Full Circle (now with pictures!)

I'm exactly where I was six weeks ago: Melbourne! More specifically, the Park Hyatt Melbourne, my former (and hopefully future) home. :) I rolled into town early this morning after the best train ride of my entire trip. 11 short hours (from Sydney) in a nearly empty train car. There was no one in the seat next to me, or in front of me, or across the aisle from me ... I hardly saw another person the entire time! It was fantastic! I still had a hard time finding a comfortable sleeping position in my double seat, but that's to be expected. I think I slept about six hours, off and on, which is pretty solid, especially considering on my last train ride (Brisbane to Sydney a week ago) I slept about one hour. It was the worst night of my trip, if not the worst night of my life. But I'm not going to dwell on that because it was a long time ago and ... I'm at the Park Hyatt! woo hooooo!!!! Free internet and shower and STEAM ROOM!! I just spent about an hour and a half in the spa mwahahaha :] I'm going to hang out in the city today; I'll probably go read in the Fitzroy Gardens and then get something to eat for lunch and then wander around. I left my backpacks at the train station at the Traveler's Aid storage room (which is an awesome service) so I wouldn't have to carry them all over town -- and also to make myself more inconspicuous sneaking into the hotel haha

My week in Sydney (well six days, five nights) was wonderful!! I spent three nights at the Base hostel downtown, which was pretty good (clean at least, and in a great location, down the street from the Town Hall train station, close to The Rocks, Harbour Bridge and Darling Harbour -- and a Woolworth's grocery store) except that the staff was pretty lame and they charge for everything! $8 for laundry (so I didn't do it) and $6 to store my luggage for the day when I checked out on Friday morning at 10am (the Base hostels in Brisbane store it for free). Of course there was also the matter of my stolen Reef flip flops. :( They were never returned and housekeeping didn't find them in the room so someone took them and is probably wearing them right now and thinking how comfortable they are. Such a bummer. I wore my running shoes all weekend (twice to the beach haha) and then yesterday I finally decided I needed a second pair of shoes. I found a really comfortable pair of Reefs and paid SEVENTY DOLLARS for them. :/ There was another pair for $50 but they had a much thinner sole and they didn't seem like they'd be as good for long walks. I figured $50 was already waaaayyy too much to pay for flip flops, so I might as well just pay the extra $20 and get a really good pair. Ugh. At least there wasn't tax on top of that :/ I just hope no one steals these ones. The next time I stay in a hostel (Thursday night in St. Kilda, near Melbourne) I'm not letting them out of my sight! Anyways, back to the reasons I liked Sydney. Actually, I LOVED it! The beaches are gorgeous (see last blog for pics), there are several awesome walks (I did four really cool ones), museums (I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was okay as a museum and excellent as a place to hide from the rain for two hours, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales,

which was awesome -- I went there yesterday for about an hour but I could have spent several hours there if I had more time), beautiful gardens (the Royal Botanic Gardens,

Hyde Park,

and a couple others that I didn't make it to this time) and of course all the famous stuff like the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. I didn't actually go to the Opera House OR the Harbour Bridge (well I walked under it and up some stairs to the bridge level but that's it) but I did look at them and take pictures.

I planned on paying $10 to climb 200 stairs up to the "pylon lookout" at the bridge, but the day I wanted to do that it was raining and there was thunder and lightning so I decided it probably wasn't a good idea and went to the museum instead. I never made it back, but oh well -- I saved ten bucks. :) I made a few new friends in Sydney: a couple nice boys at the hostel (one very sweet Canadian boy had Shawshank on his ipod and we watched an hour of it my last night at the hostel. woo hoooo!), Roxy, a lovely American girl who I met through my friend Karine in California (we walked all around Sydney one night and had hot chocolate and chocolate-dipped strawberries/waffles at the Max Brenner chocolate bar. yum!), and Chris, my Sydney Angel. He rescued me from homelessness on Friday night. Well actually I would have just checked back into the hostel (I bought a package of 11 nights at Base hostels so I could have used one of those, but I didn't want to). I sent out several requests on couchsurfing and didn't hear back from anyone. After I checked out of the hostel that morning, I posted a message on the Sydney Emergency Couch Request group page but I didn't hear back from anyone all day. After I got back from the beach that night (I walked from the Spit Bridge to Manly Beach and then hung out there for a few hours), I got online and still hadn't received any messages from couchsurfing hosts. I knew they had beds available at the hostel so I wasn't too worried but I really didn't want to check back in, especially because that would mean I had wasted the $6 on the storage locker. Finally, when I had 20 minutes left on my internet card, I got a message from this guy named Chris, asking if I had found a palce to stay. I told him I hadn't and he invited me to stay at his place. It was just a 15 minute walk from the hostel, across a foot bridge that goes over Darling Harbour. When I got there, it was the most amazing apartment building, and Chris was soooo nice! He just came back from a trip to New York and California but I'm hoping he makes another trip out there next year so I can repay his kindness. I had my own room and bathroom at his place, he let me do laundry, took me out to dinner on Saturday night in Chinatown, and he even tivo'd the Heat/Knicks game and we watched it when we got back from dinner. The only bad part about the weekend was that the Heat won. Everything else was completely wonderful. :) His house was the perfect home base for exploring the city and the nearby beaches. I'm so grateful to him for rescuing me and being so much fun to hang out with.

I took lots of pics of MacKenzies Bay when I went there on Saturday. It was so beautiful!

When you walk out into the water, you're about waist deep for a few steps and then there's a big sand bar that goes out about 15-20 yards so you're in shallow water again. It's also one of the only dog beaches in the area so there were adorable dogs running around all day. And it rained a little but the rest of the time it was warm and sunny -- and there's a big rock overhang so I was able to keep my stuff dry while I swam in the ocean in the rain.

It was such a nice day!! There was even a rainbow out on the ocean when I was walking back to Bondi.

Oh! and before I went to Bondi I mentioned to Chris that I wanted to find a used bookstore and pick up a book for the beach. He jumped on google and found a little cafe + bookstore called "Gertrude & Alice" a few blocks up one of the main streets in Bondi. When I got there, I found it right away and it was so cool!! I took pics of it, of course.

I kind of wanted to hang out in there all day but I was excited about the beach so I only stayed a few minutes. I found Cakes & Ale, which I've been wanting to read for years, and it was only $6 because the previous owner for some reason stabbed the book with a sharp object three times so there are three tiny holes all the way through the book. Good times. It's totally readable and every other book  I picked up was around $10 so I feel like I scored :) I'm about 3/4 of the way through the book and of course it's excellent. Johnboy, let me know if you haven't read it yet and I'll bring it back for you.

Here are some more pics of Sydney:

Town Hall

obligatory ferris wheel pic

my favorite place to shower/sauna in Sydney :)

Harbour Bridge at night (better pics coming soon)

Me and Roxy in front of the Opera House :)

So that's it for Sydney, for now. I'll be back there before & after my trip to New Zealand in February. It's already almost 1:00 pm (I think I've been at the hotel for almost four hours!) so now I'm off to explore Melbourne once again. 

p.s. I just found out the Lakers beat Toronto today for FIVE STRAIGHT WINS!!! YEEAAHH LAKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

As for "my other team," they're on a 1-game win streak, thanks to their new boy SASHA!! (no seriously, he had 10 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists in the win against Atlanta)

this looks so wrong :'(

Goodbye Reef flip flops =(

My Reef flip flops have disappeared and this feels like big enough news to prompt an entire blog, or mini-blog anyway (I only have about 15 minutes of internet time so I gotta be quick). I'm in Sydney. I was supposed to leave today (for Melbourne) but on my second day here, I decided I liked it enough to stay a while so I changed my train to Sunday evening. I spent three nights at the Base hostel in downtown Sydney, close to the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, which I have seen from afar and taken pictures of but still haven't actually walked over to. I'm planning to do that tomorrow. As soon as I get some breakfast (brekkie), I'm going to take a bus to the Spit Bridge (about 30 minutes by bus) and then walk 10km to Manly Beach. It's one of the famous Sydney walks (the tour guide calls it "one of the most scenic harbour walking tracks in the world") and I'm really excited about it. You pass several small beaches and coves, aboriginal sites, rock formations, and the Sydney Harbour National Park. It's supposed to take 3-4 hours to complete the walk, but I'm planning on about 5 hours because I know I'll take a million pictures -- and stop to swim a few times along the way.

I took an amazing walk on Wednesday! I took the bus to Coogee Beach, which was gorgeous, and then walked along the coast 6-7 km to Bondi Beach. I walked past lots of beaches and coves and baths and stopped to swim a few times that day. The path also goes past a beautiful old cemetery, the Waverley Cemetery. Here are some pics from that walk:

So if my walk today is half as beautiful as the one on Wednesday, I'll be stoked. I'm planning to couchsurf tonight and tomorrow night but so far I don't have a place so keep your fingers crossed that I'll find something! I'll update this blog later with more info about my visit to Sydney but I think my internet's going to time out in the next couple minutes so I have to go ... buy new flip flops. I hope everyone's having a wonderful day!! :)

"Brizvegas" so far

Hello everyone! Sorry this blog is long overdue. and this is only going to be a partial, picture-free blog so hopefully you can check back in a couple days when I update it and add pics. Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to this past week. As I said before, my couchsurfing host, Ronnie, was awesome from the start. He picked me up from the train station and took me back to his place in Teneriffe, which is a very nice part of town, right by the river. He gave me lots of info about how to get around town and what to see, and I set off to explore the city. When I got back that evening, he was cooking an amazing chicken curry meal ... it smelled delicious and it was! We ate and drank beers and talked and listened to music. He offered to take me camping that weekend on North Stradbroke Island (of course the island has a nickname: "Straddie") if it wasn't too rainy. As it turned out, it was pouring rain on Saturday, but we decided to go anyway. We spent the morning washing and loading up all his camping supplies and making food for the trip. He brought two steaks to cook on the portable stove he brought, and pancake mix that came in a little plastic jug (just add water and shake it up in the jug -- so smart!) for breakfast. I made potato salad from a recipe he had, and it actually turned out really good! And of course we brought lots of beer. We drove across the Story Bridge in some of the hardest rain I've seen in years, and then got to the ferry just as it stopped raining :D Other than a couple quick bursts of light rain that evening, it didn't rain again until we were asleep!! We got sooo lucky! We were able to set up our camp right there next to the beach, hang out on the beach and spend a great night drinking beers around the campfire. In the morning, it rained a little while we were packing up our campsite, but by the time we drove away, it had stopped again. We saw a wallaby on the way to Point Lookout, had lunch (fish & chips ... delicious) overlooking the ocean, and then did The Gorge Walk at Point Lookout. It was so beautiful! And there were lots of stairs :D I'll post pics when I can. We also saw a group (pack? school? gaggle?) of sea turtles out in the water! The pics didn't come out but we definitely saw a few of them. It was such a cool trip!! :D

On Monday, I said goodbye to my new friend and headed downtown to stay two nights at the X BASE hostel. It's a chain of hostels known for being nice and clean -- and of course fun party spots. I took one ferry to cross the river from Ronnie's place, and while I waited for the ferry that would take me down the river to the center of the city, I started talking to a girl named Tanya and her friend Ben. Within about 30 seconds she had invited me to stay at her place, and a few minutes later she invited me to their work Christmas party at a bar downtown, "The Vic" (The Victory), which happened to be about four blocks from my hostel. I declined the invitation to spend the night since I had already paid for my hostel, but I enthusiastically accepted the invitation to party with them at The Vic, especially because she said it was open bar, and they'd be serving food. Woo hoooo! A poor traveler's dream! :D I checked in at my hostel, changed into a dress and walked over. I wasn't sure if I'd get busted and thrown out, but I decided it was worth a try. If anyone asked who I was, I intended to tell them I was new at QPAC (Queensland Performing Arts Center), but thankfully no one did and I strolled in and found my new friends without incident. The open bar was a myth but apparently the company had paid for some jugs of beer (pitchers), and Tanya poured one for me to start me off. She introduced me to a table full of people and they generously shared their plates of appetizers with me. After that first beer, the beers kept flowing ... someone gave me a Canadian Club (tastes like Coke with a little booze in it) and this funny guy nicknamed The Jaguar kept coming around with jugs of beer and filling everyone's empty bottles. It was quite impressive, and awesome. I met a ton of people and had a great time drinking and dancing with everyone all night and then I finally walked/stumbled back to the hostel about 2 or 3 am. The next day I had planned on going to the XXXX Brewery tour, but I had a slight hangover and suddenly paying $22 for four beers didn't seem like such a great deal anymore so I skipped it and just wandered around the city all day. That night, I went to South Bank, a very beautiful part of town along the river, and met up with my friend David (who couchsurfed with me a couple months ago in LA) and several of his friends from the Brisbane couchsurfing group, as well as some fellow travelers (from Germany, US and Switzerland). It was fun and I met some really nice people.

On Wednesday, after a huge, delicious (and cheap, thanks to the hostel) breakfast, I walked around the city for a few hours, begging building security at all the tallest buildings to let me climb them. It was very unsuccessful and kind of a waste of time, but at least I went to some places in Brisbane I hadn't been before. Then it was time to retrieve my packs from the hostel and catch a bus to Mater Hospital, where my cousin Deb works. I met her there and she took me to Kangaroo Point, which didn't actually have any kangaroos (none that I saw anyway) but it was really cool anyway. There are these huge cliffs along the river, and of course stairs to get down the cliff. Just think ... I could have been climbing those all day! Oops. But Deb took me down and showed me where I could rent a kayak or rollerblades if I wanted to the following day. I met a girl from Fremont, CA who was working at the kayak place. She came to Australia on holiday last year, met an Aussie guy, and ended up moving here. She was really nice and I told her I'd come back the following day to rent a kayak, which I did, even though that night, Deb's boyfriend, Stef, told me there were sharks in the river. I thought he was joking but he insisted it was true. Of course I couldn't just take his word for it. I googled "Brisbane river sharks" and got about 50,000 hits. I found out that there are over 500 bull sharks in the Brisbane River, and that bull sharks are the most dangerous shark to humans because they are fast and super aggressive, likely to attack anything that invades their territory, able to live in shallow, fresh water ... lovely. I was pretty freaked out but decided to go anyway. They wouldn't have a kayak rental business on the river if people were getting eaten by sharks all the time. Would they?? :/ I asked the girls if anyone ever saw sharks in the river and they said no. I was less worried than before but I still thought about the sharks that might be underneath my kayak for the first 20 minutes or so. But when I didn't so much as glimpse a shark fun or a dark form in the water, I relaxed and enjoyed my peaceful kayaking trip up and down the river.  After I finished kayaking for an hour and a half, I was a little sore and a little sunburnt so I decided to just sit down and read in a gorgeous park until it was time to meet Deb at work and go home. It was such a nice day!

This morning I woke up super early (so did Deb and Stef, who were heading down to Melbourne for the weekend, but to them 7 am is sleeping in late, not waking up early) and Deb took me to the Beenleigh bus/train station. I took a train to Nerang, then a bus to Surfer’s Paradise. I expected Surfer’s Paradise to look more like a small island village, or at least like Santa Cruz or Malibu, but it's actually a pretty big city with tons of tall buildings and of course, a ferris wheel. I didn’t ride the ferris wheel or even try to climb any of the buildings; I’m still dying to climb the famous Q1 building (80 stories, the tallest residential building in the world!), but today I was wearing flip flops and anxious to get to the beach. I took another bus down to Kirra Beach, a beach that my brother suggested I check out – he loved it when he was here with Andrea on their honeymoon, and he thought I would love it too. It was soooo pretty!! So much white sand and clear, warm water. And the water didn’t even have sharks or jellyfish in it! Well, I’m sure it did, but I didn’t see any. The only problem was that it was incredibly windy so there was powdery white sand blowing everywhere; within about five minutes I had it all over me and my bag and my water bottle, but that was a small price to pay for a lovely, peaceful day on a gorgeous beach. I got some sun and read almost an entire book (thanks Deb!) and made it back in time to feed Deb & Stef’s adorable little “sausage dogs,” Cecil and Henry. I'm looking forward to a very relaxing weekend. Tomorrow I think I’m going to go into town for a few hours because I need to pick up all my rail tickets for the next few weeks (I’ll be spending 8 days on the train between now and the first week of January … good times). Sunday I think I’m just going to stay here in Tanah Merah and read, walk the dogs, and play Deb’s Wii. :)

Monday = Round Two of Sydney ...

Back in Brisbane

Hiiiiii! I'm finally back in Brisbane after a 19-hour train ride from Townsville.

It was a surprisingly pleasant ride for two reasons: one is that I actually was able to sleep for around six hours (not six hours in a row; six hours total, but still!) and the other is that I made some friends while waiting at the Townsville train station, Jono and Leanne.

They live in Townsville and were also headed to Brisbane, and they ended up being in my same rail car, right across the aisle. I got to take the "Cairns Tilt Train" this time which is business class only and it's 4 hours faster than the Sunlander, which is the one I took on the way up (the one that took 23 hours). All I had to do to upgrade for free on my Austrail pass was walk down to the train station and book my trip in person. So easy! I'm definitely doing that next time I travel north, which will probably be in a few weeks. Anyways, Brisbane is awesome!!

My host, Ronnie, is super nice. He picked me up from the train station and took me back to his place where he printed out three maps of Brisbane and spent about half an hour showing me every bus/ferry route and point of interest in the city. I walked a few blocks from his apartment building, down to the river, and caught a ferry across the river, then another ferry that goes all up and down the river and you can get on/off anywhere you want. A day pass for ferry, bus, and train use is only $7. I'm probably going to get one of those every day I'm here. Tomorrow I get to see my cousin Deb! I'm staying with her next week but tomorrow night she's picking me up here in the city and we're going to her friend's Christmas concert. I don't have much else planned for Brisbane but I plan on doing a lot of walking and exploring. So far today I've been to the Queensland Art Gallery:

... and a sweet three-story skate shop with a mini ramp on the top level!!

I almost took a ferris wheel ride but it was $15 so I just took a picture of the ferris wheel instead:

Oh, quick Townsville update: I didn't make it to Maggie Island a second time and I also didn't make it to Billabong Sanctuary or Reef HQ (the Great Barrier Reef Aquarium), but I did go to the beach A LOT and I hiked Castle Hill again yesterday afternoon right before I had to leave town. I'll guess I'll just have to do those other things on my next trip up to Townsville. :)