunately, due to all the Swans players being in attack, as soon as they lost possession there was no defence at all. The Bulldogs scored and easy goal in the dying minutes to seal up a 112-97 victory. Even though our new team lost we had a great time and watching AFL live is definitely better than on TV. The pitch is so big (cricket oval size) that on TV you can't really get the gist of the game as you can't see the options or who they're kicking to.

So, our time in Sydney is up, what did we think of it? We both absolutely loved it. I'm glad we stayed for a month too as we got to do all the touristy things we wanted to but also got to do the family thing too. If we were only in Sydney for a week or two we wouldn't have been able to go out into the suburbs as much or explore as freely as we've been able to.

Sydney is a really massive city and not just in Australian terms but in comparison to other cities across the world. It is also made of so many different areas and none would survive without the others. The CBD (Central Business District) is obviously the main hub where all the shops are and where the most famous landmarks are. This is also where most people work. If you were in Sydney for just a short while it would be in the CBD that you would probably spend most of your time. The outskirts and the suburbs, however, are just as great to spend time in, if you have a chance. Newtown is a prime example, so different from what we had found in central Sydney but it was still a part of the city, part of what makes Sydney unique. The other thing that makes Sydney so special is the beaches. There are so many beaches and all offering different things. There are beaches within the harbour offering swimming and sailing and then there are those on the ocean coast offering great surfing. We only managed to go to the most famous beaches like Manly and Bondi but there were so many more great ones that we drove past within only a few hundred metres of the really famous ones. We were in Sydney for a month and still only scraped the surface of what was out there.

So, a few of our 'favourites' from Sydney.

Favourite Experience: BridgeClimb. Absolutely amazing, being on top of one of the most recognisable structures in Sydney. Fabulous weather, great sunset and a great view of Blue Mountains one way and ocean the other.

Favourite Snack Place: Circular Quay, Wharf 5 Cafe. Muesli and Yoghurt......amazing!

Favourite Lunchtime Restaurant: Guzman y Gomez, Newtown. Best Mexican ever, and cheap too! Alternatively, The Elephant Boy Cafe in Bowral (Blue Mountains) for the best pies ever!

Favourite Restaurant: Aria. Best restaurant I've ever eaten in, best food I've ever eaten!

Favourite View: On any ferry going East from Circular Quay when the sun is just going down, you can see the bridge and the opera house, nice!

Favourite Beach: Manly, not as busy as Bondi but still amazing, great waves too.

Favourite Drinking Hole: "The Fortune of War", the Rocks. A real pub with live music all weekend evening.

Biggest Surprise: The Opera House was a lot smaller than I expected when I first saw it, it wasn't as bright white as I had expected (probably to do with all the bloody cloud!) and it's actually 3 buildings, not just 1!

All in all, we had a great time in Sydney and a month was only just enough to do everything we wanted, wouldn't have experienced it quite as well if we had stayed any less!

Saying Goodbye in Style!

2008-05-03T19:36:00.005+01:00

Although we aren't leaving until Monday, Thursday was the only day Ben and Fahm could get a babysitter and was therefore the day that we all went out for a 'goodbye' meal. This was very generously funded by Ruth and Andrew, not often they get to take Ben and Fahm out for dinner and this gave them an opportunity! We headed over on the ferry at about 6ish, just after dark, and as we rounded the corner of Cremorne Point to see the most famous part of the harbour lots of fireworks started. It was as if they were there especially for us to send us off. They were fabulous and you can see how New Years Eve would be so beautiful here. They carried on until we were just about to turn so we couldn't see them and then they stopped. They were made just for us!!

To continue our fancy evening (we were dressed up all posh too!) we went to the ECQ bar in Circular Quay and drank bubbly whilst overlooking the bridge. At 8pm we found our way to one of Sydney's best restaurants, Aria, where the others were waiting. As you walk through to the tables you are greeted with an amazing view of the harbour through the floor to ceiling glass windows. The menu here was excellent and among some of the best food we have ever tasted. The portion sizes were not so small that you could hardly see them but not so big that you feel horrible afterwards, perfect!

On Friday, we had decided to have a late lunch/early dinner at the Phillips Foote restaurant. This was recommended to us by someone telling Dad. I don't know who it was but it was a great call. Here you can cook your own steak on the BBQ, however you like it. All the steaks looked fabulous and were all local, we both had 'Sydney Cut' steaks which were tasty and cooked to near perfection (if I do say so myself!). After lunch we went to the 'Pylon Lookout' on the Harbour Bridge and used free vouchers we got when we did the BridgeClimb. There was a lot of history of the bridge and lots of info about building it too which was really interesting. There were lots of random facts dotted about the place and I thought the best and most accurate one was how much it cost to build; 10,057,170 pounds, 7 shillings and 9 pence! From the top there are some good views but unfortunately a load of clouds came over just as we got to the top!

We then walked across the bridge (quite a good experience in itself) across to 'Luna Park', the amusement park in North Sydney. This was fun and fairly immature, we got an unlimited rides pass and went on pretty much everything there including the carousel (which we had to go on separately so we could take photos of each other!).

Early this morning Zeena took us kayaking on the Harbour, leaving from the Spit we paddled all the way down to Balmoral and back. It was a great morning for it, nice and sunny, and good exercise! Megan and I were in separate single kayaks and it was quite lucky as if we were in a double whoever was at the back would have got pretty wet! We weren't that great and kept splashing, I managed to get pretty wet just by myself, the technique definitely needs improvement!

The afternoon saw us go to Taronga Zoo, the zoo with a view, from which you can see across the harbour and into the city. This was nice but not as good as Australia Zoo and definitely not worth the $39 admission price (luckily we got in as students for $23!). We saw lots of animals but I was happy to stroke an Echidna and see a Duck-Billed Platypus. These are two animals in the most unique group of animals in the world. Found only in Australia, the monotremes are the only mammals to lay eggs. There really are some amazing animals that come from being so isolated for so long!

Alternative Harbour Cruise

2008-04-30T20:46:00.003+01:00

Tuesday was a beautiful sunny day and a great one to be out on the water. Wed decided to go ahead with something we'd seen on our first day, Jetboating. It was really good fun and definitely a different way to see the harbour. We went ll the way up the harbour to the entrance and saw all the places and bays that we've been to before. We went to Watsons Bay, Balmoral, Mosman Bay and all a lot quicker than we could have got there any other way! We were going at speeds of up to 80kph doing slides, spins, fishtails and sudden stops. All in all a very fun but wet morning!

Today was another sunny day and we were happy to stick to our plan of going the 7 miles to Manly (7 miles from Sydney, a thousand miles from care apparently!!). We arrived at midday and took a stroll down the main high street, towards the ocean surfing beach. There are lots of surfing shops amongst cool little cafes, nice for a stroll around. The beach itself is huge with good waves all along it. This being the case I thought it would be rude not to hire a board so went along, got one and went surfing for an hour. It was really fun, great exercise and really good to be out on the water again. Megan stayed on shore and read, took photos and acted as timekeeper for me. The beach is lined with really tall pines which look nice but cause massive shadows as soon as the sun drops even a little bit. By 3pm it was pretty chilly with most of the beach in shade so we headed back up to the front and had a cup of tea to warm up. On the way back to the ferry we popped into the surf shops and indulged ourselves on t-shirts! Ended up leaving Manly at about 5pm so we managed to make a good day of our trip.

Lots of Beaches and Sydney Tower

2008-04-28T22:31:00.004+01:00

ANZAC day morning saw us going round the Wollongong local beaches. These were really nice beaches, long stretches of sand with next to no-one on them. In the UK, a beach like that would be very famous and a tourist attraction. Here it is just the norm! Everyone has heard of Bondi but who has heard of Wollongong North and South beaches?! Not many foreigners, yet they were just as nice as Bondi, with some great surfing waves too. We also took a scenic drive up Mt. Keira to a stunning lookout point from where we could see all of Wollongong and the great mountain surrounds.

On Friday night we stayed at Ben and Fahmiyas and in the morning were taken to Paddington Markets. They were great markets with lots of really busy stalls, obviously a local favourite. They were stalls for most things here but the majority were art and clothes. There were also a lot of young designers selling goods here, hoping to be picked up by design companies that look for new talent here. In the afternoon we went to another family meal, this time at Salma's house. We had met everyone the previous week so it was nice to be a bit more relaxed. We also saw Zahra again who is taking us to the Sydney Swans AFL match next Sunday!

Yesterday we caught the first ferry over to the city and met with Ben, Fahmiya and their friends for Yum Cha, a chinese buffet style brunch. This was ok but slightly chaotic first thing in the morning! After leaving here we went on a long drive over to Palm Beach on the far north of Sydney. This is where Home & Away is filmed apparently (Summer Bay??) but I never watched it so I wouldn't know! It was a great beach with some nice waves, we went for a swim which was pretty hard work as there was a strong sideways current.
On the way back we stopped at Balmoral, a nice little beach with a sailing club that I'm sure someone I worked with in Italy said she had worked at! We had fish and chips here as the sun set and it was a really nice end to our third week here (I can't believe how fast it had gone!).

So, Monday, the start of our final week! Today we planned to go and do the Sydney Tower. We could have done this earlier but I wanted to make sure that the BridgeClimb was the first time I saw Sydney from on high! I'm glad we did it that way round too because this was ok but nothing that special. Don't get me wrong there were great views all around but we didn't know what we were looking at really. It's lucky we had been here for 3 weeks and had been to any places, we could pick them out. There was a distinct lack of information up there which was a shame. It was also pretty expensive for what it was, this was just a good view, the BridgeClimb was an experience!

After we came down, we did as Hazel my Godmother suggested (and paid for as a present to us both) and went to Watsons Bay for sunset and fish & chips. The weather cleared up jut enough for the sunset to be really nice. From here you get a great and not typical view of the city in the far distance. It was really nice to see it from a different perspective for once.

The plan for the rest of the week is Jetboating, Manly Beach, a couple of dinners out, a visit to Luna Park and a trip to the SCG to watch the Swans!

Exploring the 'burbs

2008-04-24T21:03:00.004+01:00

For the last few days we've been discovering the areas around Sydney that are off the beaten track, at least off the track usually beaten by English backpackers! This is one of the many benefits of staying with locals, the not so famous places are still just as nice as all those that people across the world know about.

On Tuesday we went back to Newtown to have a proper look around, it was raining first thing in the morning but luckily had stopped for once by the time we wanted to leave. There are so many shops in Newtown that we had plenty to keep us occupied. The area is very vibrant and full of lots of second-hand shops, boutique shops and design-style shops. In amongst all of these, there are also some really cool little cafes and restaurants. As soon as we got off the bus at 11am we started going onto shops and carried on all day until about 4pm. This isn't usually my sort of thing so if I enjoyed it they must have been good! It is just different to the usual 'city shops' that you find all across the world, here you will never find the same 2 things in 5 hours of searching!

On Wednesday we left at about 11am with Zeena to drive down to Wollongong, where her parents live. We went via the Royal National Park (the second oldest national park in the world after Yellowstone in the USA) which was really nice. We went on a short walk (about an hour) along the coast to see the stunning landscape, sheer cliffs, overhangs and big crashing waves. It felt lot more like we were walking in England than Australia, especially with the grey overcast weather. This is one of the awesome things about Australia, the diversity of the landscape in a short distance is very impressive. After scaring each other silly by taking photos right on the very edge of ridiculously high cliffs we headed on to Wollongong where we dumped our stuff and were given a brief tour. This is the area that Fahmiya and Zeena grew up (from the ages of 5 and 10 respectively) so we saw their old school and old houses etc. That evening we visited Zeenas friends Irene and Keith for dinner which was quite an experience. Their house is amazing, it is built on a slope and designed to fit in with the surrounding landscape, it was huge with a beautiful wooden interior. They had it designed and built to their specifications 40 years ago and it is still fabulous. Irene and Keith were both in their mid-70's and both really nice. Keith was going slightly deaf and by his own admission slightly odd in his old age but he is a professor of maths so it is to be expected! Irene is a prominent figure in local community groups and told us all about the corruption and scandals in the local government. She is also an intrepid explorer and told us tales of how on her 60th birthday she decided to go to Melbourne on the train and cycle back just because she could. Then on her 70th birthday she wanted a holiday so took a train across Russia, Siberia and Northern Europe to see as many countries and cities as she could, all by herself! So obviously she was interested to hear all about our travels and stories. We all had some great conversations over a lovely inner (finished by amazing homemade nougat and ice-cream!!), it's always nice to meet the locals!

Today we went even further afield down into the Southern Highland (sounds like we were in Scotland!). Once again the weather was overcast and drizzly but this was good as from the car we could see the amazing landscape of the mountains with clouds rolling over the edge. Unfortunately when we got further up we couldn't really see a lot but instead got to study the anatomy of a cloud! Late morning, we stopped at a little town called Bowral where it was raining and had the lovely temperature of 12C! We stopped at a small cafe called 'Elephant Boy Cafe' which was really cosy with walls covered in book-cases and comfy chairs. It was here where we had lunch and ate possibly the best pies I have ever eaten (sorry Granny and Jojo!!). From here we continued on down the coast to Jervis Bay, a beautiful bay which is Zeena favourite place in the world (and she's been to quite a few places!), and she's even put it in her will that her ashes are going to be spread here! The beaches are beautiful with white sands and forests surrounding them. We went on a walk to a lookout point from which you could see the entire bay with waves crashing just below us at the entrance. From here, when we were just about to leave, Megan spotted some dark shapes in the water which then started jumping and turned out to be a pod of dolphins! When we went back to the beach we saw them pretty close up, there must have been at least or 7 all together, jumping around. The sight was made even more beautiful by the rainbow appearing overhead! As we were leaving to go back to the car we had a little wallaby hop alongside us in the brush and have a nibble from some plants, really cool to see!

We arrived back at about 7pm to Fahmiya and Zeenas parents to a dinner of traditional Sri Lankan curry which was awesome. We were also treated to plenty of stories from them both, they are both really nice and very welcoming. All the family is here as it is ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Armed Corps) day tomorrow which is a public holiday similar to remembrance day in the UK. We are having a big family lunch before heading back to the city.

Weather

2008-04-23T22:15:00.001+01:00

It has been raining for 11 consecutive days, a 15 year record according to the weather tonight. Just our luck!

Birthday Parties + Exploring

2008-04-21T21:15:00.003+01:00

Friday evening saw us head out for a night on "The Rocks" as it was the birthday of Megans uni friend, Steve. We started at the Lord Nelson where they brew their own beers (always deadly) at 5.30pm. It was really nice as it wasn't too busy and we were able to chat with Steve who moved out here straight after uni and was getting married on Sunday. We also met lots of his family and friends who took the opportunity to have an Australian holiday. The Lord Nelson is one of few pubs in Sydney that serves pints and I took full advantage of such a rarity, trying many if their different brews! We left here at about 8pm and headed for one of our Sydney favourites, "The Fortune Of War". The plan was just to have one more drink and then head home but there was a musician there who changed our plans, 'Lance Link'. Crap name but the music was great, he was just playing an acoustic guitar and singing whatever song people shouted out. This kept us amused until we were suitably jolly and 11pm and headed home.

Saturday morning was slightly written off what with the recovering from the night before but in the afternoon we headed further up north to 'Cheltenham' (it's sometimes like being back in England driving around over here!) for an afternoon birthday tea. It was Fahmiya's cousin Zara's birthday and it was nice to meet her as she (along with some other friends) is taking us to watch Sydney Swans in the AFL at the end of our stay here. We got to meet a lot of Fahmiya's family and also eat some heart-cloggingly good chocolate cake!

On Sunday we headed for Newtown, a slightly more arty, fashionable area of Sydney to meet Ben and Fahm for breakfast (which ended up being lunch), and a look round a few funky shops. Lots were closed and some were late opening because it was a Sunday so we decided to come back another day and instead went to the Australian Museum, where they had a dinosaur exhibition. This was really good and the girls both seemed to enjoy it. We also looked at some amazing Indigenous artwork and stories, the skeletons of all the typical Australian animals and the largest Gold Nugget ever found!

We had to get back to Zeenas for around 6pm as earlier in the day when I went to check ferry times I found a woman's purse. There were lots of credit and business cards but no phone number. I spent the next little while using my detective skills to get a phone number and let the woman know I had it. It had probably been stolen as she was very surprised where I found it and didn't seem to know the area at all. That was my good deed for the day and she was even nice enough to buy a box of chocolates to say thanks!

Today we went to Darling Harbour for a better look around, it was really nice and there are some lovely bars and cafes on the waterfront. You can tell they'd be great in the summer but it was once again grey and horrible for us! Megan managed to find a shop where they told us all about UGG boots and how the "proper" ones in the UK are actually American (hence why they're so expensive) and how UGG over here is just a style, not a company. We managed to find the original UGGs that the Americans copied and they are possibly even better anyway, plus they were less than half the price. Megan paid $99 (about 45 pounds) for some that she has wanted for ages and would have paid 100 pounds or more for in the UK.

We got the mid-afternoon munchies and found the wonderful 'Lindt Chocolate Cafe' to satiate ourselves. Megan ate some Lindt profiteroles and I gorged myself on a waffle with white chocolate ice cream and hot Lindt sauce. I couldn't help thinking that Mum would be very jealous if she knew! For the next 2 nights we are staying at Ben and Fahmiya's and tonight we're having roast for dinner! Yay!!!

Babysitting

2008-04-18T10:24:00.003+01:00

After the busy weekend we decided to take it easy for a couple of days, but that doesn't mean we didn't do anything. There hasn't been a single day where we've stayed in and done nothing whilst in Sydney!

On Monday we braved the rain (again) and headed for the "Powerhouse Museum" near Darling Harbour. This was a pretty good museum with lots of exhibitions including the Australian Design Awards and some good displays on Space travel. The main attraction, however, was "Diana: A Celebration", a massive exhibition currently touring the world. It was really good and showed lots of things from her life, including her ridiculously long wedding dress (25 feet seems slightly excessive!).

On Tuesday we wandered around 'The Rocks' for a little while again and managed to stumble across a restaurant that we've been looking for since we arrived. It's called Phillips Foote and it is a sort of pub come restaurant come butchers shop, they sell quality steak that you can then cook yourself on one of the massive grills. It looks like a really nice place so we'll be going there hopefully in our last week in Sydney. In the evening we went back to Darling Harbour and met up with Zeena and her friends to go to the Imax cinema to watch the worlds first 3D concert. We watched some of the U2 "Vertigo" tour and I realised that I didn't actually like U2 as much as I thought I did! I appreciated the idea and the technology though, the 3D side of it was great but the music just wasn't really my cup of tea. Luckily, Megan and everyone else really enjoyed it! When we got home we were picked up by Fahmiya as we were going to be looking after Shari and Aaliyah for 2 days.

The girls were really good for us and we didn't have any screaming fits and not too many tantrums (only one actually, about ice-cream . . . . . . understandable really!). On Thursday as a special treat we took Shari to Sydney Aquarium which she really enjoyed. It was an excellent aquarium with great displays of all sorts of marine life. She loved the seals, sharks and obviously the clownfish, she spent most of the time saying: "wanna see nemo, wanna see nemo, wanna see nemo". Luckily there was a big display, if they didn't have any I don't know what we would have done! We ended the day by taking Shari on a couple of ferry trips to get back to Zeena where Fahmiya met us.

Hard work but fun looking after them and that was only 2 days!

Blue Mountains

2008-04-14T08:06:00.007+01:00

The Blue Mountains, so called because of the blue haze around them, are about an hour and a half drive from Sydney. To make the most of out first day we left nice & early, 8am on Saturday morning. We arrived at out cottage in "Wentworth Falls", a nice little village sitting at about 900m. Strange to think that in Europe this would be getting up to ski resort level when here it was a relatively warm 21C! After dumping all our stuff in our cosy little cottage we headed off for a bush walk in the mountains. We headed for the "National Pass" walk along the middle of the cliff. To get there we had to go down a lot of steps through "The Valley of the Waters", a series of magnificent waterfalls made even more spectacular due to the fact it has actually been raining recently, filling the rivers & streams. After passing through (and around & even under!) the falls we got to the National Pass with some amazing views of the valleys and mountains, covered with dense forests of trees where people have probably never been. After about 90 minutes walking we got to the falls themselves, beautiful high falls made even more magnificent by the sun shining over the top making them sparkle. We stopped at the bottom and had a picnic lunch before heading to the top of the falls. The walk up to the "Overcliff Pass" was quite challenging as it was via a series of steps carved from the rock, over 600 steps in fact! Once at the top we walked along the top of the cliff with even more breathtaking views, eventually arriving back where we started after a great 4 hour trek.

Yesterday we got up early again and headed for "Echo Point", the most visited place in the Blue Mountains. The reason being, its the main view point for the "Three Sisters" rock formation, a pretty strange formation with three pillars of rock standing alone at the end of a cliff when all around them has eroded away. We were planning to meet Ben, Fahmiya, Shari & Aaliyah later on so we didn't have time for a long walk but instead we did the "Giant Stairway" a challenging stairway down the cliff mostly carved from the rock but occasionally with extra metal stairs. We counted the steps and there were 901, and that's just one way! so 1802 steps (and a ridiculously sweaty back) later we got back to the top and went to the little mountain village of Leura to meet up with everyone and have lunch. After lunch Ben & Fahmiya took us to see the place they got married, and what a place it was! The view is amazing, there can't be a more picturesque wedding place! After playing with the girls and pushing them on swings we went to visit Katoomba where there is a scenic railway, skyway and cable car down into the valley. We took the worlds steepest railway down, with it's steepest incline being 52 degrees and the average incline being 43 degrees. It was a lot steeper than it sounded, especially feeling it whilst going through the 80 metre natural tunnel (pitch black!) through the cliff face! After a short walk, we came back up via the scenic skyway which Shari seemed to enjoy! After all the exercise of the last couple of days we were definitely ready for bed after the drive home!

I've had the climb of my life!

2008-04-11T18:45:00.003+01:00

We checked out the weather forecast for next week and it doesn't sound great (again!) but we heard that Friday (today) was going to be good. We called up the Bridge Climb people and asked about the weather and decided that today was going to be best. Luckily they had space left on the 3.45pm climb which would get us to the top for sunset (3.5hr total trip time). We used the vouchers that Mum & Dad bought for my 21st, a great idea by them!

At the start of the day there was quite a lot of cloud and I was a little nervous that the forecast was wrong but as the day went on the clouds cleared up until it was totally clear. We arrived at Bridge Climb at 3.45pm and began our briefing and kitting up, donning our lovely grey jumpsuits. After about 30-40 minutes we got outside and started the climb itself. I think the worst/scariest part was right at the start when we had to walk above the road and water and could see straight through the walkway to the city below. Once we got onto the archway everything was fine and we had a clear view of the beautiful city below us. We took our time slowly walking up to the height of 134 metres above Sydney, stopping to take photos and take in the amazing views. On the way up a seaplane flew over & our guide encouraged us to wave, we did and the plane gave us a wave back by tipping his wings!

It was great to see the city in the day but when we got to the top we saw the sun setting. This was really amazing as we could see it actually getting lower over the distant Blue Mountains until it was completely gone and all that was left was an amazing orange hue over the horizon. Once the sun had gone the guide pointed out some famous Sydney buildings including the PM's house, a big shiny building used in the Matrix but the best one was the building where the dentists office from "Finding Nemo" would be! We crossed over at the summit and made our way down the western arch as night fell. It was great to see and experience the bridge and city in all three states, day, night and sunset (although in summer you can also watch sunrise.......if you arrived at 3.30am!!) The bridge climb was an absolutely amazing experience, a great birthday present!

P.S. I managed to finish the day off by slicing the end of my finger open. Spent the rest of the evening with my hand up, "put your hand up if you're an idiot!!"

Chilled Week

2008-04-11T07:32:00.005+01:00

Since the opera house visit, this week has been pretty chilled and relaxed. The weather hasn't been great with occasional showers on most days. We began the week by visiting the Botanical Gardens in the city, they were really pretty and definitely a lot nicer than the last ones we visited.......Bundaberg. It was nice enough weather and really good to wander around and see all the plants and wildlife, including a huge colony of flying foxes (fruit bats). They were all hanging upside down in the trees, chittering away, and they are HUGE! The park was a wonderful place for a picnic so we stopped and ate with a good view of the harbour, the bridge and the opera house. We also walked round to "Mrs Macquaries Point" a perfect place if you were here on new years eve as you get the classic view of the harbour, brilliant to watch the fireworks off the bridge! Just as we left here it started raining so we had to run between trees in between the showers, eventually we gave up and walked in the rain until it stopped. We then went and explored the city a little more.

On Wednesday the weather still wasn't great so we took ourselves off to a big shopping centre, Bondi Juction. To get there we went by train, unremarkable usually, but we went on a double-decker train, how novel! Bondi Junction was really nice, loads of shops and restaurants here making for a busy day before finishing it off by visiting the cinema to see Will Ferrells new film "Semi Pro".

On waking up yesterday morning we were very surprised to see it was really nice weather so we decided to make the most of it and headed to the beach down at Bondi. It was really nice weather, not too hot but definitely not cold!

Swan Lake

2008-04-08T07:04:00.004+01:00

When we were in town on Sunday we popped into the Opera House just out of interest to see what was on and how much it cost. The friendly information person told us that Swan Lake was the major show at the moment but it was currently showing "Sold Out". He did tell us that sometimes tickets become available and also that on Mondays there was a deal for under 27s. We decided that we would call first thing Monday morning on the off-chance of getting something and we were in luck! We managed to buy the last two tickets in the whole theatre and for less than half price, $53 instead of $121!!

Having spent so much money so early in the morning we decided to chill out for the rest of the day before heading to the city at around 4pm. We had a bit of an explore around some shopping streets before heading back towards the Opera House at about 6.30pm where we saw the bridge and Opera House lit up at night for the first time, they both looked stunning. We somehow managed to miss out on seeing them at sunset but we'll save that for another day! After picking up our tickets we had a drink in the magnificent surroundings before heading to our seats. I'm not sure why they were the last to be sold as they were brilliant. In the circle, row D and smack bang in the middle. The show itself was amazing, to watch the Australian Ballet, accompanied by the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra was one thing but to do so in the Sydney Opera House was something else!

Arrival in Sydney

2008-04-06T06:49:00.004+01:00

So here we are, finally in the big city where we will be making our longest stop in Australia, we are planning to stay here until the beginning of May. We arrived into Central Station late afternoon on Friday and were immediately met by Megans Uncle Ben and his oldest daughter, Shari (who was unfortunately not very well). This being so, we went straight back to their flat in Earlwood, about 7km from the city. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with Ben and drawing with Shari until Fahmiya came home with 1 yr old Aaliyah. It was great for me to meet everyone but even better for Megan as she is the first from her family to visit and also the first to meet Aaliyah!

On Saturday we were given a quick driving tour of Sydney and its suburbs after taking our first look at the world famous Bondi Beach. It's really nice with some pretty decent waves, we'll definitely be back for a couple of days there. There are also some other nice (less crowded) beaches on the south coast that we were shown. We were then taken across the Sydney Harbour Bridge (amazing!!) to North Sydney where we would be staying for the month with Zeena, Fahmiya's sister. She lives in Mosman Bay with an apartment overlooking a small marina and surrounded by trees, I'm sure the view could be much worse!! It is pretty difficult to get into the city centre by car or bus from here which could have been pretty annoying but instead there is a ferry service which takes 2 mins to get to and 18 mins to get over to Circular Quay in the city. It was using this ferry today that we got our first sight of Sydney Harbour (or Port Jackson to use its real name!). As we came round the corner of Cremorne Point we were greeted with the oddly familiar view of the Harbour full of sailing boats with the backdrop of the Sydney Opera House and the magnificent Harbour Bridge (or, The Old Coat Hanger, as it is apparently sometimes known!?!)

The plan was to spend the day watching the "Red Bull Flugtag", which is basically people trying to fly with homemade contraptions and rarely ever doing so. Instead they just fell ungracefully into the waters of the Botanical Gardens. This was very disorganised with lots of big boats getting in everyones way and also the whole thing took SO long. We stayed for about an hour or more and then went and had a picnic on the steps of the picturesque Opera House. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the oldest area of Sydney, "The Rocks". There are lots of unique shops , lovely buildings and also a weekend market which was huge and worth a browse. We then went to the information centre and picked up a ton of leaflets for things to do here, as to keep happy I need plans!

We were then lucky enough to happen upon a pub called "Fortune Of War" where we had a drink and listened to some old time, upbeat jazz with a clarinet, double bass and banjo. It just so happens that this pub is also Sydney's oldest licensed establishment, built in 1823. A lucky find really!

We spent the evening sifting through the tons of leaflets deciding what was good to do and see in Sydney. We came up with quite a lot so hopefully we should have a fun and busy month!

Port Macquarie

2008-04-04T06:35:00.004+01:00

The only reason we ever planned to stop in "Port" (as the locals call it) was literally to break up the journey to Sydney. After Byron Bay there wasn't really anywhere we were desperate to see or anything we particularly wanted to do. So instead of a 15hr journey we thought we'd rather do two 7 and a half hour trips and port was a convenient place to stop. We weren't expecting much but we were pleasantly surprised, it's a lovely little seaside town with a few beaches, some nice walks and some great nature surrounding it. We didn't do a lot in our couple of days here, on Wednesday we went and played "Hydro Golf", basically a driving range into water with a few targets to hit to win prizes. Unfortunately, out of 2 buckets of balls, the closest either of us got to winning was Megan hitting the post holding a target up, we weren't too accurate! We then played 27 hole crazy golf where I came from 5 strokes behind to storm into a 3 stroke win. We then finished off the day by taking a stroll down to the town beach to throw a ball about. Port Macquarie is also situated at the mouth of a river so to get to the beach you have to walk along the breakwall of massive rocks. It seems to be quite popular to paint these rocks as every single one has painting and writing from people on holiday, honeymoon and even proposing to people via the rocks. It's pretty cool to walk along and see all the things people have put, it's like the worlds largest visitor book!!

Yesterday we went for a long walk along the coast to see all the beaches and lovely landscape, there were 4 beaches in total ending in the local surf beach, Flynns, where we stopped for lunch. Whilst there we saw something pretty cool, the local school came down to the beach for their PE lesson...........bodyboarding and surfing!! Awesome!! Early afternoon we made our way to one of Port's prides, the regions only Koala Hospital. Any Koalas found injured or distressed in the area are brought here, cared for and released into the wild again. It is a brilliant operation and a great cause yet they receive no funding. The animals they take in would never survive in the wild, they have been hit by cars, attacked by dogs, caught in bush fires or have contracted diseases. Why the hospital doesn't receive help is beyond me. We were there for the afternoon feed of baby milk and vitamins and the Koalas were loving it, they couldn't get enough! We saw koalas that had been hit by cars, some burnt badly, one who was completely blind (a permanent resident) and 4 little joeys who were orphaned. All the others we saw, somewhat amusingly (for us, not them) were there because they had chlamydia.......odd!

Today we're on our way to Sydney, arriving to meet Ben, Fahmiya and the girls at about 4.30pm (we left at 9am).

Byron Bay

2008-04-01T11:18:00.005+01:00

We arrived in Byron Bay on Saturday evening, our first stop in New South Wales and confusingly we found ourselves in a new time zone. Time usually only changes going east or west and considering we'd only gone south that was a bit odd! After checking into our very expensive hostel ($95pn) we took a walk around town and had a quick look at the shops and the beach before crashing out for the evening.

Sunday was a beautiful day, much nicer than the greyness we had at Surfers Paradise, so we went to the beach. There was hardly any surf on the Main Beach but apparently its better along the coast. It was a nice relaxing day finished off (or so we thought) by some drinks and live blues music at a bar and then sitting on the beach star gazing. It's amazing how much darker it is here, no light pollution (or clouds) make it a lot better night sky. We thought our night was over but as it turned out, it was far from it. One of the people we were sharing an apartment with came home a little bit worse for wear after apparently eating some "hash cookies", these did not go down too well and we spent the rest of the night playing nurse to her, i had to carry her to a bed as she had lost the ability to walk, we made her breathe into a paper bag (probably the first time I've been in possession of a paper bag since I was about 9!) and got her to drink water, fun times!

On Monday we decided to hire some bikes and cycle up to the famous lighthouse on Cape Byron and the most easterly point in mainland Australia. Unfortunately the bikes were rubbish and couldn't go into low gear making the climb very difficult. We ended up walking most of the way which took quite a while but was definitely worth it when we finally got to the top. The views were amazing, from here we could see all of Byron Bay and the surrounding coast and beaches. Looking out to sea there was absolutely nothing but blue, blue skies and blue waters as far as the eye could see with no clouds at all. The nearest thing to the most easterly point of Australia is New Zealand and that's not exactly close! From here we could also see turtles poking their heads up for air and a few dolphins coming to the surface and chasing fish. After a picnic in the shade we rode back down. This was a lot easier, a lot faster and a lot more fun! If we had wanted to, we could have got up early and taken a tour up to the lighthouse and been the first in Australia to see the sun rise. Unfortunately, due to the time the sun generally rises in the morning, this was never going to happen. So instead we contented ourselves with being the first in Australia to see in set! After dumping our thing we headed back to the beach and grabbed some fish and chips, listened to the hippies playing the bongos and watched the sun go down.

It was a beautiful sun set, lots of different colours in the sky but just as interesting were the hippies. Byron Bay is the hippiest (if that's a word) place I've ever been, they all seem to like to dance randomly, play music and use hula-hoops (the big plastic thing, not the snack). There are lots of hippy type shops too, it makes it quite a cool little place to visit but I think I might get a bit weirded out if I stayed too long! On that note, we've now left and are on the train on the way to Port Macquarie, halfway between Byron Bay and Sydney. It's a day trip, we left at 8am and won't be arriving until about 4pm. Once again a short distance on the map but not in reality!!

Aussie Rules

2008-03-29T13:00:00.004Z

For our last full day in Surfers Paradise, the weather wasn't great, mostly grey and drizzly. This meant no beach action unfortunately but instead we wandered around the many shops, culminating in the evening with a night market on the seafront. We finished the evening off by watching (on TV) our first ever game of Australian Rules Football (AFL). Neither of us really know the rules but it was pretty easy to pick up and get the general idea.

If you have never seen it, I will try to describe it, if you know about AFL, I can only apologise. The only way I can describe it is as a strange cross between Rugby and Football. 18 players on each team try to get the ball through a set of posts at each end of a gigantic pitch. To do this they can run with the ball, but not too far, they can pass the ball, but not by throwing it and they can kick the ball as much as they want. In defence, it seems you can barge people out of the way if they're trying to catch, wipe them out if they're trying to kick and tackle them if they're trying to run. It's pretty fast paced and hectic and I loved it!! I could see myself getting quite into it, mainly because its so manic. I'm definitely looking forward to going and watching a live game some time.

Surfers Paradise

2008-03-27T19:55:00.005Z

We arrived on Monday in the most southern point of Queensland that we will be visiting. Strange to thing that the whole time we've been in Australia so far, all those miles that we've travelled, we've been in the same state the whole time! We've both agreed that Surfers is one of the best places we've been so far. It is really touristy and on occasions pretty tacky but the combination of the amazing beach and the great weather more than make up for any bad points!

On Tuesday we headed for the beach in the morning, hired a bodyboard on the way and settled in for the day. The weather was perfect for a lazy day on the beach, beautiful blue skies and not a cloud above us. We lotioned up 3 times in the 5 hours we were there and still burnt. This was pretty annoying considering the lotion is meant to last 6 hours for one application, rubbish!! (It seems that it lasts for 6 hours of English sun, not the proper stuff down here!). The waves here are brilliant and nothing like anything I've been in before, they are SO powerful. The water isn't even deep, I was never really out further than just above waist height but the waves came way above everyones heads and were definitely a good few metres high. Even when they came further into the shore they were still really powerful (enough to knock Megan over anyway!) and you could really feel the rip too. A certain highlight of the day was when I was casually swimming along the seabed (as you do) and my hand happened upon something hard so i grabbed it (as you do). Turns out that it was a nice pair of Oakley half jackets!! I had a quick look around and there didn't seem to be anyone looking around desperately for some sunnies so not a bad mornings work for me!!

For the last two days we have been at the theme-parks. These are pretty much the biggest and most popular in Australia and there are 4 or 5 pretty close to each other. We bought a pass allowing us entry to "Dreamworld" and "Whitewater World" over 2 days and transfer between them as much as we wanted. Yesterday we went to "Dreamworld" which was good fun with lots of thrill rides. The day definitely got off to a good start when we didn't have to queue for the first roller coaster and even got in the front two seats! Bonus! It was a really fun day but also really hot which meant that by 2pm we were starting to feel it so called it a day and caught the bus home. Today we had planned to go to "Whitewater World", a water park, and it was lucky we did because it was raining. Since we were going to get wet anyway (and the fact that we're British) we stuck to our plan and went nice and early. Due to the weather the park was pretty much empty so we found 2 dry sunbeds undercover and got on with the fun. There were quite a few rides there and Megan actually enjoyed all of them, which was great! I think the best thing of the day was the "Flowrider" which is a standing wave similar to the one I tried in Wild Wadi, Dubai. The system here was better, instead of queuing for ages for just one go, we bought a $5 ticket and got a 30 minute session on the wave. We both absolutely loved it and got the hang of it pretty quick, getting some great photos (and wipe outs for me) in the process. We lasted a lot longer today and got back at about 5pm.

We're still here for another day and are having $5 all you can eat pizza tonight, chilling out at the beach tomorrow and leaving for Byron Bay (bloody expensive hostels!!) on Saturday.

Brisbane

2008-03-24T12:41:00.004Z

On Wednesday afternoon we arrived in Brisbane, it was the first time we had been in a city since Singapore and it felt surprisingly good to be back in one! Most of this month has been spent in small towns (by our standards, they are big to Australians!) and as nice as that was, it was good to be back in civilisation with people and buildings and things going on.

Unfortunately our first day there was marred by bad weather, we went for a walk around town and through the Southbank Parklands across the river from our hostel. This was really nice, the riverfront is very well designed on the south of the city with parks, gardens, walks and even an artificial beach (Brisbane is a river city, not a beach one). This is just about where we managed to get to before it started raining so we spent the rest of the day seeing Brisbane from the inside of a coffee shop!

On Friday we went off to Australia Zoo, something we've been looking forward to for quite a while and it didn't disappoint! It is quite a way outside of Brisbane so we had to get up early for the hour and a half journey there. As soon as we arrived demonstrations and talks were going on with elephant feedings and giant tortoise feedings amongst other things. We had a little time to wander round and see some crocs before the main show of the day started at 11am. This involved snakes and birds which were good but were nothing compared to the main attraction of the Crocodile Show! This was presented (to our surprise) by Terri Irwin, wife of the late, great Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter. It was a brilliant show and we got to see how a croc would attack from the edge and how it would jump upwards out of the water too. We even saw a demo of a "death roll" when it gets hold of its food. The other highlight of the day was to be able to walk through the kangaroo park and sit with and stroke the kangaroos. They were all so calm and incredibly soft, a brilliant experience!!

Saturday and Sunday saw us meet up with my friend Ash again, also his girlfriend, Lauren, his parents and a friend of his from England, Mo. Meeting up with Ash always leads to a few drinks but generally leads to a good time as well. On Sunday morning (Easter Sunday) we were meant to go to his apartment for a barbie but we were delayed due to the fact that we had a bedbug issue at the "Palace Backpackers" hostel we were staying at. I was waking up every morning with more bites culminating is over 80 by the time we left. This meant we had to change room and wash every single item of clothing and spray all our shoes and bags. This definitely wasn't our first choice for things to do on Easter Sunday!! The afternoon, happily, went a lot smoother with a barbie, beers and footie on TV before heading on to the biggest nightclub in Brisbane, Normanbys.

We both enjoyed Brisbane, it is a really nice city but there isn't actually a lot to DO there. We are now in Surfers Paradise, today was awesome weather and it looks like this is an awesome town. The next 5 days should be pretty good with the sun, surf and theme parks!!

Turtle Power!!

2008-03-19T07:35:00.004Z

We were picked up by our tour guide at our hostel at 6.15pm and were taken along with 7 others on the 20 min drive to the Mon Repos Conservation Park. The 'park' consists of one beach about a mile long, the dunes behind it and a very small visitor centre. Not quite what I expected from the most important Loggerhead Turtle site in the world. All around the area the lighting is kept to an absolute minimum resulting in a kind of eerie glow which just added to the excitement we were feeling. The reason for the low lighting is that the turtles use the cover of darkness as protection from their predators and the hatchlings use the moonlight to guide them out to sea.

On arrival, all visitors are put into groups and each group is taken down to the beach separately when there is something to see. The bonus of being on a tour was that we were automatically put into group 1 so would be the first lot to see anything that evening. We passed the time whilst waiting by watching a few videos on turtles and showing ourselves around the visitors centre until the big moment came at 8.30pm. A ranger had found what looked like a nest and had realised that there were lots of hatchlings about to appear. As soon as we got down to the beach the tiniest little turtles started to emerge, poking their little heads through the sand and then flapping with all their might to get out. They came slowly at first as some were still sleepy with the warmth but after a little while they came more rapidly until eventually there was just a mass of little green and brown things in the hole flapping, squirming and clambering all over each other to get out. It was so amazing to see them all, something I'll never forget.

As they came out, the ranger was putting them all into a little pen so she could keep an eye on them all until they ran for the sea. Just before she let them go she brought one around to show everyone and let us have a feel of how tough their shells are and how grippy their little fins are.

When they were all out of the nest we stood back as she let them go and they were off towards the sea. It was brilliant to see these little things only a few days old scuttling down the beach for all their life is worth to make it to the sea where they will stay for 30 years if they are a female, when they will mature and come back to the same place to lay their young. If any of our turtles were male then we watched them as they left land forever. They will live, feed, mate and eventually die at sea.

There were over a hundred of our little turtle babies and they all made it to the sea, some by the more unconventional way of via my flip-flops! It was an amazing evening and even if we had done nothing else here it would have made our trip to Bundaberg worth it. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos but the conservationists saying sums it up: "We leave only footprints and take only memories".

Bundaberg

2008-03-18T13:37:00.002Z

The Tilt Train has its bonuses (big seats, TVs etc) but there was one downside on this trip. Strange to say, but it was annoying that it was faster! We ended up arriving in Bundaberg at 7.30am instead of 9.10am which meant we had to wait around for ages before we could check in at 9.30am!

Bundaberg is a fairly big town and the main reason for backpackers coming here is to work. There are lots of fields around and a lot of fruit to pick so most people at our hostel are up at 5am to go off to work! This hostel isn't great but its only $46 pn, we're only here for three nights and its clean so we can't complain really. Whilst waiting to check in I went to tourist information to find out the best things to do in 3 days. Turns out that there isn't much but one thing that was recommended and only "a short walk away" was the Botanic Gardens. We started off to go there on Sunday just after lunch but it was an immense walk and not even very good gardens, I wasn't happy! After a long walk back we managed to cheer ourselves up by finding a backpacker bar showing the Melbourne Grand Prix, 1st race of the season. Watching Lewis Hamilton win took up most of the afternoon and definitely cheered us up!

The main reason that an Australian (and maybe even a Brit) would know of Bundaberg is because it produces some of the finest rum. It was this rum that we focused on on Monday. We booked a distillery tour and this was actually really interesting. We got to see (and smell) the gigantic vats that they keep the rum in to mature. Each one holds around 65,000 litres of rum, the equivalent of $3 million worth and they have over 290 of these vats, that's a lot of money! We also got to see the bottling plant which is quite cool to see all the machines go from an empty bottle to a full one complete with lids and labels in exactly the right places, being put into boxes and then onto palettes, all automatically. At the end of the tour we also got 2 free drinks, bonus!

To complete our Bundaberg drinks day out we took a wander to what is know as the Bundaberg Barrel, the home of Bundaberg Soft Drinks company where they brew ginger beer among other things. I wanted to go mainly to see the building which is designed as a barrel, very clever. This was quite good but nowhere near as good as the rum distillery (and not just because of the lack of alcohol!).

Tonight we have booked on a tour recommended by reception which could be absolutely amazing but could also be a massive disappointment. We're booked to go to 'Mon Repos' one of the worlds largest and most important hatching grounds for Loggerhead Turtles. Here's hoping we see something!!

Trains

2008-03-15T20:11:00.002Z

So there we were, minding our own business at Proserpine Station waiting for our "Sunlander" train to come along when what happens? Our old friend the Cairns Tilt Train turns up instead, we have no idea why but we're now currently sitting in business class again! I love this country!!

Airlie Beach

2008-03-15T17:35:00.002Z

After two more relaxing days at Townsville we made our way to the train station to catch the Thursday "Sunlander" for our short and somewhat leisurely (in Australian terms anyway!) 4 hour journey to Proserpine where we could then get a transfer to Airlie Beach. This is one of the shortest journeys we will be doing in Australia, I mean I've taken train journeys in England that are longer, and that's not going to happen too often!!

We arrived at about 9pm and checked into our hostel, "Magnums" which is by far the biggest and liveliest hostel we've been to. There is a big outside bar area with big TVs, pool tables, cafés and restaurants. It also has its own nightclub, so we had a feeling that there might be a better atmosphere here than some other places (Magnetic Island springs to mind for some reason....) and we weren't wrong. The rooms are definitely the best we've had so far, spacious and modern with silent a/c, a fridge and lots of power points for once! It was $52 pn which is cheaper than most other places so good value all round.

Friday held a surprise for me, as we were just checking out a little jewellery stand I was jumped on and hugged from behind by my friend Ash from school! He lives in Brisbane and we were planning to meet up with him there in about a week but to see him early was a great surprise! Obviously we had a few drinks to celebrate but being only 2pm we didn't want to get too carried away so spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing at the lagoon which is in a really beautiful setting. Another surprise at a place called Airlie Beach is that there is no proper beach here. That's not a bad thing though as the lagoon that has been built is excellent (and floodlit for a bit of nightswimming too!).

As evening fell we had plenty more drinks and told lots of stories as we had plenty to catch up on whilst watching the first game of the new NRL season (Rugby League) on TV. We moved on and were lucky enough to have live music everywhere we went which was great to dance the night away. Today we're feeling a little tired and slightly under the weather, but that's the price you pay! We've spent the day just pottering around town and generally not doing a lot. We're looking forward to our 13 hr overnight train journey from here to Bundaberg this evening. We arrive at 9am tomorrow morning (after leaving at 8pm!).

P.S. Forgot to mention that when in Townsville I treated myself to a typical Australian leather hat. Think Crocodile Dundee or Indiana Jones and you've got the general idea. It's awesome!!!

Townsville and Magnetic Island

2008-03-11T01:42:00.007Z

After arriving at Townsville Station mid afternoon on Saturday we checked into our new hostel, the Reef Lodge and rushed off to the supermarket before it closed otherwise we'd actually have to pay good money for dinner rather than cooking it on the cheap for ourselves! We didn't do much else on Saturday evening as we were pretty tired from travelling all day, we just continued our "Yahtzee" championship!

On Sunday we decided to head out after an early lunch to see a bit of what Townsville had to offer. Conveniently there was a market in the main shopping area which was nice to browse and we also saw/heard a man playing a traditional didgeridoo. It's fantastic the noises that some people can make as these seem pretty hard to play.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on "The Strand" which is the seafront and runs the length of the town, a good kilometre or two. It was a really nice walk and we stopped and lazed on the beach occasionally. We also cooled off in the sea, albeit within a "stinger net" which is a big enclosure to keep stingers (jellyfish) out. We walked the entire length of the strand and at the end there is an artificial "Rock Pool" which is just another swimming lagoon surrounded by grassy banks and overlooking the ocean and Magnetic Island, where we were heading next.

After checking out on Monday morning, we headed straight for the ferry that would take us over to Magnetic Island. To say that our hostel, the "Travellers Hideaway" (self proclaimed "No 1 resort on Magnetic Island") was unexpected and disappointing would be a massive understatement. However, to say our room felt like a prison cell would actually be quite accurate. My friend Dan had already been to Magnetic Island and recommended "Base Backpackers" but we thought it was a little expensive........how I wish I'd paid a little extra now! At our hostel there seemed to be maybe 4 other people, 2 of them long term. Luckily the other two were really friendly and had actually been in Megan's dive group back in Cairns. Michael was from Ireland and Alexis was from America and luckily they were just as disappointed with the hostel as us, which was at least a great starting point for conversation!!

Aside from the hostel, Magnetic Island really is a beautiful place, a real tropical paradise. There is not a lot there and really can really feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. The four of us went off on a "Fort Walk" that afternoon through the wildlife up to some WWII ruins. There were a couple of gun points just in case anyone tried to attack Townsville as it was a busy port back then. It turns out though that the guns were never fired in anger, however, they were once fired in "mild surprise" when a US ship turned up un-announced but that was the most action they saw! The main reason for going on this walk was actually to try and spot Koalas as all the literature said this was the best place and time. Unfortunately we didn't see any at all but we weren't surprised. If I was a koala I wouldn't live right next to a path with loads of gawping humans either! We did see some other wildlife including the 9th poisonous snake in the world (so I'm told), the aptly named Death Adder. Mainly because of his name we turned back when we came across him, didn't fancy being bitten at the highest point in a heavily forested and mostly deserted island! We finished our walk at Horseshoe Bay, the opposite end of the island to where we were staying (Picnic Bay). We had dinner, any reason to sit down, and then got the bus back home.

After much deliberation we decided that even though we had paid for 3 nights we couldn't stick them out, the place was that horrible (cockroaches, massive grasshoppers and other unknown bugs in the grubby bathrooms and kitchens). We decided the first night would also be our last.

This morning, before leaving we decided to go to "Koala Village". This is a small but well organised wildlife sanctuary with 2 hour guided tours by park rangers. This was an excellent way to spend 2 hours. It was much better than a zoo because the ranger gave so much information and made it all so interesting, even though we didn't see that many animals. Their idea is that they want you to hold or touch everything that you see. The first thing that we saw was a crocodile and after an introduction and some info we both held one called Barbie who was just under a metre long. Their skin is really soft and smooth and you can tell why people want clothes and accessories made from it. Next up was a Cockatoo called Shadow who would stand on your arm and eat seeds from your mouth! We then moved to look at some lizards and I held a blue tongued lizard and saw a few others too, including one with a frilly neck who could only run on its hind legs, highly amusing to watch! Next up was the absolute highlight, the Koala. We met an 8 year old male called Barney and we were both able to hold him and have our photo taken once we had made a donation to the conservation fund. We finished off our tour by holding a python called Ollie. All in all, a great day out.

We left our hostel a.s.a.p and came back to Townsville where we're now staying at "Globetrotters" which is pretty good value. For $55 pn we also get free breakfast and dinner, a/c that works and is free, plus a room that isn't a prison cell! This is the life!!

Kangaroos

2008-03-08T07:29:00.001Z

Just seen our first Kangaroos/Wallabies!! Can't tell the difference! 3 wild ones just hopped past the train!!!

Great Barrier Reef

2008-03-08T07:15:00.004Z

Yesterday was the big day. We were picked up by the Tusa Dive minibus at 7.30am in the rain and were taken down to join the boat. After a short safety brief and guidance to where the sun (or rain) decks were we began our journey. We were heading to "Hastings Reef" which is in the Outer Reef, about 40km from Cairns so we were in for about a 90 minute trip. The weather wasn't great and the journey was rough from the word go. We had both taken the free ginger pills that we were offered as they are meant to help with travel sickness. . . . . they don't! Within about 5 minutes we were both out the back with our faces in bags. Needless to say, the journey was not pleasant. Unfortunately the only real cure for sea sickness (as my Dad always says) is to sit under an Oak tree and surprisingly there weren't many of those around!!

Luckily as soon as we moored up we both felt better and were able to get on with our day. I had booked 3 dives and to fit them all in we had to get started as soon as we had moored up. The visibility was not great due to the weather but down at 18m I could see about 5m or so in front of me and close up everything was perfect. The reef was really amazing, so many different types and colours all housing thousands of different species of fish. Of these I only saw a tiny percentage (and even fewer that I recognised!) but it was still enough to fill three 45 minute dives. Among the things that I saw that I actually know the name of were: Angel fish, Lizard fish, 3-stripe Humbug fish, a Pineapple Sea Cucumber, Butterfly fish, Pink Anemone fish, Catfish, Dogfish, Clownfish (that's Nemo by the way!!) and the highlight of the three dives for me came on the last one, a Green Turtle! They are so calm and didn't seem to mind that there were 7 people floating there. I took lots of photos with the camera we hired (about 200) and hopefully some of them will be good.

Megan had booked 2 intro dives as she has never tried it before. Unfortunately it was very choppy and this didn't help with her first experience. She didn't like this first session at all but she's not a quitter and decided to carry on and give it another go for a first proper dive. The instructors knew she was nervous so didn't push her into anything. She tried again but after about 10 minutes of being under decided that she really didn't like it so came up and went snorkeling instead, which she liked a lot more. The fact that she could breathe normal air instead of oxygen was better and she was on the surface too. Megan also saw lots of fish and coral and was really close to the reef. The only thing she was disappointed about was that she didn't see Nemo!

On the trip back we learnt from our mistakes and bought some proper sea sickness tablets (for a whole $2, we really should have done it on the way out!) and were much better!

Today we are off to Townsville and we are currently on the train. This is the first train to leave Cairns for 5 days due to flooding. We are very lucky that we've still managed to keep to our plan really. The train we were supposed to be on, "The Sunlander" is in Townsville so instead we are on the "Cairns Tilt Train" which is entirely Business Class. Huge Seats, TVs at every seat hidden in the armrest and loads of legroom too! It is a 6-7 hour trip and we're certainly doing it in a bit of luxury.

Australia

2008-03-06T07:58:00.006Z

So we've made it to Auz, we got here by way of a somewhat unexpected flight however. Firstly we had booked Singapore-Cairns so were slightly confused when our flight was displayed "via Darwin". This was no real problem as we didn't have to change planes but literally get off, sit in a lounge and then get back on again, all this at 3am! The other unexpected thing was the plane itself. Having booked a BA/Qantas round the world ticket we would expect nice big planes run by either company especially for an 8hr intercontinental flight but no, not this time. We were on a relatively small plane with no entertainment whatsoever, no TV, no radio, nothing. I'm not spoilt but it's come to be somewhat standard really. Once again Megan slept for a couple of hours, I on the other hand did not....AGAIN! I tried and tried but it wasn't happening so i gave up & went to the other extreme and listened to hard rock on my iPod! The flight from Darwin to Cairns was a lot shorter and i did manage to get a few uneasy minutes of sleep in, enough to miss breakfast in fact! I know, shocking!

Whilst flying we could see that there was a lot of cloud but on landing we were greeted by pouring rain, gales and widespread flooding. Not great for our first morning in Australia, but we knew there is always a chance of "showers" in tropical northwest Queensland.
We got picked up by a minibus from our hostel, the "Travellers Oasis" and were taken straight there & shown around. Even in the rain it looked excellent and we both liked the look of it. Nice & cosy with 2 kitchens, plenty of showers/bathrooms, a TV room and a swimming pool (which was overflowing with rain when we were shown it) with sun loungers, chairs and hammocks surrounding it. Our room is decent too, nice and big with A.C. ($1 for 3hrs) a fridge and a sink. Definitely can't complain about this.

Cairns itself is pretty small, there isn't a great deal to it and what there is is geared towards tourists like us. Lots of people come here because it is one of the best places possible to get to the Great Barrier Reef from and also great to visit the rainforests here (which definitely get plenty of rain!) We went into town as soon as we'd got our stuff in and made some enquiries into the upcoming weather and the possibility of reef trips. They said it was clearing up and that boats go to a site which has the best weather (one company has 17 different sites to choose from) and they select the site on the day. We decided to go for it & booked ourselves onto a boat for Friday morning, being picked up at 7.25am. Megan is booked for 2 intro dives and I'm booked for 3 guided dives. We will be taken to 2 dive sites and lunch is included. We paid around $250 each (120 pounds at todays rate) which i think is a fantastic price.

Today we've mainly been relaxing but we also went into town & exchanged the piece of paper saying we have a train ticket for an actual ticket! It seems we're quite lucky as we plan to leave on Saturday for Townsville but this train hasn't been running for about a week due to flooding. We have to be there before 8am to "check in our luggage". A very strange concept for us but long journeys are all part and parcel of travel in Australia and something we'll no doubt get used to in a few months! We also went into a camera shop and hired ourselves an underwater camera for $45 (20 pounds) which comes with massive memory (about 600 photos) and free burning to CD. The camera looks great, about 10 mega pixels (capable of 12 but we get more photos this way) and it also has a "macro" mode which is for close ups and gives extreme detail. It looks good & hopefully we'll have plenty of fish to take photos of tomorrow. We're both looking forward to it!!

Night Safari

2008-03-03T23:22:00.005Z

To begin our last proper day in Singapore we decided to go and explore another of the ethnic areas of the country so we went to Little India. It was good to walk around and see but nowhere near as impressive as Chinatown. There were plenty of shops selling sari's, bangles and a lot of gold but unfortunately no street markets. Nonetheless not bad for a couple of hours strolling. We headed back to the MRT and went back to Orchard Rd where we knew we could catch a direct coach to the zoo for the Night Safari. Having a couple of hours to kill we decided we would try and walk around Orchard Rd in the dry.

No such luck there, almost as soon as we stepped out a tropical downpour had begun. It seems Orchard Rd doesn't like us!! We were once again confined to the insides of malls, not daring to venture into the weather. This had cleared up by the time came to wait for the bus which was lucky. On the bus we travelled down a lot more of Orchard Rd that we hadn't been able to get to due to the weather. I must admit that I may have been a bit hasty putting it down yesterday as there was a lot more to it than we had initially seen.

The Night Safari was excellent, well worth the entrance fee and I would highly recommend it. We began with a 45 minute tram tour and saw lots of things from Mountain Goats, Tapirs and Kapibara to Rhinos, Elephants, Lions and Tigers. It was really great to see them in the dark, something very different anyway. After this we watched a show about "Creatures Of The Night" which was very good and presented by a brilliant ranger. He was very impressive and spoke about 8 different languages and made people laugh in all of them! After the show we wandered around by ourselves and saw lots more. We went and saw a Malayan Tiger but it was really sad. He was just pacing around the enclosure doing the same circuit over and over again. Its really quite sad to think that there are hardly any left in the wild and pretty much the only way to keep them alive is by putting them in a tiny enclosure. It's probably the only place he won't get shot. People will still pay up to $10,000 (U.S.) for their bones alone and the rest is worth plenty too. Aside from this it was a great evening out and a nice way to finish off our Singapore stay.

I would definitely recommend anyone to come here, but only for a short stay on the way to somewhere else as 4 days was definitely enough for us. We fly to Cairns at 10pm tomorrow, landing just after 8am on Wednesday morning. Australia here we come!!

A Rainy Day

2008-03-02T14:05:00.003Z

After the resounding success of our first day, today began as a disappointment. Just as we were about to head out it started hacking down with rain. We braved it and went to the National Museum of Singapore. This was the second disappointment (after the rain), it really wasn't that good. I was expecting lots of displays, ancient objects and such like but it was just walls of photos and a dodgy audio tour. The sort of information you could easily read in a book and I would have much preferred to have done that. Its a shame because it was so built up in all the books and guides that I was expecting much more.

After this we were off to the much famed Orchard Rd, variously called the "epi-centre of shopping" and a "must see". Unfortunately for us, this was the third disappointment of the day (and we'd only been out for about 90 mins!). It was just another busy street with a few malls along it. Lots of shops, yes, but nothing new or special. After some umming and ahhing we decided to head towards the river in the hope that the rain would give up. Luckily it did and our day got better. We wandered around the lovely Clarke Quay area, relaxed with a beer and had some food. It was a relaxing evening after a poor start to the day. Luckily the weather was a lot better and we managed a stroll along the riverside before heading home.

Arrival in Singapore

2008-03-02T04:17:00.005Z

The flight over from Dubai was bearable but not great. We actually had 2 flights, one from Dubai to Doha and then another from Doha to Singapore. Initially we had an hour between landing in Doha and taking off again but after leaving Dubai about 30 minutes late it was a bit of a rush to get through and onto the next flight. We were among the last people to board but at least we didn't have to queue!! Once again, Megan slept for 4-5 hours, I tried but had the world's most annoying woman sitting behind me. She liked to move about a lot, mostly by grabbing my chair and pulling herself up with it, needless to say, a randomly moving chair isn't the best sleeping environment!

Anyway, onto Singapore, our first view of it was coming out of the airport and to describe it in 3 words I would have to say hot, sticky and grey! We are pretty much bang on the equator here so the weather hardly ever changes, it is always hot and the sort of tropical plants we were greeted with proved that point. To get from the airport to Kallang, where we are staying, we used the renowned SMRT, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit, which is the underground train system. It is cheap, reliable and easy to use, we got ourselves an EZ-link card which is like an oyster card and got to where we needed for about S$1.50 (about 50p), not bad for a 20 minute journey. When we got to the hotel we were somewhat disappointed with our room. It was clean and had all the facilities but it was tiny. Imagine a hotel room, now shrink it so that the walls just about surround the bed, that's pretty much what we had! The next morning we went to reception and upgraded ourselves to a "deluxe" room which was a lot bigger (not hard!) and for only about 2 quid extra each per night i was willing to make that sacrifice!

Our first full day in Singapore was a successful one, we started off by heading to Chinatown and it was like nothing either of us had ever seen before. As soon as we stepped off the MRT we were straight into a street market surrounded by Chinese buildings, pagodas and red lanterns. It was absolutely fantastic and we fully immersed ourselves in browsing the traditional (and touristy) goods for sale. The major thing we did here was to go to a tailor and both got measured up and fitted out for new suits. The tailor we went to was excellent and a big fan of Britain. He was so excited that we were British and told us all about how his Dad was in the British Army and how Singapore was much better under Britain. He was an excellent tailor and really knew what he was talking about design-wise. One of the photos he had in his shop was of Bill Clinton there. If his suits are good enough for a US President then I guess they are good enough for me!

After this we continued walking around and went to a temple which was amazing, it was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and displayed Asia's biggest Stupa (a type of Buddha) made from 420kg of pure gold, decorated with 201 rubies and surrounded by 35 statues of Buddha. We then walked down to the oldest Indian temple in Singapore, not quite as impressive but an amazing tower at the entrance featuring statues of divine beings.

After engrossing ourselves in yet more browsing through stalls we took the MRT to HarbourFront and got on the cable car to take us over to Sentosa Island. This was a really good way to get across, we could have gone by train or bus but we saw a lot more this way. Sentosa is a heavily forested island paradise with a few beaches and a few tourist attractions. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, they are extending the island and are building hotels, casinos and goodness knows what else. Whilst on Sentosa we enjoyed the views and saw the giant statue of the Merlion, a symbol of Singapore. We also went to "Underwater World" which is a sea life centre and had a whole variety of sea life including coral, tropical fish, crabs, sharks, jellyfish and Megan's joint favorites, Clown Fish and Turtles! There was a tunnel running under the tanks that you could go through and see everything, we both really enjoyed this.

After dinner, the plan was to go to the "New Asia Bar" on top of the Swissotel in town. It is the tallest point in Singapore and would have been a perfect way to finish the day, a brilliant view of the city apparently. Unfortunately, to get in you have to be 23, well MEN have to be 23, women only have to be 18! So instead we stayed on the ground floor and had an excellent view over, well, the pavement. Not quite the same but it was a really nice bar where we had appletinis (yes, that's right Adam!!!!) and it was still a good way to finish off the first day of our short stop in Singapore.

Some Firsts For Megan

2008-02-27T07:18:00.005Z

On Monday we took ourselves off to the 'Irish Village' near the airport. This is where the Dubai Tennis Stadium is and where the Dubai Tennis Championships were taking place. Monday was the first day of the women's tournament and tickets were only 30AED (less than a fiver!) so we thought we'd go along and watch a bit of tennis. This was Megan's first 'first' of the last few days, the first time she's watched a live tennis match. She really enjoyed it and we saw some great matches. We saw Kirilenko vs Bondarenko (ranked about 26th and 27th in the world) and also Schynder vs Dementieva (ranked 12th and 13th in the world) among others. It was a great day out and the weather was cracking. After arriving at 1pm we stayed until about 10pm so I think we definitely got our money's worth!!

Megan's second 'first' came the next day at Ski Dubai. She has never been skiing before and didn't know whether she'd like it so we booked her in for a 'Discovery Lesson' and she absolutely loved it! She took to it really quickly and where better to try it out than at the largest indoor ski slope in the world? Better than booking an entire holiday and realising that you don't actually like it! Whilst Megan was in her lesson I went onto the slopes and tried a few jumps and also the worlds first 'indoor black run'. It was incredibly good for an indoor ski slope but not quite what you find marked as a black run in the Alps.
Ski Dubai is really strange, it's weird being in such a hot country (30 degrees again today) but then putting on your thermals and going off for some fun in the snow! A great place and typical of Dubai, generally building things (usually the biggest in the world) just because they can.

Today we are relaxing by the pool again, trying to make sense of the fact that this time yesterday we were in -1C and now we're in +30C and we've only travelled into town and back!
The general plan for our last 2 days in Dubai is to relax and generally not do a lot! We've seen a lot of what Dubai has to offer and we've really enjoyed it. It's easy to see how it has become such a popular tourist destination and place for people to move to. Megan even admitted yesterday that she'll miss this place when we're gone.

But not to worry, we'll be in Singapore on Friday!!

Wild Wadi

2008-02-23T18:21:00.005Z

Wednesday was planned for us to take a trip to a waterpark and luckily, the weather didn't let us down. It was possibly our hottest day so far, so a great one to be in and out of the water.

The water park was "Wild Wadi" and is a 12-acre tropical paradise with waterfalls, rapids, waves, rides and attractions. The main ride is the "Jumeirah Sceirah" and is the tallest and fastest speed slide outside North America hitting speeds of over 80kph and a drop of 27m. It was an absolutely awesome experience, slightly scary too but it all adds to the fun! Most of the rest of the rides at the park are connected and are ridden in big inflatable tyres. You don't even have to climb any steps as part of the ride is getting shot up by powerful jets, just to slide down again! The height of laziness!! This was a nice day out in a really nice setting, overlooked by the Jumeirah Beach Hotel (looks like a wave) and the Burj-al-Arab (looks like a sail). If you haven't heard of these, look them up on the net and get a picture, they really are extravagant hotels!

Thursday began with beautiful plans involving getting a bus into town, linking up with a river cruise then wandering around the Old Souk before meeting Louise and Marc that evening. Unfortunately our best laid plans were ruined when the bus didn't turn up (so we had to get the more expensive taxi) then the river cruise was cancelled due to high wind (giving us an extra 2 hours to kill) and then the Old Souk was a lot smaller than expected and only took about 5 minutes to walk round! So for all our planning we just wandered around town for a bit and then went to another of the many malls in the city. It was nice but not quite what we were hoping for from our day.

Friday, on the other hand, went exactly to plan. We went along to what is apparently a bit of an institution over here. We went to a Friday brunch. These start at about 11.30-12ish and go on until about 4pm and are just massive buffets with everything you can imagine on offer. The price of 179AED (about 27 pounds) includes as much food as you can eat and all drinks including beer, wine and spirits. A very good price and we all certainly made the most of it before heading to another bar for a few more and then home for even more! We finished the evening with drunken karaoke on "SingStar", a PlayStation game. Fun, but I think it only highlighted the fact that I really shouldn't sing!!

As you may imagine from the description of Friday, today was a slightly subdued day, what with the fuzzy heads, furry mouths and funny tummies!!

Desert Safari

2008-02-19T20:21:00.005Z

After exploring the city of Dubai on Sunday, today we discovered that there are two sides to this Emirate. The side that we we shown around today is the desert part of the country. We were picked up late afternoon by our driver in a nice big comfy Toyota Land Cruiser and were driven out of town towards the dunes. It is amazing how quickly the buildings disappear and how quickly the landscape changes, giving way to scrubland and then suddenly to sandy desert.

After a little drive we arrived at the meet point for our safari and 13 other cars turned up. After a lot of waiting around we finally headed off to "bash some dunes"! It was a brilliant experience to drive up what seemed to be near vertical slopes and then go straight down the other side. This carried on for almost an hour when we eventually stopped to watch the sun go down over the dunes. The colour of the sand as the sun is setting is incredible, really deep red and it seems to change colour as you are watching it.

We messed around in the sand and took lots of photos and then were told that we were moving out towards the "traditional Bedouin camp". I'm not sure how traditional this camp really was, what with all the electricity, sound systems and flushing toilets but it was nice, well laid out and still in the middle of nowhere! There were lots of things there like camel rides, sand boarding, traditional Arabic dress but we went over and had some henna tattoos done by the most amazing artist. She was so quick, didn't need stencils and it was free (although we still gave her money for being amazing). You didn't get a choice what you wanted but just gave her a body part and she painted away, excellent!

Our entertainment for the rest of the evening was a belly-dancer and she was excellent. At one point she came right over to me and basically gave me my own private dance about 10 inches in front of my face, shaking pretty much everything she had! I definitely wasn't complaining. At one point, as a sign of appreciation, someone gave a traditional loud Arab shout/shriek/wail and we were both convinced that our friend Tom from uni was right there with us but luckily it was just a local!

It didn't take long before she started dragging people up to dance with her and Megan and I were both taken up separately to try our hand at belly-dancing. Mightily embarrassing but a good work out!

The evening was completed with traditional foods, barbecued by the locals before heading back to civilisation.

Flip-Flops

2008-02-18T07:20:00.004Z

My flip-flops have just broken, really annoyed!!! they were so well moulded to my feet!!

Arrival in Dubai

2008-02-17T18:21:00.004Z

After leaving home at 16.30 for a 21.40 flight on Friday we arrived at Heathrow with plenty of time to spare and were treated to a lovely Hilton Hotel Restaurant meal before boarding. The flight itself was very decent with good service and it was comfortable enough. Megan slept for about 4 hours out of the 6 and a bit we were flying so she was happy. I on the other hand slept on and off for about 15 minutes so wasn't exactly feeling refreshed! Our flight was overnight and the highlight for me was when we had just passed over Baghdad and i looked out to the left and saw the most beautiful coloured sunrise with deep oranges and purples, absolutely amazing. I then looked out to the right and it was still absolutely pitch black! Very strange but one of the few perks of being at 38,000 ft at that time of day!

Our first day in Dubai was a very strange one for me as I really hadn't slept so had been awake for about 21 hours by the time we landed! We were taken back to my cousin Louise's apartment (which is lovely and very spacious) in Jebel Ali where we dumped our stuff and were shown around the area to the swimming pool and mall etc. In the evening at about 5.30 we met up with my Uncle, Christopher (who is also on holiday here) at a hotel rooftop bar for half-price cocktails as the sun went down, and then had a meal in the Jumeirah Beach Hotel (a five star hotel that is designed to look like a wave), a very relaxing end to a very long time of being awake!

We decided to get straight into tourist action on Sunday morning and made our way into town via taxi. The taxi's here are very reasonably priced, air conditioned and the drivers are actually polite. Imagine driving on a motorway for 25-30 minutes in a taxi in the UK, how much would that cost? Well here it was 70AED, about £9, absolutely brilliant! We got on the "Big Bus Tour" in Dubai and actually really enjoyed it. It was great because we got to get our bearings slightly, see all of the main things and learn a bit of history and some interesting facts. One of which is about why the roads are so busy here, because petrol is cheaper than water!
1 gallon petrol = 6.6AED, 1 gallon water = 7AED!!!

We picked up the tour at Wafi City, a big shopping centre and made our way into the old town by the creek and stopped at the Dubai Museum in the cool basement of the Al Fahidi Fort. This was good and showed the roots and development of Dubai from a small town in the early 1900's to the booming city it is now.

The tour continued from here and went past the Old Souk (Souk means market), under the creek and onwards to the Gold Souk. There were more jewellers together here than I have ever seen before. More than 400 shops carrying over 100,000kg of gold ranging from 18cts upwards and selling gold, white gold and even purple gold! Brilliant for a wander round.

We continued onwards and after lunch went to Al Karama which is famed for it "genuine fakes". We were asked by someone as soon as we stepped off the bus if we wanted bags, watches, wallets, clothes etc. and luckily we did. We followed him for quite a long way and started to get a little worried about where he was actually taking us but we ended up in a shop (always a good thing) and were guided out the back and upstairs to a secret Aladdin's Den of bags and wallets, Megan was in heaven! There was such a wide range that we ended up staying for quite a while longer than we anticipated before meeting up with Louise and Marc and heading off to my Aunt and Uncle, Michelle and Derek's house for dinner.

This is where Christopher and Susie are staying and where we'll be staying too and I must say it is an absolutely amazing place! 3 giant double bedrooms, a massive kitchen/dining room, an even bigger lounge/bar area but best of all is the swimming pool outside with a wet/dry bar. Lovely!

Leaving Spain

2008-02-11T20:07:00.001Z

The last few days in Spain left us with very little to do having seen all of the small town of Chiclana more than once and having been to most of the local attractions. We would have gone to the beach but it was very windy and we didn't think a sandy beach would be the most forgiving environment in that sort of weather.

Friday saw the continuation of the Carnival but with the day being more child-based. At midday we went to Megan's cousin Hugo's school and watched each year perform a song on stage whilst dressed in various costumes. Hugo's year (9 yr olds) were dressed as tourists while the others varied between hippies, old people and wearing pyjamas. As soon as we got home we had to help out to finish the costume for the afternoon parade. A few of Hugo's school were going out supporting Cadiz FC, the local team. To do this they were dressed as footballs and cheerleaders. The effort that is put into dressing up is impressive as most of the costumes are handmade! In the parade later in the afternoon we saw groups of ghosts, cowboys, hippies, babies, witches, police, skeletons and various assorted others.

That evening we were treated to an almost private performance by another group of singers, this time dressed as (and singing about) Sherlock Holmes. Amusing, not least for the fact that they couldn't quite say Sherlock Holmes properly and also they were apparently singing about being from England and dunking biscuits in their tea!

As I'm sitting in departures in Jerez Airport (after being early enough to be first checked in!) I think we've had a pretty good 12 days or so, we've seen and taken part in Spanish culture and enjoyed it very much.

Seville

2008-02-06T20:57:00.003Z

Seville was next on the agenda as recommended by lots of people that had been so off we trekked to the now familiar bus terminal for an early (for us) bus. An hour and a half later we arrived, once again lacking a map and any idea where to head for. We luckily found ourselves a big map outside a Starbucks in town and located three things that were necessary.

1: Where we were
2: A tourist information centre
3: A morning coffee and snack!

The first and main tourist attraction to visit in Seville is the Cathedral, from the outside it is big and ornate but from the inside it is just incredible, really the only way to describe it. We spent about 2 hours wandering around looking at everything there including the extravagant and huge tomb of Christopher Columbus, the "Cathedral Treasures", the first elliptical room ever built and a floor designed by Michelangelo. One of the highlights was the "Giralda" which is basically the bell tower. You can climb to the top and see all of Seville. There are no steps but instead a series of 36 slopes, designed so that people could ride horses up to the top when it was first built in the 1200s, for what purpose i´m not sure!
After a pint of Guinness at the local Irish Bar we spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the river and through "Parque de Maria Luisa" which was beautiful and full of orange trees (which Megan decided she wanted to pick - dicing with death!). A nice relaxing afternoon was only slightly spoiled by breaking into a fast walk/slow jog when being pursued by a guitar playing hobo, but that was just amusing rather than annoying!

Day Trips to Cadiz and the Beach

2008-02-05T21:16:00.002Z

On Monday we had no real plan when we got up, we were up late and had a relaxing morning before finding out it was a public holiday in Cadiz for the carnival. We took ourselves to the bus station and took a gamble on which bus to get on, luckily this paid off and within 30 minutes we were in Cadiz town centre. We had no map and no idea at all of where we were heading so we immersed ourselves in the carnival crowds and atmosphere and went wherever the flow took us. There were thousands of happy people all enjoying the carnival, watching the little singing groups and watching the tractors pulling big floats full of even more groups. These moved along ridiculously slowly and occasionally stopped for the group to have a bit of a sing. We wandered about for 2 hours before thinking that maybe we should try to find our way to the bus station as this may take some time!! Following Megan's advice, we took a series of alleyways and side streets and found ourselves at the sea just as the sun was going down which was a nice end to another unplanned day.

The next day once again started with no major plan but we ended up going to the once weekly market just across the river from where we were staying, it was absolutely huge and kept us busy for quite a while before we decided we would brave the public transport once again. We managed to not get lost, as soon as we saw the sea we hopped off the bus and went and relaxed on one of the most beautiful beaches. There were no clouds at all and it was easily warm enough for just shorts and t-shirts, not in the water however, as that was absolutely freezing! Needless to say, we didn't go in! In the absence of watersports we amused ourselves by drawing in the sand and jumping off things like the mature adults that we really are!

Boots

2008-02-04T14:00:00.001Z

Megan buys expensive leather boots, very nice!

Spanish Weekend

2008-02-04T10:24:00.002Z

If our weekend was a typical weekend in Spain then a Spanish weekend consists of a series of unplanned events revolving almost entirely around eating and drinking! Saturday began with us having breakfast at 11.30 then going for a walk and not coming back until about 4pm after visiting plenty of bars, drinking lots of beer and eating tapas with the locals! We then went entirely "Brits Abroad" and went to an English bar, not something we´d generally do but we had good reason. . . . 6 nations rugby!! Unfortunately it didn't turn out the right result for us but an enjoyable afternoon nonetheless. After being back in the house for a matter of minutes Vince got a call and told us we were heading straight back out to the Carnival.

It seems the traditional thing at carnival time is for groups of men, dressed in ridiculous clothes with bright wigs on to get together on stage and sing funny/satirical songs, this was fun and enjoyable but we couldn't understand a word!! after joking for a while that we were the only ones that didn't know what the hell they were singing about, a local told us that most of the people there couldn't actually understand because they sing with such strong accents and so fast that most people were just enjoying the atmosphere and the tune too!

On Sunday we went along to Mass as Spain is a highly religious country, we thought it only right to go along. Once again we couldn't understand a thing but got the general idea. The church was absolutely packed, people were standing at the door, standing in the road, sitting all the way round the sides and standing at the windows trying to see in. Maybe you have seen a full church in England but it will have never been like this, i had to remind myself that this wasn't a special occasion. Not Christmas or Easter, it wasn't a wedding or christening, there were no famous people there. It was just a normal Sunday mass. There are benches outside and loud speakers too, this sort of turn out was expected!

As you would now expect, the rest of the day continued with us going to a cafe and then a restaurant along with unplanned manoeuvres such as getting lost and then stumbling upon a restaurant that they have been to before and liked anyway, where we had such dishes as whole squid and partridge. We also visited the neighbouring village of Conil de la Frontera where there is a lighthouse and from the edge of the cliff if you look hard enough into the distance you can see Tunisia.

Its not every day that you can stand and look across the water to see another continent!

Arrival in Spain

2008-02-02T19:28:00.003Z

We left the house at midday on the 31st and made great time to the airport. We arrived just as the check in desk opened so luckily didn't have to queue but we did have to sit and wait for our gate for ages! The flight was easy and uneventful (apart from the small side effect of me going deaf in my right ear for half the flight, annoying to say the least!). I still find it amazing that in the time it usually takes us to get from Basingstoke to Sutton Coldfield we had arrived in a completely new country, and not even the closest part of that country but almost the furthest away you can get!!

On arrival we drove for about 30 mins to get from the airport (Jerez de la Frntera) to the town where Vince and Esther (Megan's Aunt and Uncle) live, Chiclana de la Frontera. Its a really nice, small town, split into two parts, one on the river and one on the beach.

When we got to their house we were told "Mi casa es sous casa" (if that's how you spell it!!) which means "my house is your house", this is really common in Spain, they are very generous and welcoming. The cultural differences between us Brits and the Spanish were immediately obvious. For them it is common practice to have 4 meals a day and all later than we would eat. A late breakfast, lunch at around 2.30 - 3pm, tea at about 6pm and dinner at 10pm. Strange but I wasn't complaining as we were just in time for a late dinner! Perfect!

First port of call on Friday morning was the food market, we were told that it was a cultural experience and that wasn't wrong! It really was amazing, lots of different stalls with everything completely fresh. The best stall was the fruit and veg, everything was absolutely massive and so colourful, the grapes were the size of our strawberries, the strawberries the size of our apples and the apples were as big as our grapefruits!!

Later on we went and saw Vince and Esthers Beach House which is less house, more mansion! We also had a look at the beach which was around 9km of white sand with rolling waves and a picturesque castle just off the shore, a lovely first day, finished off well with a traditional meal of tapas, wine and beer!

2 days to go!!

2008-01-29T20:45:00.002Z

2 days left to go and we thought to ourselves, what is there in England that we can do before we leave for 6 months? So we thought, lets go to London and have a go at this graduation lark. . . . so we did!!

We have also just heard that there is a carnival on in Spain when we are out there and apparently it compares well to the carnivals you see in Rio de Janiero. Very colourful and fun, sounds pretty good to me! We have one day left to pack our things (we haven't started at all yet) and then we are leaving for the airport at about midday on Thursday for our flight to Jerez. We are both getting very excited now, not long to go.

Next time I blog it will hopefully be from abroad!!

41 days to go!

2007-12-20T19:38:00.001Z

The final flights have now been booked, we are officially going on holiday on the 31st Jan. Megan found cheap flights this morning, 1p each way!! Not bad huh?!?!

44 days to go!

2007-12-18T19:24:00.003Z

I have spent the afternoon today working out our trip down the east coast from Cairns to Sydney using our east coast discovery pass. I have realised now that this pass also includes coach travel for some sections. not as nice but it'll have to do.

To work out where we wanted to go I basically had to go through every single stop on the network and see whether there was anything there that may be of interest and was it somewhere that we might consider staying for a few days. I also had to take into consideration distances between places as we didn't want too many massive trips.

After a long afternoon of searching I think I have finally cracked it. The initial plan is to stop at the following places:

Cairns, Tully, Mission Beach, Townsville, Magnetic Island, Bundaberg, Brisbane, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay, Casino, Port Macquarie and finally Sydney.

This is a 1,679 mile route taking in the wettest town in Australia, the great barrier reef, museums, koalas, rainforests, cities, beaches, dolphins and lighthouses. Not bad!

57 days to go, not 63!

2007-12-04T22:24:00.001Z

We have now found the cheapest flights to Jerez are on the 31st of Jan instead of the 4th Feb so the countdown is reducing more rapidly than i ever could have hoped!!

76 days to go!!!

2007-11-20T14:29:00.002Z

It is now Tuesday evening and yet I am still reeling from the excitement of buying our tickets on Saturday morning. We went into STA travel as soon as it opened with a clear-cut and defined itinerary of what we wanted from our trip. Within the space of 5 minutes this had been ripped up and thrown out of the window!

Initially we wanted to fly from London to Jerez, then make our way to Madrid from where we thought we could fly to Dubai. As it turns out, the only way to get to Dubai from Spain is via London. This led to our first change of plan, we are now starting our Round The World (RTW) ticket from London and are just adding a return trip to Jerez as a mini-holiday before the big one begins!

Our other major plan change is our itinerary within Australia. The original idea was to fly into Cairns and then Brisbane, Bus to Gold Coast, then fly to Sydney, Melbourne, Alice Springs and Perth. We were told that to get the best deal RTW ticket we could only have 3 internal flights and this was a problem as we had 5!. We then decided to to change our ticket slightly and see a bit more of the country by travelling the entire East Coast by train!

We were well advised on which train tickets to buy and purchased an "East Coast Discovery Pass" for around £200. It is valid for 6 months and is hop-on and hop-off as many times as we need as long as we keep going south. We can now see much more of the country and all at our own pace. I am very excited about this as we are now not limited at all by flight dates and times.

The rest of the trip is still basically as we had originally planned with the exception of having pre-booked a tour of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (Ayers Rock and the Olgas). This sounds amazing, a 2 day camping safari, being woken to watch sunrise over Uluru. This was only £200 each including hostels at Alice Springs for 2 nights, not bad at all!

We have also booked and paid for travel insurance, youth travel cards, some hostels and also the visa for Australia. All in all it came to around £2500 each. Definitely the most expensive day of my life so far but money well spent I'm sure.

I'm very excited and will keep counting down the days and will keep writing about any new developments!