Fun Down Under Day 1 & 2

 

Since the people that want to hear about the trip are scattered through out technology and social media land I'll post here.

Day 1 in Australia:
We got to our hotel early in the morning. We dropped off our bags, had some breakfast and set out on foot. As we rounded the corner of our hotel there staring us in the face was the Sydney Opera house. Ridiculously surreal.  I always thought that the top of it was white. like, white metal or something. But it ISN'T.

It actually has millions of off white tiles placed
in geometrical designs. The designer said he was
inspired by three things; swans wings, waves and seashells. The pattern reminds me of clamshells.
In a certain light the roof is not white, it has a rosy glow to it. It's massive with tons of
components and a breath taking view from any angle.




Near this is the Botanical Gardens. We took a little choo choo train ride around it. It was BEAUTIFUL!! Obviously. Have you ever seen ugly botanical gardens?! I don't remember any of the names or anything but it was wicked cool.

CHOO CHOO!!!

View from said CHOO CHOO!

Just cool stuff

  These birds are cray cray. 

I was going to post more pictures but if you want to see more go to my instagram or Facebook. This is STORY time not PICTURE time.  Anyhoodle. We walked around the city trying to stay awake. Good lord jet lag is no joke. 

Speaking of jet lag.... flashback to the flight. The plane has three rows of three seats. So I booked one row and one seat in the row next to it. Get on the plane...... nobody in my row!!!! the plane was at about 65% capacity. SWEET!!! We watched some movies, went to sleep (if you can call it sleep) woke up, had breakfast, landed, blah blah blah. The point was that there was a ton of room on the plane and that was COOL.  Ok flash forward......

Back at our hotel we went to the pool which was.... ON THE ROOFTOP with an amazing view of the opera house.  We finally went to bed at 5pm. Then woke up at 5am. Packed our bags and headed north. or at least it felt like north. I'm pretty sure it was north. 

Here's the thing about the southern hemisphere..... you LITERALLY feel like you are upside down. Since it's winter here the sun stays VERY low. Like a very low, wide arc in the sky. It feels like 5pm ALL DAY LONG. especially at 5pm. The sun is NEVER above you. I can't orientate myself with N,S,W, or E to save my life. I would DIE if left alone in the outback. Well that and the total lack of proper training. But that's neither here nor there. 

Day 2. Head toward Hunter Valley. One of the the wine regions here. We found an animal sanctuary along the way and decided to stop. Glad we did. We saw kangaroos! and Koalas! and Emus! and dingos! and wallabies! 

While we were very excited about the kangaroos we soon learned that a kangaroo in Australia is like a deer in the U.S. ; everywhere and damn menace to the roads. 

The animal sanctuary had a bird cage. We went in. Low and behold the birds flocked to Greg. Shocking. The bird keeper kept trying to get the birds off Greg but the birds weren't having it. 

grooming and nuzzling, nuzzling and grooming. 

This bird was nuzzling the shit outta greg. he LOVED him. 

They say "hello" with an Australian accent. 

After the sanctuary we headed to wine country. 

So this is how wine tasting works in Hunter Valley....

They give you a list of 20 or so wines. Then you pick whatever ones you want to try. NO LIMIT. You can taste EVERY.SINGLE.ONE. no tasting fee. True Story. =)

Unfortunately I'm just too jet lagged to really enjoy a wine buzz. Shocking. I know. 

As far as Australian people go.... It's hard to tell. You just have to take them on an individual basis. So far everyone is very nice. But we haven't had many chances to just talk to people. 

Australia reminds me a lot of California. Remember, we're only on Day 3 now. So haven't seen the diversity yet. 

Stay tuned.