Australian Odyssey

Hello my lovelies; my wifi connection has decided to stay strong this morning, so I finally managed to post pictures :) I have so many pictures that I will have a second post on my aussie adventures....so....where to begin?
Australia was wonderful. After 22 hours of flight I finally touched down in Melbourne on July 10th, at 10:55 pm. I couldn´t believe that I was on the other side of the world, where all toilets flush backwards ;). It was a bit surreal at first, and it took me a while to really believe it...it also took me a lil while to get my jet-lag off (since I´m so used to siestas here in Spain, it was quite hard).

These pics are not in chronological order, since our trip went something like this: Melbourne, Sydney, Great Ocean Road Day Trip, and various little getaways at the end...BUT, I´m sure you´ll enjoy my pics anyways...I´m just happy that I´m finally able to share my photos from Oz with all of you :)

Since my pics start off with Sydney, I´ll tell you a bit about that, now won´t I? After a little tour through the botanical gardens (we saw some HUGE bats, really early in the morning) with a very sleepy Shane (poor guy hadn´t slept a wink the night before since we had to get up at 4 to catch our early morning plane), I saw the Opera House...and wow, it´s really as beautiful as the pictures make you believe. It´s a strange feeling to finally be in the vicinity of a world famous piece of architecture after only having seen it in travel mags and television shows.

We had a lot of fun in Sydney, even though the weather was crappity Mccrapperson. Our hostal was nice (although cold...no friggin´heat in our room! I admit I whined there). The port is GORGEOUS at night, and Shane showed me the Sydney Aquarium, where we walked through these little "tunnel domes" under water where sharks and giant sting rays swam above us. It was sooo beautiful. It´s quite a big aquarium, and the money we spent sure was worth it. Meeting Shane´s relative ED was Hilarious...I shall never think of Drambuie the same. Let´s just say that at the end he was drinking out of his coffee mug and would stare at my earlobes when talking to me rather than my eyes:P Oh, Ed. They did serve us some REALLY good food and were very hospitable; so yeah, great times there indeed.
Shane and I were a little disappointed at not having had the chance to go see "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" since we only stayed 2 days there....oh well, things like that can´t always be planned. We saw a poster for the musical on the night that we were preparing to leave to go meet up with Ed...and of course we wouldn´t have cancelled our evening plans with him.
But man, did it EVER rain in Sydney! One of the things I´ll never forget is running through a torrential downpour with Shane just to get to a record store that had JUST closed....oh well, at least we got some Gelato (Banana and Chocolate...hmmmmm) afterwards and waited a bit for the rain to subside. Oh, we also had some good chinese food at the chinatown there...it´s a nice lil chinatown, quite cozy.
All in all, I raved at Sydney´s beauty and size. It´s overall very clean and has beautiful lil spots here and there where I could imagine myself writing in my journal or reading (or even just people-watching). Shane was surprised that I found Sydney THAT beautiful, but agreed with me in the end that it was definitely a city that had its charms. I did catch a cold after our Sydney adventure, but heck...it was worth it.



Now on to our Great Ocean Road trip...I think that trip was definitely one of the highlights of my australian odyssey. First of all, our tour guide was funny and happily enough not obnoxious, so 5 plus points right there. We saw amazing sights, and the Ocean road by itself was spectacular, with all of its winding roads along the cliffs and whatnot (which did make one person sick in the back...luckily I think she only puked outside when we stopped). We got a pretty sweet deal, since our trip also included a bunch of free postcards and a great lunch where we got to choose between a variety of hearty meals with fries (Shane and I chose hamburgers...I had been dying for one...SOOO GOOD!). The picture above is of The Twelve Great Apostles (well, some limestome rock formations fell down, as you can see on the lower left corner, so there are technically not 12 anymore) which was one of our last stops, and I saw a whale swimming in the ocean (at first I pointed out to Shane that I thought it might be a dolphin or a shark, but then we both saw that it was a whale since it was very large....too bad it was so far off, couldn´t take a good picture).



We also had a stop where we walked through a rainforest...wow, wow wow and quadruple wow. That beauty simply can´t be translated into picture, this picture is nice and all but it soo doesn´t do it justice. Some trees were just immense, and everything around us had a moistness to it...it was simply beautiful. I had wanted to go on the Otway Treetop walk, where one can walk on a steel walkway about 25 metres high up in the air, but sadly that little tour was not operating during the winter season. Oh well, it was a "beaut" to see anyways!



Here, I am; feeding parakeets (I think that´s what they are) at one of our stops where we had lunch. I hadn´t banked on a third one resting on my head, but at least it didn´t start pecking at my skull. Shane hates bird, so 5 points for him for taking this picture of me (and yes my eyes are closed cuz I´m praying that it doesn´t poo on my head or something). As you can see, I´m wearing a jacket and a scarf. It wasn´t too cold that day, but I didn´t want to take any chances. The australian winter is 50 times better than the canadian one, but I think that the weather in spain had weakened me, lol. Right now, I´m sitting here typing this and I´m complaining that it´s only 23 degrees outside....I´m so pathetic. Guess when you´re used to at least 30 every day going back to "normal" temperatures feels wrong. Anyways. Going back to the parakeets, it was my first time ever feeding birds out of my hands. Needless to say though, Shane and I chose an eating spot that was far away from the hungry little monsters.


Ah, it´s Koala time! At the spot where we ate, there were a lot of koalas, and there was one that was resting on a little tree only about 1 metre away from us (didn´t post that pic though). Koalas are protected, so nobody was allowed to touch them (they were also really huge!). It was quite fun watching them slowly move from branch to branch. Most of them would be sleeping, but some were seen slowing moving through the trees and munching on Eucalyptus leaves.





Ahhhh...the ocean, off of the Great Ocean Road. I´m so happy to be living close to it now, it´s really incredible how much it relaxes and soothes. We were lucky to have great weather throughout most of that Tuesday, and took full advantage of it with our cameras. Taking this trip was one of our best decisions; I really felt like I got to see some real australian flora and fauna (is it so weird that I use that expression as part of my vocabulary? ;) . Kangaroos were seen as well (while we were driving we saw some resting in golf courts!).




During our last week we had some spontaneous little getaways, and here we are at a Footie Match that took place on the last Saturday that was I there. I had great fun! It was St-Kilda (the district where Shane lived) against The Richmond Tigers (another district not too far off). Our team won by a little more than 100 points!!! Aussie Rules games are actually really fun to watch live, I didn´t think that I would get so into it, but I´ve realized that it´s far more fun watching games live than on the telly. I got the same feeling when I went to a Montreal baseball game a few years back...when the Expos still existed.


To cap this entry off, here´s a picture of Chapel street, not too far from where Shane lived. This street is wicked since it´s packed with coffee shops, clothing and record stores, you name it. If you´re in Melbourne you needn´t search for a good cup of joe anymo´! Their muffins were also out of this world....true dat. I think that they were the tastiest muffins I had ever tasted...mmmmmm.

Best things about Australia:

1. Doing the little normal things with my baby (cooking, shopping, sightseeing, the astor movie theater dates (finally saw Singin´in the Rain!) etc, etc...)
2.Their APPLEJUICE!!! (sooo not bland)
3. Tim Tams (yes, Eve....yes.....exactly...)
4. (ok, enough with the food)Sydney downtown streets, the port and the botanical garden
5.Its natural beauty of course; parks and walkways, etc.

I could add so much more to this list, but this is what comes to mind right now...more to come! xoxoxoxoo vuestra chica Heidi