Australia was interesting. There were a lot of unexpected, frustrating bumps but the trip was...interesting to say the least.
It was so odd moving out of my flat and handing in my keys. I no longer have a home in Parnell Student Village. I have no bedroom or place to call home. After checking out, I took the Link downtown and got some free gelato and some sushi! Okay, I am a huge fan of sushi. It is outrageous. My flight to Cairns (in Queensland, Australia) was fine. I slept for most of it, but it was a loooong flight. Like 5 hours. And JetStar is not exactly a nice airline - you literally just get a seat on the plane, no fluff or anything. Not even water. I got in around 10pm and took a shuttle to my hostel. My hostel was slightly swanky, but it was okay. I feel like I usually don't like hostels the first night but then they usually warm up on me. And I slept pretty well. Earplugs are the best things ever for traveling.
I had thought that I'd booked a tour for the next day, but after reception opened at 7:30am I was informed that it was full when I'd tried to book it! A lot of the other tours had already left for the day, but there was one that hadn't so I did that one. It was all right. It was a "Tablelands and Waterfalls" tour, which basically meant that we drove around to lookout points, learned a little bit about the tropical rainforest in Queensland, saw this giant Cathedral Fig tree, and went in an ice-cold waterfall. Literally. Like, shivering when the water was up to my knees cold. The other travelers on the tour were pretty nice too; I feel like I talked with most of them at one point or another. It was definitely my first experience with reverse culture shock because I mentioned something that is rather basic in New Zealand and none of the Aussie travelers knew what I was talking about. At all. Oh well. The tour lasted from about 8am-7pm, and I was wiped by the end of the day. And there's a two hour time difference between New Zealand and Australia so I went to bed early for Aussie, normal for New Zealand. I also tend to go to bed early and wake up early when I travel. I'd prefer to have more daytime than nighttime.
The next day, the 4th of July, I went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef! The company I'd booked through had a package where you could do an introductory dive as well as snorkeling and that was a main reason why I booked through that particular company. However, I was unaware that if you have a cold you're not allowed to scuba? So that was extremely upsetting to me when I found that out. Needed a moment alone to cope with that. And overall I wasn't impressed with the company I booked through; the food wasn't very good, the staff were overall kind of rude to me, and the scuba thing just really means I would not recommend this company. However. The Great Barrier Reef? Yeah, it's beautiful. I saw tons of wrasses, parrotfish, and other kind of colorful fish whose names I can't remember. I also got to touch a wrasse that was maybe 1m long? It was cool. Also, I didn't want to rent an underwater camera for $45AUD, but I met an English girl straightaway and she had a disposable underwater camera so she took some pictures - including pictures of me - and told me that she'd send me them in a few weeks. Awesome. Like, I don't know how to further embellish the reef other than say that the fish were so colorful and ranged in size, the coral was both hard and soft and so beautiful, and the water was so clear. It was kind of sad because there was some dead coral on the ocean floor from Cyclone Yazzi that came through and hit Cairns in January. But I just took that in with everything else. After the day on the reef I stopped and got my free dinner at the Woolshed, which is a local bar in town. Given that it was the 4th of July in Australia, there were obscene amounts of obnoxious Americans chugging beer and wearing stars and stripes as clothes. Clearly, these people were ALL about the class. I wasn't too impressed when beer was spilled on me either, as the smell alone nauseates me. But ah well. I talked with the Germans who were staying in my room for a while before bed and then finally fell asleep.
My flight was scheduled out of Cairns to Sydney the next day so I didn't book any tours or anything - plus tours are expensive - so I slept in a little bit before checking out. Woot. I went to the grocery store and had a delightful brunch of Tim Tams (and Australian cookie) and yoghurt. Then I lay out in my bra and shorts (silly me didn't put on my swimsuit that morning) at the beach, reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and just basking in the sun. I walked around tourist shops and whatnot and was gearing up for my evening flight when I got a text message from JetStar, telling me that my flight has been canceled and I was rescheduled until 3:15pm the next day. I booked it back to then stand on a corner outside the KFC at the pay phone for a half hour with JetStar. I was able to get on a flight to Sydney that was leaving at 10:25am the next morning, and told that JetStar would refund me for any accommodation costs I had that night. So, instead of staying in my $17 a night hostel again, I decided to stay in a 4-star hotel! It was awesome. I took a bath, watched weird Australian tv (I stayed away from the CSI-type shows, not good to watch by yourself late at night), and was COLD because there was AIR CONDITIONING. (This is winter in Australia, but Cairns' winter is nothing like MN winters - and it's hot at night when you're trying to sleep.) It was awesome. And to have my own bathroom? Yeah. This is also the first time I've ever stayed in a hotel by myself, so it was a new experience in itself.
The next morning I ate the overpriced breakfast and took my flight to Sydney. My flight to Sydney kind of sucked because as I said, JetStar is not a nice company, which means that while I was on the aisle seat and half-asleep, I would be woken every time someone walked by because the floor shook. Mmm. Lovely. When I got to Sydney (which I seriously though we were going to land on the water - the airport is right by the ocean and we were dangerously close to it. Similar to the Auckland airport, actually) I had yet another thing go wrong because since I hadn't shown up the night before at my booked hostel (I'd emailed them but apparently they didn't check their email) they'd canceled my entire reservation and there were no beds available for the night. And there were a couple workshop/conferences going on in Sydney so hostels were pretty much booked out. I eventually found a hostel to stay in, and was quite grumpy at this time. I was feeling very frustrated with Australia and really just wanted to either be at home or be in New Zealand. Australia is not the greatest to travelers...however, it was only about 4pm at the time, so I figured it would be stupid not to go walk around Sydney for a first impression.
My first impression of Sydney? I loved it. My overall impression of Sydney? I absolutely loved it. I walked down George Street towards the harbour and stopped in the Apple Store (because yeah, there are Apple stores in Australia! There aren't any in NZ) to charge my iPod and check my email. It was awesome. Then I continued on towards the Rocks, which are a famous historic area of Sydney on the harbour, and immediately fell in love once I saw the Sydney Opera House. It's so cool! It's a lot smaller than I'd always thought it was, and it's actually three buildings, not one, but it was really cool all the same. It's such a symbol of Australia and to be seeing it in person was way cool. It was getting dark so after getting very turned around/lost on my way back to the hostel I ate dinner and went to bed early. Even early for traveling for me.
The next morning I did the Free Walking Tour in Sydney. It's basically a historic tour of Sydney, and this guy started it because he grew up in Sydney and wanted to share his knowledge and love of Sydney to others, no matter your budget. I met a New Yorker who had spent the semester in Wellington right away, as well as a Sydney native who wanted to see what the tour was about, and spent a lot of time talking with them throughout the tour. We went everywhere; the tour lasted about three hours. The tour was witty, informative, and took me to cool buildings that I otherwise might not have been to - like the Rum Hospital, which was basically built on alcohol profits, or the last outhouse-type place left in Sydney - it's actually a really historic, cool thing. Afterwards my plan was to go to the zoo, but after being told it was probably too late to go for the day and that it was $50AUD, I hopped on the ferry to Manly. Manly itself was okay, I went to a cheap grocery store and walked through the Manly art gallery, but the ferry ride was really cool. You go out into the harbor and basically go around the Opera House and get a really good view of Sydney. On my way back I met a woman from Denver (who was also a Sudan refugee) and after getting off the ferry, we walked around the Opera House together before parting ways. Another cool part about the Opera House is that the roof is actually off-white colored tiles. I always though it was just paint. (Another cool fact - in the early 2000s a couple guys climbed on the Opera House and painted "NO WAR" in red paint on the house to protest Australia's involvement in the war in Iraq. Then they had to pay something like $150,000 to have it repainted, but they paid for the fees by selling keychains and magnets of what they'd done to the Opera House too.)
On the 8th, the next day, I was pretty busy too. I started off my day by going to the Sydney Fish Market and eating octopus, shrimp, grilled fish & chips, a scallop, etc. They sell seafood for you to buy and take home and cook too, so it was interesting to walk around all that since I don't know if I've ever been around that much seafood before! I told my mom that clearly, I was not born in the right state because my intense love of seafood and living in Minnesota don't exactly match up. Ah well. The fish market also had things like bread and fruit and fancy cheese too, so it wasn't totally fish. I stopped at Paddy's Markets after the fish market, but I have to admit that I really wasn't too impressed. It just felt like the vendors were running tiny thrift shops that also had kitchy souvenirs. However, everything was really cheap so I suppose there is that. I stopped at the Boulangerie across from my hostel for lunch, which was amazing. Got my croissant and coffee. There are a lot of French people/French influence in Australia. It was just odd because my hostel was in the Chinatown area of Sydney and then there was the boulangerie. Cool though. Then I walked across the Harbour Bridge and went up one of the Pylons for a really great view. That was pretty cool, too. I had some time before my flight still so I walked along the rocks, listening to the street musicians - including a guy playing a dijeredoo, an Aboriginal woodwind instrument that has been around for a very, very long time.
And then I stopped at the Apple store to check and make sure that my flight to Melbourne that night was still running.. and found out that Tiger Airways, my airline between Sydney-Melbourne, had actually canceled all of their flights for the rest of July. After much stress and the kindness of the guy working at reception lending me his personal cell phone, I booked a much more expensive flight to Sydney leaving the next night, called my hostel in Melbourne to tell them that I wouldn't be there (but had to pay for the bed anyway), and hung out with the Germans (seriously so many German travelers in this part of the world) in my hostel before going to bed. It was a highly stressful night for me.
However, I didn't mind having another day in Sydney since I loved it so much. I started out by going to the grocery store to buy some food for the day (and getting the best deals of course), then sitting in a coffee shop. The coffee shop I wound up in made me a delicious chai, and it was cool because this also meant that I explored the underground shopping tunnels in Sydney since that's where I found the coffee shop. I sat in there for a little over an hour, reading. After this I walked down George Street, trying to take in as much of Sydney as possible, and wound up at the Rocks Market. Now this market I loved. Live music, delicious-smelling food, lots of crafty stands of artwork, jewelry, clothes, food products, etc. Seriously so cool. I even bought some cheap art because I loved it so much. Nothing can cheer me up so quickly other than a fabulous farmer's market. :) Charged my iPod in the Apple store, went to the airport. I also was assigned an emergency exit row seat, which was really nice for the extra foot space, and talked to the guy sitting next to me for the entire flight, which was pretty interesting because he lives in Melbourne, used to live in Canada, and was born and raised in Mauritius. Pretty cool to talk to. When I got to my hostel in Melbourne, the night staff didn't answer their phone for about an hour, but fortunately I wasn't alone. There was a Swiss girl who's just come from New Zealand waiting too. However, it was Saturday night and there was a pretty bumpin' bar down the street (called "SORRY Grandma".. haha) so there were lots of skeezy guys and girls in clothes too short for how cold it was out on the street. I eventually checked into my hostel though, so it was fine.
I had two days left in Australia! I got up and went to the Queen Victoria Markets, which are pretty well known and supposed to be really good in Melbourne. It felt like the Paddy's Markets to me: like a giant thrift store. I took the tram to the suburb of St. Kilda, where I browsed the market there and went down the block to explore the shops along the main road. My intention afterwards was to walk along the beach (it's apparently a beautiful beach) but the torrentially windy downpour proved to me that walking on the beach? Yeah, not going to happen. Oh well. I then took the tram back downtown to Federation Square, where there's lots of informative stuff I guess you could say. I walked around the Ian Potter Centre for the Arts, which was cool. I like Aboriginal art, but to me it looks like patterns of dots on paper. Then I read the description by the painting and it's this intricate story about two women and a snake and some thing that happened to them. Personally, I don't see it; I wish I could. There was European art too, but that impresses me less because I've seen a lot of it. I like the super abstract art though. The ones that take images that you're accustomed to and twist them into this interesting thing. Then I went to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and watched a documentary on the Australian accent, which was pretty interesting. I think I can definitely distinguish between a Kiwi and an Aussie accent now. And I think I prefer the Kiwi accent.
The following day was my last day in Melbourne, as well as Australia in general. I decided that I had $45AUD left in cash (after a brief stop at the ATM) so I went to the Melbourne Zoo! I'm really happy that I went. It was so cool. There were the normal things of bears and big cats and birds and whatnot, but it was cool because there were little maps that labeled where the animals originate - and I liked all the ones that originated from Australia. My favorite exhibit was the "Australian bush" exhibit. It was another example of the laid-back nature of Down Under because basically you walked through a gate and an emu was literally a foot from my face with nothing barricading the animal from myself. No gates blocking those animals! When I saw the kangaroos I was entranced. They were so cool! Earlier I'd watched a tree kangaroo eat its breakfast, but this time I got to watch a baby kangaroo nurse with its head stuck in its mother's pouch. Kangaroos are kind of cool too because when they walk, they reminded me of a rocking chair because they rock. Since their hind legs are so much bigger than their front I think. The koala bears were adorable too - they were sleeping in a tree so they didn't move at all but it was so cool. I also saw some sleeping wombats as well as lots of Australian birds - which were literally in a cage with everyone going through the exhibit, meaning if a bird had wanted to land on me it very well could have. Kind of funny.
After the zoo I walked around Birrarung Marr, which is a park in Melbourne that basically acknowledges the Aboriginal tribe that was originally on the land that Melbourne is. And then I went to the ACMI again and went through the galleries, learning about film, and then watched some suuuuper tacky blind date tv shows from the late 1970s. Like the kind of tv shows that I didn't think were actually aired and taken seriously but APPARENTLY they were real because they're kept in the Victoria State television and film collection or something. I walked around the Chinatown area and got some cheap sushi (seriously, I love sushi now..) before hanging out at my hostel with a Danish-German guy. That was pretty cool. The flight Melbourne-Auckland wasn't the best. I slept about 20 minutes in total, but I was sitting by a cool actor who I talked with a bit. I think I blogged about that already.
And that's Australia! I visited three cities in three different states, saw Australian animals, the Sydney Opera House, snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef, spent much more than I had originally anticipated, but overall I'm glad I went besides the several upsetting hiccups dominating the beginning of the trip.
And right now I'm sitting in the LAX airport, waiting to board my flight to Dallas. It's 10am here but for me it feels like 3am and I haven't slept. I have a feeling today is going to be a loooooooong day.. I think I will start going through my pictures from Australia, as I took about 900 of them. Yeesh. Wish me luck, though by the time I get around to posting this I will have already done it (hopefully).
Flying out of Auckland I didn't actually think I was going to cry, but cry I did. I had a window seat and looked out the window until I couldn't see New Zealand anymore. It was awesome because the Maori word for New Zealand is "Aotearoa", which means "land of the long white cloud", and as we flew out of Auckland Aotearoa was difficult to see because of the huge, white, long, fluffy cloud covering it. It was sad to fly out, having no idea when I will return again; I think that's why it was so difficult for me to leave here. It's not like leaving home where I knew I would be back within 5 months.
When we were over LA, I was startled when I saw the cars driving on the righthand side of the road. Clearly, things like these are going to take some getting used to again. And there are so many Americans around me! I'm sitting at the LAX airport, waiting to fly to Dallas, and all the announcements about flights are in such an overly American accent it's off-putting, actually. Just wait till I get to Dallas and are thrown a Southern accent over that.. seriously, these people are so nasal! But I will admit that getting off the plane to the "Welcome to the United States of America" sign and having the customs people tell me "welcome back!" was exciting too. And I know there's so much to look forward to at home. My mom and brother are coming to pick me up from the airport tonight and then we're going to get pizza, so I'm pretty excited to see them. I have plans with friends and mom in the next few days, then FC, then trips with friends the week after that! Coming home.. is exciting. Not looking forward to getting over this jetlag though! Man. I'm feeling okay now (it's 10am, which is actually 3am for me) but I have a feeling the next few days are going to be really rough. Oh well. Hopefully I'll manage. :)
