Australia: Sydney Part 2

On Sunday of our trip we met up with a fellow HMB alum, Lynn (who writes facedowns) and we went to dim sum. How cool is it that we can travel the world and still find HMB friends? Pretty darn cool!

Next we took another ferry out to Bondi Beach, where we planned on doing a "short" cliff walk. By short, we were under the impression it would be a 1.5km walk... easy peasy. We were pretty tired from several days of walking and being on our feet, so this was supposed to be one short little jaunt we squeezed in before calling it a day.

Overlooking our starting point, Cogee Beach

First of all, no walk involving tons of stairs and steep inclines can be considered easy peasy. Easy Peasy is a stroll around a paved flat park, or walking through the climate controlled mall. However, we're both in somewhat ok shape and it was so breathtakingly gorgeous that we didn't notice the distance we were walking at first.

Random cove

 I would have wanted to swim in each little cove we discovered, except it was windy and cold.

Another cove

The sunlight and the ocean and the clouds seemed to be playing together. I think Mark stopped for a picture every five steps.

Being near the ocean, hearing the waves, and smelling the sea filled my soul. I guess a you can never really take the California beach out of the girl.

Creepy but cool old graveyard

We decided this would not be such a bad place to be put to rest. It was creepy, but really cool.

The last of the light fading away

After about two hours, we confirmed that we were completely wrong about the distance. As the sun started setting, we put away the camera and picked up the pace. Luckily the last of the path was well lit because we (stupidly) were not carrying our headlamps.

When I got home I mapped our route, and discovered our 1.5m walk was over 6km (nearly 4 miles!) Typically that distance would have been just fine, except it was super steep in many places, had a ton of stairs, and we had prepared for easy peasy, not moderate hike! Ahwell. It helped keep the cheeseburgers and gelato in check.

The next day we had a really big day planned. We spent the morning in Featherdale Wildlife Park and the afternoon at the Blue Mountains. In retrospect, we should have split those into two separate days.

The Featherdale Wildlife Park promised me a chance to meet and pet a koala bear, and they did not under deliver! We got to pet koalas, feed and pet kangaroos, watch a penguin talk/keeper feed, hold a snake and an owl, and see all kinds of neat birds and native animals. It was not like a zoo-- these animals were all tame and more like pets than anything. I think I have about 300 pictures so you can check those out in our Picasa albums if you're so inclined. Here are the highlights:

baby koala... aww! 

I'm REALLY excited about the baby koala... can you tell?

Adult koala

Our feed cups were cake cones filled with yummy green stuff

My possee 

Will accept pets for food!

This dingo thinks it's Sundog. 

 Koala climbing with the cool bird song in the background

There were lots of different kinds of owls... most were impossible to get a good picture of but still very cool!

After the wildlife park we continued our way by train up to the blue mountains. Rail travel is awesome, when it's not amtrak.

Once at the Blue Mountains we walked out to Echo Point. I was disappointed to learn that the hike I had hoped to do was nearly a six hour hike and we didn't have enough daylight for it. Mark and I were also reaching a point of exhaustion on our trip. So we just decided to do another "easy" cliff walk that was far from easy but still really cool.

View from Echo Point

 All that haze isn't smog.. it's oil from the eucalyptus groves. No wonder I felt so sick! (I'm allergic)

But the views were so worth it.

This video was part of our hike. Again, a far cry from an easy sidewalk stroll, but not too bad. And we had lovely birdsong to keep us entertained!

Tuesday was our last day in Sydney. We stopped by the Royal Botanic Gardens, listened to some buskers, did some shopping, and rode around on ferries.

Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens 

Another adorable ferry

We just didn't get tired of riding around ferries and enjoying the harbor views!

Can you believe this is a ferry dock? 

We spent our last evening in Watson's Bay and exploring a little of the Sydney Harbor National Park.

Another cliff walk.. this one actually was short and easy!

And so, after 10 exhausting but wonderful days, we spent our last Australian sunset eating gelato in the park. It doesn't get much better than that, folks!

Australia: Melbourne

After a whirlwind two days of home inspections in Lafayette, CA, Mark and I headed out on our long trip to Melbourne. It was long and epic and mostly boring. But Virgin Australia is a fantastic airline! We had bigger seats with more leg room, even in economy. There were water bottle fillers in a couple of places throughout the cabin and USB ports for every seat-- even in economy.

Seat back on Virgin Australia

Sunday was mostly a jet-lagged blur but our first impressions of Australia and especially Melbourne were that it seemed remarkably like the United States. Melbourne's architecture reminded us a lot of Seattle and in general besides the money being different and people speaking with an accent, it just didn't feel that different. I won't lie-- we were kinda disappointed to have flown so far to find ourselves in a land that felt so oddly familiar. It was also really, really hard to adjust our schedules by 14 hours. All in the name of adventure though!

Waterfront near the Southgate center

Melbourne is located right on the water. Like I said, a lot of the architecture feels very similar to Seattle, though I don't think we captured any of the buildings very well. It was late fall in Australia too, meaning that the trees were changing colors and it was cold and windy!

Busking for gold coin

Of course, there were some major differences. Street buskers in Mellbourne and Sydney seem much more likely to be caught playing a didgeridoo than a violin or a saxophone.

Since Mark was in Melbourne primarily for a work conference, I did most of the sight seeing on my own. We did manage to sneak in some cool things in the mornings before the conference. One day we went to the famous Victoria Market, where some of the produce was HUGE (see those grapes next to the tangerines??) We also scored some rad souvenirs here. I would say this market comes the closest to comparing to Pike Place in scale and scope and quality, with a distinctive local flavor.

HUGE grapes!

Cheap but wonderful produce

Like I mentioned, I tried to make the most of my time while Mark was ambling through poster sessions and listening to talks. The highlight of my time in Melbourne was definitely the zoo! Aside from the normal lions and tigers and bears, I got to catch my first glimpse of some distinctly Australian fur balls.

Turns out wombats are adorable and almost never stop eating! 

The Melbourne Zoo is one of the best zoos I have been to. I think I must have missed my calling as a zoo keeper. If only I could have faced the memorization that biology classes would have called for! The Melbourne zoo has a huge emphasis on conservation and preservation. In addition, much of the zoo was landscaped to feel more like each animal's habitat, and I saw many gardens where it seemed like the zoo was growing a lot of its own animal feed.

Just a walkway through one of the exhibits! Cool! 

"Rainforest lore: Bring only curiosity, leave only footprints, capture only fotos,
take home only memory, help save our forest, terima kasih." 

 They also had some really cool educational exhibits. Below is a giant "washing machine" aquarium. It was all about phosphates and how we should use laundry soap that doesn't have them. I admit, I didn't even know phosphates were a thing to consider in the green discussion!

Fishy!

On our last day in Melbourne we hit up the Royal Botanic Gardens. Check this out:

I'm on the edge!

It seems like a lawn of some sort. But then we read the sign. And realized that what we thought was residual jet lag dizziness was actually the motion of the lake!  Watch: 

Sure enough a few moments later we caught these guys skimming the water and going fishing:

Water? Huh? 

 So we did the responsible thing and dipped our hands in to prove to ourselves that there really was water under that growth. It was super clean! Here's what the green stuff looked like:

Coolest lake ever!

After the morning at the botanic gardens, I snuck into the conference to watch Mark give his talk. He did great! And before we knew it, the conference was over and we had one last evening in Melbourne. We hit up the St. Kilda neighborhood and put our hands in the water. It's the other side of the ocean!

The beach in St. Kilda

We ended our week with a lovely dinner at a cute restaurant in St. Kilda (the food in Melbourne, though expensive, was all ahhhmazing and yummy.) And that was the end of our time in Melbourne. On Friday, after five days in Melbourne, we woke up early to catch our quick flight to Sydney. More on that later!