Seven minutes

Seven minutes doesn't seem like such a long time, does it? I didn't think so, either, but apparently it is to Tiger Airways. I missed my very first flight ever (out of 20 flights in the last 10 months and many dozens of flights in years prior) trying to get to Melbourne from Sydney. Check-in closes 45 minutes ahead of the flight with Tiger; it seems to me that most other airlines close a half-hour ahead of time. I'd like to blame slow trains or long lines or even Tiger, but the reality is that I just didn't plan very well. I have no one to blame but myself - I made a stupid, newbie mistake in not allowing enough time to get to the airport and I should know better after all this time. Although. Part of me also says "come on! seven minutes?! an exception? please?" Particularly since as I was sitting at the gate, there were multiple calls for five other passengers who weren't on the flight yet while I was sitting there, waiting, ready to board a flight! Grrr.

It's not really that big a deal. I booked myself on the 7pm flight instead of the 4:35pm flight (although the $70 fee I had to pay is about the same amount of the original flight, so that sucks). So why was I in tears as I walked toward my gate (and no, I'm not PMSing)? I was in tears because I want to go home. And instead of being stuck in the airport as I head home, I'm going to Melbourne. Where it's cold. And I'm kind of tired of traveling. Plus, I got used to having a travel buddy in the last month and I'm back to being alone again.

BUT! I will be okay. I've suffered homesickness before and I won't let it stop me this time either. Besides, I may not ever have another chance to visit Melbourne and I'm already here so I HAVE to forge on to New Zealand. I finally got into Melbourne around 10:30pm or so and I'm having Tim Tams (my new addiction!) for dinner. The picture below relates to nothing at all, but I like it and wanted to share it. :-)

(My last night in Sydney was spent writing postcards with chocolate and a glass of wine close at hand.)

Will has left the building

Well, actually, he's left the whole country. On Tuesday I walked him to the subway station and sent him off to the States. And, believe it or not, because of the time difference and the direction he's flying, he arrives in San Francisco just a few short hours later, even with a layover in Fiji and another in LA. :-)


I don't know if I lost a bet or what, but I somehow managed to promise Will that I'd write up a glowing post about him and how great it is to travel with him. Oh, and how he was the only person from home who managed to meet up with me on the road (I think that's supposed to make him better than the rest of you? lol) (But there's still time to change that! I'm not home yet! Any takers??)


Ah, wait. I remember now. I insisted on having permission to post this picture of him and he agreed, but only with the above conditions:

(Will ironing his tie. While he's wearing it.)


Oh man. This makes me giggle every. single. time. I see it. This wasn't even taken in Australia, but rather in Vegas when he was driving cross country from Philly to San Fran with his friends right before he came here.


Yes. So. We had a lot of fun. Will and I both agree that the Oz highlights were diving in the Great Barrier Reef and petting 'roos at the Perth Zoo. Actually, we both liked the west coast of Australia (what little we saw of it) better than the east coast and wish that we'd spent more time there instead (Perth is on the west coast). All of the pictures of "Serious" Will were fun to take and a great running joke to have (one example can be seen here). Having an open ended game of rummy kept my competitive little heart going. For the record, I won - 7230 to 6905 (and we only started keeping score in, Airlie Beach, was it?). Four weeks and one day of traveling together and I only barely wanted to kill him - that's something he already knows, so don't feel bad that he'll be reading it here for the first time, btw.


I guess that about covers it. I was really glad to have a travel buddy and even gladder that it was a buddy from home. If it weren't for Will, I'd be feeling SUPER homesick right about now because Australia is so similar to the States and yet I'm so very far away still. Ah, but that's a whole 'nother topic and one I'll write about soon.


How'd I do with "your" post, Will? :-) I miss you already. See you in San Francisco!

Laziness reigns

So, I'm really loving Sydney. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Pacific Northwest, an area that I would move to in a heartbeat. I've been enjoying walking around, checking out the neighborhoods of Kings Cross, Chinatown, Darling Harbour, and others that I don't remember the names of. We've really just been taking it kind of easy. After a month of traveling, Will seems to be growing weary of it and has been happy doing a whole lot of nothing for his last few days here before he heads to San Francisco to start his new job. 

(Not a great shot of the Sydney Harbour, but I was digging the way the clouds looked.)

(The Sydney Tower there in the middle.)

There hasn't been much to talk about since our day of symphony and soccer. We've gone to the grocery store so that we could save money by not eating out and I've really enjoyed being in the kitchen and cooking again (even with the bare bones facilities that the hostel offers). And, actually, just doing a whole lot of nothing saves money, too. Besides the neighborhood wandering, we're also doing a lot of reading, card playing, travel related research online, movie watching, and Nintendo DS playing (well, Will is anyway). 

So that's about it. On Tuesday the 29th Will heads to San Fran and the day after that I head to Melbourne. I'm also finalizing plans to move on from Australia, but more on that later.

Sydney Day One: Symphony and Soccer!

We arrived in Sydney a bit late on the 22nd. There'd been a mistake with the reservation, so rather than being in the dorm room that we booked, they gave us a private room with two single beds instead. Being in a private room was a nice treat, but it meant that we had to check out the next morning and move into the dorm. Not a huge deal, it just ended up meaning that we were kind of stuck at the hostel. Then it ended up really not being a huge deal because it started raining with a vengeance and Will and I decided to turn lemons into lemonade by doing laundry and soaking up as much free internet as we could.

The rain eventually stopped which worked out perfectly for us because Will had surprised me with tickets to the Sydney Opera House. He's as good at keeping a secret as my sister which is to say that he's not, lol. They both get so excited about the surprise that they can't help but tell you all about it. So I actually knew about the tickets a couple of weeks ago.

Will didn't own a suit so we went shopping for one during our whirlwind tour of Brisbane. And I didn't really have appropriate symphony attire either (I sent the little black dress that I got in Dubai home ages ago), but Rhian had given me a dress that I thought might work. I just needed to get something to wear over it since warm weather wear isn't working so well in Sydney's 12C/55F temps. Getting dressed up to go to the symphony was really fun; I put on makeup and everything! :-) Even Will got into the idea of dressing up and most guys don't usually go for that.

The symphony was fun, but I almost liked taking pictures of the Opera House more than the concert itself. Will and I were hamming it up and totally marking ourselves as tourists by taking cheesy picture after cheesy picture. I particularly like that we both wore Chuck Taylors to the symphony. Sydney is just laid back enough that it worked.

After the concert we made our way back to our hostel's neighborhood to a sports bar that we'd looked up earlier in the day. You see, with the time difference we haven't been able to watch any of the World Cup soccer games live - the USA games have been airing here at 4:30am. But last night they played against Algeria and it aired at midnight. We figured we were already out so why not? We made a pit stop at a 24 hour pie shop called Pie Face where I pretty much was in heaven and wanted to eat every sweet and savory thing in sight. We settled for a shared slice of cheesecake instead. :-) The England/Slovenia game was airing at the same time as the USA/Algeria game so it was a divided sports bar, especially since the outcome of each game could affect who moved on. Every time we heard the England fans cheering we had to quickly glance over at their screen to see what was going on (and maybe boo just a little bit). Eventually we were just too tired and decided not to watch the rest of the game. Unfortunately, that meant that, like ToadMama, we also missed the US game winning goal. Grrr, so frustrating. We found out the score this morning when we woke up.

If you ask me, not a bad start to Sydney. . .

Sand and more sand

(Female dingo on the beach at Fraser Island)

Have you ever driven a car on a beach before? I don't think it's something most people get a chance to do because most beaches frown on that kind of thing. I still haven't driven myself across a beach, but the driver of the tour that Will and I joined did a lot of beach driving particularly since Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island.
 
And there was definitely a lot of it. We saw soft sand, hard sand, yellow sand, orange sand, red sand, black sand, and sand that was so fine and mineral laden that could use it to polish your skin AND your jewelry. For two days we were driven around the island, stopping at different spots along the way for pictures or a walk through a rainforest or a break by a lake. There were only six of us in our group, plus the driver, and that was kind of nice because in the peak season there could have been as many as 28. Rather than being in a huge bus, we were in a Land Cruiser and we were able to tailor the trip to the things we wanted to see and do.
 
The first night we stayed at a place called Happy Valley which is also where we had all of our meals. After dinner we played Scrabble with some of the others in our group and then called it an early night because we wanted to get up to see the sunrise. Come time for actually getting up, though, and I decided that my bed was warm and it was cold outside and I'd rather sleep in. Besides, I'd seen the sunrise during our overnight trip from Airlie Beach to Hervey Bay. I guess I never mentioned that, but then again, I also never mentioned that I finally crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere back during my overnight trip from Lake Toba to Bukittinggi, either. Details.
 
Highlights of the trip: We saw a handful of dingoes and that was pretty cool. They can be dangerous and there's signs all over the island about dingo safety, but the ones we saw just kind of glanced at us, saw that we weren't going to feed them, and moved on. Indian Head, in the north of the island, was one of my favorite spots. You had to walk up a 60m hill and from there you could look out and see for quite a distance, or you could look down into the ocean and see what kind of marine life you could spot. We saw dolphins and another woman in our group saw a stingray. Walking back down from Indian Head, we saw our driver pointing out to the ocean and we realized he'd spotted whales. Humpback whales have started their migration, so we stood watching for awhile to see if we'd spot them, too. We did, but to be honest, it was mostly blowhole splashes and a flicker of a whale tail. They were pretty far out so it wasn't as exciting as you might expect. But at least I can say I saw a humpback whale!

(The view from Indian Head)

We spent another night in Hervey Bay when we returned from Fraser Island and then left the next morning for Brisbane. Brisbane gets the whirlwind treatment as we're we were only here there for about 24 hours before we have had to catch our flight to Sydney. I think I would have really liked Brisbane - I'll have to explore it more another time if I have a chance - but we decided that since we'll have a week in Sydney, a huge city, we'd spend our time on Fraser instead of Brisbane, a much smaller city.

Happy Father's Day

Way back when I decided to take this trip, I held off on telling family at first and only told friends and colleagues. When I finally went to Dad with my plan, I expected at least some push back from him. But he surprised me by throwing his full support behind me. I even found out that that kind of world travel appealed to him, something I'd never known about him before.

The point is that today, on Father's Day, I want to thank my Dad for being supportive and encouraging and understanding. Of course he was all of those things when it came to this little trip o'mine, but he's always been those things. All fathers and daughters go through phases or periods of difficulty over the years, as we did, but I'm glad to say that today I'm closer to Dad than ever before. 

Dad, I miss you and our conversations at the island in the kitchen as you start dinner and I keep you company. I'm so excited that you're getting to do some world travel of your own (right now!) and I can't wait to join you at the island to hear all about it. I love you!

Overnight bus trips are the same no matter what country you're in

I said goodbye to Rhian and Marina yesterday (so sad!) as they took off north up the coast, going the direction we just came from. After we checked out of our hostel, there wasn't a whole lot for me and Will to do, so we decided to play cards, have a couple of beers, and just hang out until 8pm when we'd board the bus for Hervey Bay.

It turned out to be a good way to spend the day, especially since we sat on the balcony out in the sunshine. There was a tiny little wrench thrown into things at the first restaurant where we stopped. I'd ordered a chicken caesar salad. It wasn't good. At all. It was swimming in enough dressing for three salads and the bacon wasn't cooked all the way (yes, I know, bacon doesn't even belong in a caesar salad, but I was willing to forgive it since maybe Australians don't know that, lol). I asked the server if I could have another salad instead, she complied, but then turned back to say that she was still going to charge me for half of the caesar salad (that I hadn't eaten), plus the full cost of the second salad. At first I agreed because I was starving, but by the time she came back, I realized that was crazy. I again told her that I didn't think I should have to pay for a salad that I hadn't eaten and that I couldn't eat anyway because of the half-cooked bacon. She disagreed and said that since I ordered it, I had to pay for it and she cleared dishes and walked away. I realized that she'd taken my beer bottle even though I hadn't finished with it yet. When I asked her about it, she commented that she thought it was empty. She brought me a beer, but it clearly wasn't my original beer. For one thing, the bottle was icy cold, but it was strange because there was more beer than I'd had. The only thing Will and I could figure was that she opened a new beer and poured some of it out to approximate how much I had before she mistakenly took it off our table. Here's where it gets really weird. She came back to our table to pick up the check she'd dropped off, but we hadn't paid it yet. She told us that she wanted us to pay immediately and then leave because she didn't like my attitude. Wha?!?! Oh man, there's so many wrong things about this whole experience, but I think you all can probably figure it out on your own. I was so freakin' annoyed (and hungry! still!) at that point that I wanted to leave anyway. The whole thing was strange and had me shaking my head in wonderment for the rest of the day. It didn't stop us from our card playing session as we waited out the bus, though. In fact, the next place we went to had an awesome server who was just great.

8pm rolled around and it was time to head south to Hervey Bay. We've now been on four different Greyhound buses as we've traveled down the coast and none of the buses have been even close to capacity. Last night's bus was no different and this was a good thing as we were able to spread out a bit (ghetto upgrade anyone?). Spreading out only works so good, though, so neither of us slept too much (although the codeine I'm still taking probably helped me a little bit). We arrived in Hervey Bay right on time and were picked up by our hostel at the station. Considering how tired Will and I both are, I'm surprised we managed to bicycle around for hours today like we did. Then again, it is only 4pm now and we're like slugs in our room, with barely enough energy to even consider watching a movie. :-)

Tomorrow we are off to Fraser Island for a couple of days. Fraser is the world's largest sand island and can only be driven across with 4WD vehicles. It also has rainforest, lots of lakes, and DINGOES. I'm looking forward to the dingoes! So, just a heads up, I may not be around for a couple of days. . .