Penguins and Koalas on May 5th!!

May 5, 2010
It took us awhile to get out of Melbourne, we tried driving past the Docklands first, then we were off to the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Range.

This is supposed to be Wine Valley and such, only I haven’t seen a single one and we are wasting our time wandering around the curvy mountain roads (its more like NZ now, curvy mountain roads, but these are paved, and a full two lanes).

Into Healesville for coffee. Tim and I got more treatment and toothpaste, mom in search to the bakeries, she wanders far, saying that there was no coffee in the windows. Its like, its not coffee, and why would they put an espresso maching in the window? So we went into a fish and chips shop for coffee. It’s a fish and chips shop, and mom proceeds to specialty order her coffee. Its like treating Blue Moon like a Starbucks.

We found the Rochford Vineyard, and decided to go in. There was a café and restaurant attached, we looked at the menu, and the eating area looked nice and cozy, so we sat down to eat. There was a fudge counter right at the front, and one of the fudges that they had was a caramel apple fudge. Yum. After we ordered, Tim showed me where the actual dessert cooler was, and holy cow did they look absolutely amazing. There was a pear cake, and a chocolate cake that looked absolutely to die for. Mom first got a trio of wines and vegetarian lasagna that was absolutely delicious. I could have eaten a whole pan of it. Slightly sweet with the squash, lots of veggies. Delicious. I ordered the soup of the day and a side salad. The cucumbers and tomatos though, those were juicy and delicious. I also had the vegetable soup, which wasn’t like regular veggie soup, but pureed veggies, like pumpkin and squash and celery. It was absolutely delicious.

After the restaurant, we went to another winery Stoneridge only a few miles down the road. Mom was pretty much done with wine, but its like, we did not drive all this way to go to a café inside one winery. Huge waste. The view from the place was absolutely gorgeous. It was atop a hill and you can see in all directions form it. We went inside, and the guy was super cute, I thought he was a bit pushy, but both Mom and Tim commented afterwards that they didn’t feel pressured at all. I didn’t try any, but Tim tried a Souvignon Blanc, a desert wine, and a whiskey based wine. The guy kept talking on and on about the different wines, different grapes and just lots of facts and such. I totally tuned out, but the guy was totally into it.

We were racing the clock. We made it to the Koala Conservation at 4:25. And it closed at 5, so we had half an hour once we got our tickets to get through. The guy said that we could still do the walkway, but Tim and I felt that it was a total ripoff, because usually “walkway” is just looking at trees and birds and stuff. We got to the place where the Koalas were, and it was a walkway less than 10 feet off the ground, and we spotted the first Koala right away. He was faced away, and sleeping, so we moved on, found another one, much closer to the ground where we were, but again, asleep and facing away. Then, we found an awake one. Kind of high up, but still visible from numerous angles. He was looking at us, and then decided to crawl down his branch, and move to a different branch to reach some leaves, and then down to mere feet away from us, and crawl up a different branch. It was really weird, it was uglier than I expected it to be, but still cute in the ugly way. Mom bought the better seats for the Penguin Parade, and when I saw the numbers of penguins from the night before, I actually got pretty excited, there were 1285 the night before. That is a LOT of penguins. It was quite windy and chilly, I was hoping the penguins would make an early ocean exit. There was one penguin that was super early, and it was so small and cute! The ranger said that that’s as big as they get, they are the Little Penguins, the smallest penguisn that exist. We had to wait awhile, but finally the penguins arrived. One or two, and tehn a massive clump of them. It was hilarious! And totally awesome.

The better seats were well well worth it, they were right there along the walkway of the penguins. They went right in front of us, or right up the hill and you could watch that. We watched for 20 minutes, the noises of and squawking of them kept getting louder and louder. It was really weird nosie, they sounded like they were sick or hurt or being murdered. But it just kept getting louder and louder. There were so many penguins. We saw burrowns on the way down to the seats, and the ranger said that it was the home of some 60,000 penguins. They just kept coming in droves, resting right at our corner before they walked on, preening.

They stayed in their tight group though, waddling super fast to catch up. We all got a little too cold and followed a group all the way up the walkway, listening to the super loud noises. They were everywhere, you could see them on both sides of the walkway, in the bushes, in the hillside. It was insane. Penguins everywhere! They even had roped off part of the sidewalk by the Visitor Center since they were crossing right over the sidewalk. As you leave the center, there are signs telling you to check under your car for penguins before you pulled out. This was exciting, because I really wanted to get a picture of one (since you couldn’t photograph in the park at all) and I ended up getting a somewhat decent picture of one from the car as we pulled out of the lot. It’s a dark drive, but the darkness is nowhere near as dark here as it is in New Zealand. Nowhere near it.

Pretty chill evening once we got back. We decided to start early tomorrow, and be back early since we have a pretty early flight on Friday morning. Midnight here already somehow. I was super tired around 9, and now I am wide awake. Ugh. They are in bed. Probably both asleep already.

Reef and Tide Videos!

Last Set of Videos!!!

Two hours into the Pacific Ocean, you land on a giant floating pontoon. From that pontoon you can dive in a sub and take a little ride along the reef....


Outside our hotel in Cairns. The water traveled at least the lengths of two football fields in an hour when tide was coming in. Nuts.

Tim's Helicopter Adventure!

Poor kid was so sick that there was no way in hell I was letting him take the ferry back for two hours from the Great Barrier Reff. So I was a good wifey and shelled out the moolah for him to get his own helicopter ride back....at least he got footage of the view!!!

Koala Poo?

New post last night, but this gem should be shared....

"I hope that was rain and not koala poo..."

Spending May 4th in Jail...

Tuesday, May 4, 2010
My repacking job took quite a bit of time this morning, I had coffee though and we were out the room door by 8. A super nice guy helped me with my suitcases on the elevator, to a degree of dragging one of them all the way to the desk. Right through security at the airport. I had been chugging my water and juice and sprite al morning, trying to get it finished up so I wouldn’t have to toss any of it, and come to realize, I didn’t have to. Domestic Australian flights you can take liquids through. Mom went straight to Krispy Kreme and had a nice argument with them about her coffee preparations, but you cant be going to a country that doesn’t even have regular coffee, and then be super picky about how they prepare it, its not even a starbucks, it’s a donut place.

We boarded the plane, over 20 minutes late, and the flight attendant was rather snippy to Tim getting on the plane, he was just following us, said he was with us, and shes like no, I need to see your flight number. Its like, isn’t that the job of the scanner, and not waiting until you get all the way to the plane? Once we got our bags, we realized that his bag had the zipper wide open and his multitool was missing. Because that’s a good $50, we decided that we would report it so they could at least look for it, and get it so we could deal with travel insurance for it. It was 12:45, and we really wanted to make the Victoria Square Market, since it was the only day that we would be able to do it, and it closed at 2pm. It was exactly like Reading Terminal in Philly. Like, it was weird how much they were similar. It only had about three long rows, and then two super long rows of produce out the back. There was another building for the raw meats, but I didn’t actually end up going in that one. We split up to find our own lunch. I ended up with a Burek, which is a cross between an enchilada/puff pastry, and it was filled with spiniach and cheese, but it was a baby one. We went through the produce and got some items for dinner, so we would have a picnic dinner in the hotel. We decided to go straight to the Melbourne Gaol (jail) so we could get it done, since we didn’t know how it early it closed. We got our tickets and learned about the tour, it was more an immersive experience, like they treated you how it would be to be an inmate there at the jail. They emphasized that it was scary, I really didn’t feel like doing that type of thing (there were heavy warnings along with the tour), and Tim didn’t either, so we waited in line with Mom until she started the tour, and then went and continued the Main Building, which is a good thing, since we hadn’t even finished the bottom floor by the time she was back.

It very much reminded me of the Eastern State Penn, only it would be only the size of one wing, and its totally restored. Most of the cells had personal stories about all the people that had been hung there, which seemed like a lot of innocent people in the long run. But the jail was still in use until the 50s, and their most famous inmate was Ned Kelly, so there was a lot of things about him. Off to the hotel it was, which was quite the experience in itself with all the no turning lanes. We circled quite a few times trying to find a street we could just turn on. We pulled into valet parking, and I waited in the car, but apparently the hotel had that we were supposed to check in last night, making us a no show, so they had no room for us. But Mom had her sheet printed out proving that they were the wrong ones, so we ended up getting a room. I did the hotel gym thing, and prepared for an awesome dinner of olive bread, cheeses, and salami.

We were mostly trying to plan out tomorrow with the Yarra Distirct and Phillips Island. Some laundry, and bed!

Tim's Birthday (May 3)!

May 3, 2010 (Tims Birthday!!!)
Gym, showered, hair done (for the first time in FOREVER) All had coffee, and we were out the door, in the car, and on the way to the Blue Mountains. Mom in the front seat today, for the first timte since we got here, its funny that its so weird for her. Amusing at least. Time has gone super quick, its 11. The roads are very regular. Two lane, towns every once in awhile, trees lining the road so you don’t really see much.

We got to Echo Point, aka the Three Sisters. The Three Sisters is a rock formation that has three stacks up. But the kicker is the area right next to it. It’s a MASSIVE open space for miles and miles. You can see forever, and you are super high up, you look down and its like you are on a high rise, but the ground is just the tops of trees. Katoomba was next. It was cute, it had a block of cafes anad stores and bakeshops. We lapped it a few times, and we ended up at a place called Mountain Ridges. It was very much a locals type place. Like Cup of Joe with food. We all had a huge pile of the best scrambled eggs I have ever had. Everyone agreed that they were amazing. Fluffy, perfectly salted, not overcooked. Just amazing. It was a fantastic lunch. Best decision we could have made. At the bakery we got some dessert, Mom asked what a Lamington was (we have seen bunches of those in NZ) and it’s a sponge cake soaked in a chocolate sauce and then covered in coconut. That’s what she got, and my trial bite of it was yummy.

There wasn’t much else in the blue mountains that Mom wanted to do. And we hadn’t hit up the Victoria Building or the Strand Arcade yet, so we headed back to Sydney to do those. We went straight back to the Victoria building, and ended up paying $30 in parking, which is crazy, but got even crazier when we got inside and Mom admitted that she had only wanted to see the inside architecture and didn’t actually care about doing any shopping inside. I mean, I don’t think she could have shopped there upon further looking, since it was all super high end shopping, but that’s pretty hefty parking to look at a Royal Clock inside the mall and looking at the building structure.From there, we walked to the Strand, another mall that Mom wanted to see the inside of. This one was more Gothic/iron bar-y, so it was more arty and cool looking to see at least. After perusing the inside, we went to the Billabong store across the street. They had super cute stuff, and again I got super frustrated that they got to have such super cute clothes and yet they are so pricey that I can’t get any of them. Tim did get an awesome shirt for his birthday though.

We got back to the car, paid the ridiculous pricing, and talked about how high tech the parking garage was. There was a light over every stall that glowed red if it was filled and green if it was open, so you could look down the whole aisle of cars and see if there was an open one instead of having to drive down the whole thing before moving up a level.

The next few hours involved stealing internet from McDs in the lobby, attempting to work out (whole story there) and then an argument about the dinner for the night. Tim and I were completely happy eating the tons of leftovers that we had, or going to the grocery store, but Mom was super determined to go out for dinner. Halfway to Coles to supplement what we already had, I remembered that there was an Irish pub in the area, so we wanted to look for that, and hoped to find it. And there you go, on the next block, we found Scruffy Murphy. We went upstairs to the restaurant and went through the menu, figuring out what we wanted before ordering at the bar. Mom had the fish and chips, Tim had beef burger, and I got a side salad. The fish was fantastic, the burger had an egg on it, but was super tasty, and my salad was perfect. It had huge chunks of veggies and had a vinegar dressing. We relaxed a bit longer as they each got a second beer/wine before walking back. Tim opened up his birthday cards. The best one from my parents, “The dingo ate my birthday cake!.” We drank the honeywine, and I put apple pieces in my glass, which tasted delcious after soaking a bit.

Bondi Beach, Harbor Cruise, Curry Beef! (May 2nd)

Sunday, May 2, 2010
I woke up on my own at 6:45. Mom was clearly wide awake as well, but she said she had plenty of things to do, and the market didn’t open until 9 anyway, so I was at the gym by 7:30. Mom was a life saver and had brought hair scissors with her, so the morning brought about haircuts for both Tim and I.

Paddy’s Market was a huge bust. It was all these crappy booths with really cheap stuff and clothes and electronics accessories. Really not at all what we expected. So we headed to Bondi Beach. We made it to the front strip of Bondi, but ended up getting stuck because of some sort of parade that was heading down our street. We waited a few minutes, but then ended up flipping a uturn and going down the side streets, Mom oohing and aahing at the beach the whole way. It was a perfect day for beaching. A little overly hot, but a breeze, perfect sun. There were a ton of surfers out, and they were super fun to watch. Hot, yes, but they were too far away too really tell that of the ones actually surfing. Mom was just as enthralled by them and kept trying to take the perfect picture. Mom had thought there would be chairs to lounge on at the beach, so we sat on a bench and watched for a total of two minutes before she claimed she was bored, and we walked back up to the food strip street. Tim got fish and chips again, I got a mango smoothee for right now, and the sweet potato salad to take with me since I felt it was still a little early to be eating lunch. Mom got a chicken cesar salad from the same place. I had a bit of tims fish and chips, and mom had some too and decided that she wanted more fries. She barely ate any of her salad before we looped around and dropped her off to get another order of fries.

We did a scenic loop around Bondi. Stopping for mom to take pictures, all of us eating way too many French fries, but they are just the best fries ever and nearly impossible to stop eating them. Back towards the Sydney CBD, did some Souvenoir shopping as we waited for our Harbor Cruise.

We waited by the docks to load the boat, and behind us came the stereotypical, rude, everything is about them, group of Asians, complete with know it all leader. I mentioned to Mom not to get trampled by the Asians and the Exercise Exhibition guy in front of us heard me and commiserated with us. We boarded our 2:30 vessel, and in the process of going up the first ramp, mom took a tumble. We were petrified that that was the end of our day, if not the end of the trip, but she got up, seemed ok, and we got on. The Aussie was concerned about her and kept talking to us, and we made a new friend and he was very chatty for the first 20 minutes of the boat ride.

The sun was bright and shining, unlike the day before, which was realy nice because we got some really good pictures of Mom by the Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. As well as Tim chillin in his aviators and v neck. The ride was only 75 minutes, but it felt like a few hours. I flipped through Mom's Australia travel book, not finding much more than what Mom had already on the itinerary.

Post boat, we found a wine store. They even had bottles from Clare Valley. Dropped bags off at the hotel, went to the mall to catch up with news back home (internet style) and look for a brush for Mom. It was a little after 6 by the time we left the Mall, and we all knew that if Mom went up to the hotel room, she would never make it out to dinner. We walked up and down the Chinatown block, and every few feet there were these women shoving menus into our faces asking us to come sit. It was really rather weird. Picked one and ordered, when we got the food, clearly Mom and I ordered poorly. But Tim’s curry hot pot beef dish was the killer. The curry sauce was amazing. We each had rice and put the sauce on it, and I even tried the beef too. It was amazing. Well worth eating there all by itself. The waiter was kind of strange though, didn’t know much English, but was thoughtful enough to bring over an extra chair so that we could put our bags on it while we ate. When he brought the check, we also received two thin slices of watermelon and a Sandie like cookie. Yum yum.

May Day! Mommy Day!

The day that everything turned happy!

Saturday, May 1, 2010
5:30 wake up and off to the terminal and waited for mom. Once the screen said that her plane had landed, it took mom 50 minutes to come out of the arrivals gate. I was getting worried! We stood there forever looking at every person that came out thinking it was her. It was super awesome to see her though, everyone was really happy. We waited in line with her at the Hertz rental. We got the car, and it was so awesome, the inside of the car was spotless. SO so different than the crap van we had been living in. It was beautiful.

Good Living Market first. We lucked out with parking right across the street, and it was a really big market, biggest one that we had seen yet. They had virtually every type of food stand that you could want. All sorts of foods, prepared and take home, ready meals, flowers, spreads, everything, and quite a few of the stalls had samples. We all looked for the lunch that we wanted to purchase, and I wanted figs, but you could only buy them in the trays, so that was disappointing. We ended up buying a bag of apples, olive bread, and a super super soft cheese. Mom bought some jerky, and I got strawberry tarts for dessert.

Justice and Police Museum. We almost had to park in a garage that was $35 a day, which was just insane, but we found street parking thankfully. We can’t believe how expensive parking is though. Its almost not worth having a car, at least in Sydney. And of course, Mom is surprised at the cost of things (besides parking) despite my attempts at trying to tell her before she was even here exactly how expensive this place is. But of course, no one believed me. The Justice and Police Museum was interesting, the individual stories were cool, but there was a lot on the gambling/casinos/prostituion rings, which could be super interesting, but the way they were presented was too wordy and hard to really grasp. It was just different than I expected.
Once we finished there, we walked down to the wharf. Mom got her chance to see the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House. As soon as we got to the Opera House, Mom turned into a little girl. It was really cute. She was giddy and prancing all over the place. She was taking pictures every few feet like she wouldn’t ever remember what it looks like. It was somewhat disappointing that we couldn’t go inside, but she was still in utter glee and kept saying how she couldn’t believe that she was there.
Hyde Park Barracks next. On the way, we made a wrong turn, and had to go all the way over bridge, and then get back, which took an extra half an hour. The Barracks were three levels, each floor slightly different. They had interesting set ups of views of things, like a table set for dinner, and then a video camera shooting down the images of food and hands eating as if the people were there at the table. Also a section on the orphan girls that had been housed there, and what it was like for them. I really enjoyed it overall. In the courtyard, there was a shelter and a plaque for the three kitties that lived there at the Barracks, only one was home, but it was super cute and loved the snuggles I was so willing to give it.

Outside the Barracks in the park, there were bagpipes and a huge group of people. We watched them for awhile, thinking that they would eventually march down the street, but as soon as we saw that they were Socialist protesters, Mom was more than willing to go back to the car. We got to The Rocks area, and saw that the same market as yesterday was going on again. It was hard to decide on what to get for lunch with so many options looking super tasty. So Mom and I shared a cheese and spinach crepe/quesadilla thing, which was awesome. And then we each got one kebab, hers beef and mine chicken, although I should have had beef since mine had only two pieces of meat and one of those was rather gnarly. But overall it was tasty, it was like Chinese food on a stick. Tim had a KILLER hamburger. I could have had a whole one of those all by myself. There really wasn’t any non restaurant seating, so we ate while sitting on these big planters, not exactly easy, but it was better than standing and trying to juggle the plates.

We went and found Hillsong church, so that we would know exactly where it was later and wouldn’t have to be wandering around in the dark. There was a Cole’s right next door, so instead of going back downtown and walking or parking in an expensive lot, we parked in the free lot right in front of the door. On to the hotel, which was huge driving drama. GPS wasn’t seeming to take us there at all, so I had to follow the map, which was really hard because it looked easy enough on the map, but what WASN’T on the map was all of the one way streets that we couldn’t go down, that we needed to go down. I eventually got us there, and Tim only went through one red light to do it.

Only one bed, and mom and Tim immediately started fighting about who would be the one sleeping on the floor. Tim eventually was the one that won. There was a note saying that the gym was closed until the 3rd (the day we leave), but I went to check anyway, and it was at least functional. Got to the church in record time of about ten minutes. It looked like a shady esque neighborhood, but the building on the inside was clean and bright and gorgeous. You could tell immediately that it was going to be super awesome and that I wish I could go there on a regular basis. The speaker was super intelligent and was one of those people, that you just wanted to listen to. His talk made me want to take theology classes from him. It went over the 90 minute mark and I thought my poor mommy was going to pass out. It was 4:30am her time. Back to the hotel for a brief dinner and bed for Mom.

Kangaroo Walk Video.

Kangroos walk so oddly...and sadly, away from me:

Maori and Road Videos!

Super awesome Maori Haka....

Only in NZ are the roads THIS curvy...

Part of the Maori Demonstrations....

Robert Downey Jr Seven Stories Tall, aka Lazy Day in Sydney! (A30)

That's right, two posts in one day, but this one is short, so you can TOTALLY read both.

Friday, April 30, 2010
We didn’t get out of the room til 10amish. It was gloomy and dark. Not exactly raining, but raining off and on. We walked to the central stop, got a text from mom saying that she was on her first plane, and a txt from dad saying that he had dropped her off. We waited for our bus a little bit. We still had until 11:20 in the morning to ride the hop on hop off bus, so we figured we could at least get to our first destination on it for free.
We made it to the National Maritime Museum, really the only free museum, hence the reason it was picked. But when we got there, we realized you had to pay to see the boats, only the exhibits were free, but we figured we were already there, so why not? Ranging from the beginning of Australias European convict history all the way to the current navy and such. I also enjoyed reading about Australia’s reaction to the Japanese war brides of WWII.
We got to the IMAX, grabbed the schedule, and walking out decided that really, we were so museumed out that we really would be happiest seeing Iron Man 2 on the worlds largest IMAX. Seven stories tall. And a full week before its released in the U.S. nonetheless. We decided to go to the 2:15 showing, and it was 12:30 already, so we hoped to make it to the Rocks market before hand, and headed off towards there. We walked forever, accidentally overshooting the place that we wanted to be, so we had to double back because we were at a high way, and a high tail it a seriously long ways. Tim wanted to turn back numerous times, but I was super determined to make it and get back to the movie in time. Finally we made it to the market, it was about a block long. Bread stand, flowers, soap, fruit and veggie stand and then a bunch of food stands. All with super long lines. One had amazing bbq, great looking hamburgers. There was a crepe/calzone type looking place, and a Chinese place. All looked really good. But we only had about 45 minutes to make it back, I didn’t think we would make it if we waited for food. So we stopped at a bake shop on the way back .
We got to Circular Quay and figured our only real shot was to take a cab. We walked to the train station, got in the cab (the doorhandle came off when I went to shut the door). With lunchtime downtown traffic, it took a lot longer than we thought it would. We were stopped for minutes at every single light.
Assigned seats at the movie. Near the top, somewhat in the middle just fine for me. I mean, its hard to have a bad seat when the screen is literally seven feet tall. Did I mention yet that we were seeing Iron Man 2? Its really the only reason that I could justify spending it on a movie. 7 stories of Robert Downey Jr. is ok with me. It was great. But really it was nice to relax like that. No hard plot lines, just funny and explosions. Good time.

We walked back from the mall, towards the hotel, stopping at Coles on the way. Picking up a tub of masala chicken, and salad (again). Chilled at the hotel for the rest of the evening.

Bussing Around Sydney. (A29)

Thursday, April 29, 2010

The morning found our medical issue getting worse, I was getting really nervous about it. Dealing with our travel insurance and going to a doctor and finding a doctor, and figuring out how to pay and all that jazz is not something I want to be dealing with when I am supposed to be touring Sydney. But it was a hgue debate about going to the doctor because we don’t want to affect Mom when she gets here, and/or be completely incapacitated by the time she arrives, making the last two weeks totally miserable. We decided at the least to look up our medical travel insurance, just to see what we even could do. After looking at our policy, it was looking grim that a doctors visit would even be covered. Due to the fact that its not life threatening, and we had no idea if it would leave permanent injury or whatnot since we didn’t even know what it was.

We figure out some prescriptions that could help us out, and seeing as though we aren’t in the uber restrictive US, all of them can be got OTC here. If we couldn’t get them, we would go to the doctor, but there was no sense paying the extra if we could just do it ourselves.

Feeling accomplished, we found the place selling the Hop On Hop Off bus tickets, and bought ours. Sitting on the top, the weather was awesome, not having to drive, seeing everything and being super comfortable, nothing really jumped out at us as worth getting off the bus for. We rode the bus around a good portion of the loop, Tim getting hit in the head with a branch (hard too), but got off when we hit the rocks to go to the Information Center.

We walked to the Starbucks next door, ordered filtered coffee, but had to wait for them to make it, since they didn’t have regular coffee made, which I found really funny.

The bus was a great way to see the stuff, without Tim having to drive, and we could just look at everything and drive around and hear certain information about places. We arrived pretty quickly at the Bondi Beach stop, right in front of the beach. Between it, and a whole strip of stores and eateries that lined the road in front of it. I went into the first store right off the bus.

We shopped around for awhile, Billabong was first, and it had amazing stuff. Stuff I wanted really bad, and not just for myself, but for Tim too. Everything was just so ridiculously expensive, I couldn’t justify $100 for a shirt. It’s the same brand, I just don’t understand why NONE of it is available in the states. It is so frustrating. I want to dress cute. I want to dress my style, but at home, I cant do that. And neither can Tim. Argh! This town is full of real surfers who barely wear real clothes, and they are the town that get the super awesome clothing stores? I guess it makes sense with that kind of style, but still! Not fair!

Back to the front street of Bondi Beach. It didn’t take long to find the places that we each wanted to go. Tim got the fish chips and I got a mango surpise smoothee next door. I planned on getting the fruit bowl, but that was more expensive than the whole smoothee. I had some of Tims fish and chips that were absolutely amazing. At the smoothee place though, they had tons of awesome side salads. Made me really want the cucumber feta tomato Italian one. As well as the pumpkin, sweet potato, sun dried tomato salad. Yum.

Back to the hotel to start some laundry, hit up the internet a bit, and shop at Coles for our Masala chicken and salad dinner. We tried to figure out what to do tomorrow, and in what order, which causes a bit of drama. Medicated, we head to bed and I wonder how all of those people in New Zealand walk around barefoot all the time. At gas stations, on the streets, restaurants, everywhere we went, city or small town, there were people that were barefoot, just walking around no big deal. There was even one guy downtown Wellington that was running in no shoes. It was just ridiculous. Ouch. And gross.

Down Under Nordyke Style.

I promise my next post will be a legit post. With actual events of actual days. But for now, I am watching Burn Notice, so simple photos of the heads in Australia will have to do. Note, that my mommy has a body! She is no longer just a head!

But dad almost lost his head, to a kangaroo!

Uluru, aka Ayers Rock.

Mom and her love on Bondi Beach.

She was totally giddy the whole time at the Opera House!

Oh, I lied, she was still a head at the Sea Museum.

Getting eaten by the sea monster!

Penguins and HUGENESS!

Penguin!!

The sheer HUGENESS of the Milford Sound. (Check out the white dot)

For Your Viewing Pleasure...

A few videos from New Zealand....

Prancing at Cathedral Coves...


A Kiwi Pack House....


Endless Driving of New Zealand...