Saturday, May 29, 2010
Taronga Zoo
Today me steph and jackie headed to the Taronga zoo in Sydney! as Steph did the darling harbor bridge walk! We had to take a little ferry to the island where the zoo was located on which was super cool! we got to see awesome views of the opera house and the bridge where we though we saw steph! passed the carnival that was in the Marry Kate and Ashely movie!
Once we got the the island we waited in line climbing up the side of a cliff to a gondola that would take us to the top where the zoo was! how cool is that!! once we got there we planned our attack and set off to see giraffes, a baby elephant, tigers, lemurs, the petting zoo, reptile room, and the marine mammal exhibit before having to go home!
Once we got the the island we waited in line climbing up the side of a cliff to a gondola that would take us to the top where the zoo was! how cool is that!! once we got there we planned our attack and set off to see giraffes, a baby elephant, tigers, lemurs, the petting zoo, reptile room, and the marine mammal exhibit before having to go home!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Sydney!
Ah Sydney Australia, New South Whales, The home of Finding Nemo, and oh yeah the Sydney Opera House and Darling Harbour Bridge!!!
We fly into Sydney from Brisbane and land at the domestic airport extremely excited, not only because we have a driver, complements of my very well connected Uncle, but also because we were in the place pretty much everyone in the Western world views as Australia!!! It was surreal actually being there and the four of us were eagerly all trying to poke our heads through the airplane windows that are always just too small to see out of or you get some guy hogging up the entire window! Trying to see if we could see the Opera house or the bridge from the plane as we landed we had a couple, ‘OH my god is that it is that it!’ moments, but in reality we had NO idea where we were or what we were looking at. Once we landed and found Big Wally and got in our black town car (yeah I felt like the coolest person in the entire world!) we were headed to Bondi Beach House at Bondi beach! When we arrived we checked in and were informed we were upgraded to the ‘family’ suit and had our own bathroom! This was a huge luxury! There is only so much sharing of hostel bathrooms you can take until you start wondering how clean they actually are… but any way we checked in and brought all our stuff to our room and looked around claimed beds and then were on the mission to find food! Found a little hostel up the road and went in and devoured the most amazing Hawaiian pizza I have ever had, we were so hungry that we stuffed our faces, literally, completely ignoring the guys trying to buy us drinks…oh well. After that we were so pooped that we headed back to the hostel to get ready for bed and our early surf session at Bondi Beach the next day! Well be found out when we got back just how ‘bargain’ our room really was… the bathroom window was stuck OPEN so everyone at the street level, if they happened to walk by and peer in could see you either getting in or out of the shower or using the toilet… hmm. Also didn’t know this but cockroaches had found a way to enter into our room and spend time in the bathroom and climbing up our walls. Oh and! When we all went to lie down in our beds for the night we found hair that was not ours… on the bed sheets and on the pillows… not impressed. So I made a make shift pillow case out of a dress and laid down a series of clothing to sleep on top of. We woke up at 7 the next morning to get ready to rent boards and head down to the beach and hit up the waves. Bondi is beautiful! It’s such a surf town, no shoes, no shirt, no problem! It was like my heaven. We stopped at a little breakfast place and had breakfast then headed straight out the beach! The waves were PERFECT! We all surfed a ton and spent the whole day in and out of the surf getting our tan on in between sets ☺. This time around I remembered to wear my boardies so I didn’t give the chance to the sharks to eat my bathing suit bottoms. We found our way around Bondi and popped in and out of a few shops and grabbed dinner somewhere then headed in early exhausted and salty. Because the next day was SYDNEY!!!!
Sydney was surreal, after we got off the bus and looked around and walked down some street absolutely pretending we knew where we were going, we stumbled upon gold! There right in front of us was the mecca of the United States life style, just beckoning us to come inside, and of course, as Americans we couldn’t stop ourselves from having a little piece of home, so I went up to the counter and ordered my vente caramel macchiato, YES, we had found a Starbucks! It was so nice to have a tiny piece of home for a little while. We soon embarked down the central business district of Sydney desperately searching for A. Nemo and B. the Sydney opera house! We eventually had to stop and ask for directions because we had no idea where we were in relation to the water. We finally found the rocks, where we saw the ferry terminal and rounded a corner and AHHHHH (singing sound) we saw it, right there in front of us in all its white awesome glory! It was amazing! Absolutely unreal that we were in Sydney Australia AT the opera house, for it being such a token of Australian culture and world famous I couldn’t help but to have an I’M IN BLOODY AUSTRALIA moments ☺ Naturally we had to take pictures of it at every angle and us looking at it, us looking at it and smiling, us all together, us separately, just it. Haha then without realizing we forgot, oh hey the darling harbour bridge is RIGHT THERE too! So we had to again take a million pictures of that too. After the initial shock wore off we continued to mosey down the rocks and grab some lunch a cheeky café down the road. We managed to shop the rest of the day away. Until it was time for the night cruise around the harbour! Which was beautiful! It was a party boat full of foreigners and loud music and drinks. It was such a special experience getting to see the opera house all lit up at light as well as the Sydney harbour bridge. Next days adventure was back to Bondi for some more surf and explore missions, and why not throw in some shopping.
We fly into Sydney from Brisbane and land at the domestic airport extremely excited, not only because we have a driver, complements of my very well connected Uncle, but also because we were in the place pretty much everyone in the Western world views as Australia!!! It was surreal actually being there and the four of us were eagerly all trying to poke our heads through the airplane windows that are always just too small to see out of or you get some guy hogging up the entire window! Trying to see if we could see the Opera house or the bridge from the plane as we landed we had a couple, ‘OH my god is that it is that it!’ moments, but in reality we had NO idea where we were or what we were looking at. Once we landed and found Big Wally and got in our black town car (yeah I felt like the coolest person in the entire world!) we were headed to Bondi Beach House at Bondi beach! When we arrived we checked in and were informed we were upgraded to the ‘family’ suit and had our own bathroom! This was a huge luxury! There is only so much sharing of hostel bathrooms you can take until you start wondering how clean they actually are… but any way we checked in and brought all our stuff to our room and looked around claimed beds and then were on the mission to find food! Found a little hostel up the road and went in and devoured the most amazing Hawaiian pizza I have ever had, we were so hungry that we stuffed our faces, literally, completely ignoring the guys trying to buy us drinks…oh well. After that we were so pooped that we headed back to the hostel to get ready for bed and our early surf session at Bondi Beach the next day! Well be found out when we got back just how ‘bargain’ our room really was… the bathroom window was stuck OPEN so everyone at the street level, if they happened to walk by and peer in could see you either getting in or out of the shower or using the toilet… hmm. Also didn’t know this but cockroaches had found a way to enter into our room and spend time in the bathroom and climbing up our walls. Oh and! When we all went to lie down in our beds for the night we found hair that was not ours… on the bed sheets and on the pillows… not impressed. So I made a make shift pillow case out of a dress and laid down a series of clothing to sleep on top of. We woke up at 7 the next morning to get ready to rent boards and head down to the beach and hit up the waves. Bondi is beautiful! It’s such a surf town, no shoes, no shirt, no problem! It was like my heaven. We stopped at a little breakfast place and had breakfast then headed straight out the beach! The waves were PERFECT! We all surfed a ton and spent the whole day in and out of the surf getting our tan on in between sets ☺. This time around I remembered to wear my boardies so I didn’t give the chance to the sharks to eat my bathing suit bottoms. We found our way around Bondi and popped in and out of a few shops and grabbed dinner somewhere then headed in early exhausted and salty. Because the next day was SYDNEY!!!!
Sydney was surreal, after we got off the bus and looked around and walked down some street absolutely pretending we knew where we were going, we stumbled upon gold! There right in front of us was the mecca of the United States life style, just beckoning us to come inside, and of course, as Americans we couldn’t stop ourselves from having a little piece of home, so I went up to the counter and ordered my vente caramel macchiato, YES, we had found a Starbucks! It was so nice to have a tiny piece of home for a little while. We soon embarked down the central business district of Sydney desperately searching for A. Nemo and B. the Sydney opera house! We eventually had to stop and ask for directions because we had no idea where we were in relation to the water. We finally found the rocks, where we saw the ferry terminal and rounded a corner and AHHHHH (singing sound) we saw it, right there in front of us in all its white awesome glory! It was amazing! Absolutely unreal that we were in Sydney Australia AT the opera house, for it being such a token of Australian culture and world famous I couldn’t help but to have an I’M IN BLOODY AUSTRALIA moments ☺ Naturally we had to take pictures of it at every angle and us looking at it, us looking at it and smiling, us all together, us separately, just it. Haha then without realizing we forgot, oh hey the darling harbour bridge is RIGHT THERE too! So we had to again take a million pictures of that too. After the initial shock wore off we continued to mosey down the rocks and grab some lunch a cheeky café down the road. We managed to shop the rest of the day away. Until it was time for the night cruise around the harbour! Which was beautiful! It was a party boat full of foreigners and loud music and drinks. It was such a special experience getting to see the opera house all lit up at light as well as the Sydney harbour bridge. Next days adventure was back to Bondi for some more surf and explore missions, and why not throw in some shopping.
Monday, May 3, 2010
This past week was lecture recess and me and three of my friends from Uni hit up the most amazing adventure of our lives- travel domestically through Australia! We first stopped in Brisbane were we all felt all grown up going to the airport checking in ourselves and finding our gate and making it there on time with everything we needed! Once we boarded the plane it was so exciting to be travelling throughout the country and going places where we knew no one and no one knew us and have the ultimate freedom of exploration it was so freeing! We touched down in ‘Brissy’ on Saturday afternoon where we had to rush to the train that was leaving in 5minutes to our hostel at Roma station. The train reminded me of my time in Germany and I just thought of the time where my family and I were trying to get to the Mercedes Benz museum and we just kept watching it go by on the train back and forth and having no idea how to get there, we had somewhat of the same experience. First off we are all lugging around way more than the allowed carry on baggage on a train we are hoping is going to where we need to be and there are no like train maps anywhere so we are sitting here listening to the loud speaker and hearing this is an express train and thinking…. Umm when should we get off? Luckily someone noticed our lost puppy stares and told us when the right time to disembark would be. Another adventure begins when we get off the train at the Brisbane Transit station and step outside into the city and go “now where is the hostel?” Fortunately we had the address which comes in handy when you know where streets are, and this we did not, all we knew was that our hostels name was Chill Backpackers on Roma Street and that it was teal. We decided to take a leap of faith and walk to the right a couple of blocks where we stumbled upon a tall teal building, our hostel! We got checked in to our room, which was pretty much an elongated shoebox with five beds jammed in it. At least we all like each other! We hit the streets and went exploring down the rest of Roma Street to find food that wouldn’t empty our already low back accounts and discovered up in an apartment building a naked women hanging her laundry… one this to note about Brisbane is that it’s a city and people are looking all around and who the hell dries their clothes in the nude! Anyway we walk around and cross a really cool bridge, Australians really know how to make bridges! We ventured down this boardwalk and come across South Bank, which is a boardwalk along the river, it was beautiful! After our stomachs could no longer take it we made our way back to the hostel to ask about where to eat for cheap, the ‘chill dude’ told us of a place right up the street where we made our way to have some pure blonde and the best pizza that has ever touched my lips! After becoming fat and happy and ditching some seedy guys we headed back to our hostel and passed out at the late hour of 9 PM. Our adventure for the next day was to hit up ‘Goldie’ and surf at Surfers Paradise!!!!!
We woke up bright and early at 5:30 AM and made our way to the train station to catch the 6 something train to the Gold Coast and then a bus to Surfers Paradise! We were like kids in a candy store running around amazed by all the surfing culture and shops and surfer boys and boards! We settled down composed ourselves and had some delicious brekky at a little hole in the wall coffee shop, then proceeded to hire some boards and hit the surf! The waves were rolling in perfect sets and were HUGE bigger than anything I had ever surfed on and I was about to use a shorter board, worried I wouldn’t get up and eat more sand than was on the beach. We lotioned up and left our worries with our towels and ran into the ocean! After getting thrown around in the wakes for a little bit we found a nice spot and had some OMG IM IN AUSTRALIA SURFING moments then paddled into some gnarly waves and let life pass us by for awhile ☺. I was so proud of myself for one not making a complete fool of myself and being able to stand up on the board and ride some serious swells into the shore. However, not with out the awesome wipeouts and the fact I almost left my bathing suit in the surf it was an amazing morning surf sesh! We went and grabbed lunch and explored surfers and were the tourists taking pictures of everything including restaurant napkins. We had some awesome afternoon waves and ended up meeting up with some friends from college, which was a strange feeling being in a country where you know possibly 100 people and you are on vacation somewhere you have never been walking along the beach and you run into two people you know, I felt like a compete local ☺. We shopped until we dropped down in subway and caught the bus back to the train station and the train back to our hostel where we still had some room for ice cream and managed to find a hidden little nook of Brisbane called the ‘barracks’ which held a bunch of little restaurants and shops along with a little street called Caxton where all the bars and dinner places were. It was a really cool little find because you had to take the lift (elevator) up to a sky walkway to the barracks and then down the street to Caxton. By this time we were all exhausted and passed out in our shoebox for the next days adventure of exploring downtown Brisbane and South Bank. South bank is a very nice scenic walk way down along the riverside in Brissy. We found the wheel of Brisbane after the girls rolled down a hill and I took picture because I was in a dress and I didn’t want all of Brisbane to see my jocks. We wanted to take a little ride on the wheel of Brisbane, but we soon found out as we have many times before that nothing in Australia is free, it cost 15 bucks and we cut our losses and continued walking around south bank until we were tired and had taken enough pictures to fill an entire photo album trying to be artsy and what not. Tonight we had scheduled to go to the XXXX brewery and take the tour and sample all their beers. We were keen to go and catch the 5:00 Pm tour so we made the trek not knowing exactly how to get there, but it was an adventure and we had to cross through the ‘ghetto’ of Brisbane and run across a main road, but we made it 5 minutes too late and found out you couldn’t wear thongs so we had to hire shoes like at a bowling ally… and wait around in the bar for an hour before the tour, we were all losing faith in this and getting a little anxious, but the time came and we headed to the tour. And man were we glad we stayed! We got to help make the beer by adding some of the ingredients and watch all the beer bottles get labelled and capped and sped down conveyer belts where they were wrapped and packaged. It was so cool! I have never seen more beer in my life then we went where they kept all the kegs and MAN there were thousands, like you could build a home for a family of four and all the furniture with the amount of kegs that were in the warehouse! It was unreal. At the end of the tour we got our beer passes, which gave us 4 free drinks at the bar, we soon found out we would have to consume these before the bar closed in an hour which we were a little worried about. We got to pour our own from the tap and sample each of the beers that the brewery makes, which was really cool. After the brewery we left happy and starving so we set off in search for a yummy meal and went to our hostel changed and hit up the Hogs Breath Café and had delicious steaks and garlic bread and even fondue. It was very yummy, but left us so full that we couldn’t even dance at the little club we went to across the street so we decided to head back to the hostel and shower up and sleep because tomorrow was off to Sydney!!!! The next day we packed and didn’t have much planned until we had to be at the airport later that av so we leisurely walked along the streets of Brisbane and stopped at a little coffee shop and had some very yummy pancakes and OJ then headed back down to South Bank where we walked the rest of the way down to almost the end and came across the lagoon and some very yummy looking restaurants ☺. We stopped at a little hole in the wall organic lunch flower shop place where I had some organic pannini thingy that was so good, no idea what it contained, but it was so good! Then it started to pour rain so we hung at the little shop until it stopped and then headed to the airport for our next adventure to SYDNEY. Here we come!
We woke up bright and early at 5:30 AM and made our way to the train station to catch the 6 something train to the Gold Coast and then a bus to Surfers Paradise! We were like kids in a candy store running around amazed by all the surfing culture and shops and surfer boys and boards! We settled down composed ourselves and had some delicious brekky at a little hole in the wall coffee shop, then proceeded to hire some boards and hit the surf! The waves were rolling in perfect sets and were HUGE bigger than anything I had ever surfed on and I was about to use a shorter board, worried I wouldn’t get up and eat more sand than was on the beach. We lotioned up and left our worries with our towels and ran into the ocean! After getting thrown around in the wakes for a little bit we found a nice spot and had some OMG IM IN AUSTRALIA SURFING moments then paddled into some gnarly waves and let life pass us by for awhile ☺. I was so proud of myself for one not making a complete fool of myself and being able to stand up on the board and ride some serious swells into the shore. However, not with out the awesome wipeouts and the fact I almost left my bathing suit in the surf it was an amazing morning surf sesh! We went and grabbed lunch and explored surfers and were the tourists taking pictures of everything including restaurant napkins. We had some awesome afternoon waves and ended up meeting up with some friends from college, which was a strange feeling being in a country where you know possibly 100 people and you are on vacation somewhere you have never been walking along the beach and you run into two people you know, I felt like a compete local ☺. We shopped until we dropped down in subway and caught the bus back to the train station and the train back to our hostel where we still had some room for ice cream and managed to find a hidden little nook of Brisbane called the ‘barracks’ which held a bunch of little restaurants and shops along with a little street called Caxton where all the bars and dinner places were. It was a really cool little find because you had to take the lift (elevator) up to a sky walkway to the barracks and then down the street to Caxton. By this time we were all exhausted and passed out in our shoebox for the next days adventure of exploring downtown Brisbane and South Bank. South bank is a very nice scenic walk way down along the riverside in Brissy. We found the wheel of Brisbane after the girls rolled down a hill and I took picture because I was in a dress and I didn’t want all of Brisbane to see my jocks. We wanted to take a little ride on the wheel of Brisbane, but we soon found out as we have many times before that nothing in Australia is free, it cost 15 bucks and we cut our losses and continued walking around south bank until we were tired and had taken enough pictures to fill an entire photo album trying to be artsy and what not. Tonight we had scheduled to go to the XXXX brewery and take the tour and sample all their beers. We were keen to go and catch the 5:00 Pm tour so we made the trek not knowing exactly how to get there, but it was an adventure and we had to cross through the ‘ghetto’ of Brisbane and run across a main road, but we made it 5 minutes too late and found out you couldn’t wear thongs so we had to hire shoes like at a bowling ally… and wait around in the bar for an hour before the tour, we were all losing faith in this and getting a little anxious, but the time came and we headed to the tour. And man were we glad we stayed! We got to help make the beer by adding some of the ingredients and watch all the beer bottles get labelled and capped and sped down conveyer belts where they were wrapped and packaged. It was so cool! I have never seen more beer in my life then we went where they kept all the kegs and MAN there were thousands, like you could build a home for a family of four and all the furniture with the amount of kegs that were in the warehouse! It was unreal. At the end of the tour we got our beer passes, which gave us 4 free drinks at the bar, we soon found out we would have to consume these before the bar closed in an hour which we were a little worried about. We got to pour our own from the tap and sample each of the beers that the brewery makes, which was really cool. After the brewery we left happy and starving so we set off in search for a yummy meal and went to our hostel changed and hit up the Hogs Breath Café and had delicious steaks and garlic bread and even fondue. It was very yummy, but left us so full that we couldn’t even dance at the little club we went to across the street so we decided to head back to the hostel and shower up and sleep because tomorrow was off to Sydney!!!! The next day we packed and didn’t have much planned until we had to be at the airport later that av so we leisurely walked along the streets of Brisbane and stopped at a little coffee shop and had some very yummy pancakes and OJ then headed back down to South Bank where we walked the rest of the way down to almost the end and came across the lagoon and some very yummy looking restaurants ☺. We stopped at a little hole in the wall organic lunch flower shop place where I had some organic pannini thingy that was so good, no idea what it contained, but it was so good! Then it started to pour rain so we hung at the little shop until it stopped and then headed to the airport for our next adventure to SYDNEY. Here we come!
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