Let me explain.

Saturday morning was dreary and rainy, so if I had to get on a plane to go home, I guess this was the day to do it. Tadd and I got to the airport early. Way early. And unlike in the US, Australia lets you check in and then doing things other than go through security.  So Tadd and I went and had coffee. And watched football.  It was the Broncos and the Jets, and it was a pretty bad game.  Being a Packer fan, I’m not used to having to watch terrible football.

We're pretty cool.

After the game, it was time to go through security, and then customs (another passport stamp!). I got to my gate and had a few minutes before my flight so I started reading. And then came the announcement. Plane = delayed. Again.  I was two for two on Qantas flights being delayed.  Not a good track record for them.

But we left eventually, about an hour late.  12:30 instead of 11:20 am.

Goodbye, Australia. (Look close! You can see the coast!)

On the flight, Qantas redeemed themselves.  I got breakfast. Then Cadbury hot cocoa (although don’t call it hot cocoa, Australians will look at you like you’re nuts unless it’s “hot chocolate) with a pink marshmallow. And then some mango ice cream. And then… I fell asleep and it was awesome. I was OUT. I slept for 4 or 5 hours solid.  When I woke up… breakfast was over. But I flagged someone down.  I paid a lot of money and I wanted all my food’s worth.

Next stop. LAX. And we landed at 7:20 am.  It was the weirdest thing.  The sun came up in Aus, I got on a plane at 11:30.  Then we started flying, and the sun went back down.  And then the sun came back up.  And then we landed at 7:20.  4 hours before left.  Bizarre.

Although we were supposed to land at 6:20. Soo…. I was behind.  I got off the flight.  And I got this handy little guy.

The airport people see it in your hand and they get you to the special short lines.  So I zoomed through customs! No stamp :( And then baggage claim! And I waited…

Waited…

Waited, waited waited…

Half an hour… and finally. My bag.

So then I zoomed through customs part two with my handy little orange pass.  With no such luck.  I get to recheck my bag for my flight to O’Hare but it was too late.  It was 8:55 and my flight boarded at 9. Boo….. So I waited in line. Waited waited waited.  And finally they put me on a new flight.

So then I bought this. As my reward.

Necessary Caffeine

Then the rest is normal.  Got on the flight. Sat there. Read a lot.  Had no headphones so no music.  Got to Chicago. Beth picked me up (Thank you!!). And went home.

Now.  Here are some more pictures from my adventures. Enjoy!

Click here —-> View Pictures Here!

Sad!

But it was a good day.

First stop of the day: Kangaroo hunting!

Not literally, I just wanted to see one. That’s all I asked. We didn’t manage to find one while on the Great Ocean Road, so this morning we went to the wildlife sanctuary on La Trobe’s campus.

While the scenery was pretty, alas, no kangaroos wanted to come out and play.  Made me very sad.

We headed back into the city after our wildlife excursion for some shopping and hanging out.

Did I mention it was hot? Like 91 deg when we looked. Whew. Hot day.

Later we moved on to St. Kilda where we laid on the beach for a while.

This is the only picture I took of the beach.  Whoops.  I’m bummed, but clearly I was too distracted by the sun and heat to be bothered to take pictures.   Wish I wouldn’t have been.

But I did take a picture of this amazingness.

Unfortunately, it was just too hot and while it looked delicious, the thought of actually eating any of it was not a good thought.

Also, speaking of Wisconsin… look at the trek this made.

Look at that price, $3.20 Australian dollars for one bottle. Which is almost exactly $3.20 USD for one bottle.  Although if you look at Mr. MGD’s neighbor to the right, you will see some Sam Adams for $3.50 a bottle…

The grand finale of the day: Kangaroo Burgers!

They were quite delicious.

YUM.

"It 'Getz' you where you need to go!" - Tadd, about 75,482 times

After climbing in the car, we pulled out the GPS we borrowed only to realize typing in “Great Ocean Road” does not work.  Duh. So we tried “Twelve Apostles,” the only landmark we knew by name on the Great Ocean Road (hence forth known as, GOR). Still no luck.  Some one told us that Lorne was a city on the GOR so I typed that in and off we went. I then pulled out a tour book to figure out where the heck we were going to stop along the GOR and I found the lovely sentence, “The eastern end is also known as the Surf Coast, and Torquay would be the capital.” Thank you Lonely Planet, you have saved the day once again. We finally had an actual destination.  And then I had the idea that there had to be a visitor center in Torquay, and the GPS knew where it was. Heck yes. And by the way, it’s pronounced “Tor-key” not “Tor-quay” as us Americans would think.

1. Torquay Beach - Step one: leave vistor center and turn right. Step two: drive about 4 blocks. Step three: Ocean.
   

   My First Time in the Pacific!

   I was just thinking…. Kinda funny that I had to go all the way to Australia to get in the Pacific Ocean…

2. Bells Beach – A huge surfing beach
3. Point Addis – Our checklist informed us to keep an eye out for Kangaroos and Echidnas. Of course, when I read this I saw “enchilada,” which they obviously have been re-christened.
4. 
   

   Echidna

5. Anglesea Golf Course – Kangaroos! Well that’s what our check list says. “This golf course is has approximately 1000resident kangaroos.” Well, we didn’t see any. Boooo.
6. Aireys Inlet Lighthouse – This was a cool stop.  Beautiful views, as well as our lunch stop. Obviously a plus.  Tadd made us yummy chicken salad sandwiches.
   

   Airey's Inlet Lighthouse

   

   View During Lunch

7. Memorial Arch – Letdown… Not sure what we were expecting, but it was more than this!
8. Erskine Falls, Lorne – Hiking time! Lots of palm trees and ferns. Kind of rainforest-y. The falls are 38 meters.
9. Teddy’s Lookout – HOLY CRAP SO PRETTY. 
10. Maits Rest, Apollo Bay – Rainforest hike! Our checklist informs us that is is a “circular walk through a magnificent sub-temperate rainforest. Mountain Ash trees in this region are over 300 years old and are 60 meters in height.”  In other words…. REALLY BIG.  This was part of the GFR – Great Forest Road – as Tadd and I named it. We were no where near the ocean for about an hour.  And by “no where near” I mean about a mile away, we just couldn’t see it.
11. 
    

    Myst, anyone?

12. Twelve Apostles - Was it exciting to get here? Yes. Was it pretty? Obviously. Was it the highlight of our trip? Nope.
    

    Twelve Apostles

    What always happens on a beach when you forget to pay attention? THIS. You get SOAKED. Up past your knees! In the jeans you just changed into half an hour before. Tadd ran away. I did not. Instead he just documented.

    

    Attacked!

    All in all – Awesome day.

Tadd’s school is in a “suburb.” Who knows if they actually call them that here.  So Monday morning we took the tram into the city.

First things first – Australia also starts Christmas before Thanksgiving. There is Christmas stuff everywhere!

Oh. Dang. There is no Thanksgiving here. Shoot.

Moving on, pretend I didn’t think that.  Trying again:

Christmas time in Melbourne! Christmas is next month after all. But there’s Christmas decorations everywhere, and we’re wearing… shorts.

This is all very confusing to me. The schools are going on Summer Break. Which is also Christmas Break. They’re going to the beach. Why is it still a pine tree? I think it should be a palm tree. That would make me feel better.

Mostly on Monday we just walked around the city.

Saw things like….

Big buildings….

Melbourne

Flinders Street Station….

Melbourne Park, Home of the Australian Open…

Australian Open

And finally… A bar in the river.

Quite a good day :)

After quite a long trip, I finally got to Australia.

But lets go back a little bit….

Friday morning began, and I had to go into work early so that I could leave early. I was already running late, when I encountered this:

Ew, Frost!

I was not the least bit pleased with this development. I also managed to step in a puddle during this whole ordeal. Which I find annoying, My car is frozen, but not the puddle. It was really cold through.  I finished scraping! Got in my car! Used the windshield wipers! And then this happened.

A terrible job!

A terrible scraping job, that’s what happened! So I had to jump out of my car and start again. This was some angry frost, it was a lot of work! Or I’m just out of practice, but I’m going with angry, hard-to-scrape frost.

As you can see from the lower right side of the picture: 7:05. I was supposed to be at work at 7. I was close.

I stopped at Dunkin Donuts anyway, I figured that it was a good idea to feed me and give me coffee considering I was up extra early. Wouldn’t want to be crabby and foodless…

Then I got to work!

Eh... Close enough...

7:35 is almost 7. I mean… who else was there to know? No one. Although… I do kind of like being there that early. It’s really quite! There was one person though, he said “Hi” and I jumped. I hope he didn’t notice :)

Work wasn’t too bad. I ended up really busy which was good. I thought I wouldn’t have much to do, I didn’t want to start new things and then leave them for a week. But I ended up having the perfect amount of work to leave and get home at….

Yay for short days at work!

My dearest mother met me at hope to drive me to the airport. Which only was a little complicated. We grabbed my stuff. Which was like 99% packed. So far, I have only realized that I forgot a blow drier, which lets be real, I probably wouldn’t have used anyway.

Mom brought me the greatest present ever:

DELICIOUS PIE

If you don’t know what this is, your life is incomplete. Holiday Custard pies from McDonald’s. Greatest things ever. Rush to your nearest McDonald’s and by one. Or two, they’re two for a dollar. But only if you live in Wisconsin, because Illinois currently had Pumpkin pies. Which are also delicious, but not quite as much as the custard.

Then O’Hare. I told mom to turn at the wrong spot. Whoops. We did get to the parking eventually though, but not the parking we wanted to get to. Oh well. Mom came in with me and we found the desk to check in at. Then of course the man made me go to the self check in. All I wanted to do was talk to a real live person. He said “go to number 4.” So we did.  Little did we know we needed to go to the OTHER SIDE of number 4.  Anyway, the machine wouldn’t scan my confirmation, my confirmation didn’t have my frequent flyer number, it wouldn’t take my passport, my phone was dying but luckily I got to my email to get my frequent flyer number. Whew. THEN I actually needed to scan my passport. Which still didn’t work. Not only was it not working, it wasn’t even registering that I was doing anything. I just sat there. So I hit the “manual passport entry” button which was like 80 questions long. Then I get through and a giant sign pops up that says that I need to get a person. GO FIGURE. Of course she’s not at her post, but we get her over there and she scolds us for being on the wrong side of station 4. OH JEEZ. THERE ARE NO SIGNS. I didn’t like her. But the man I had to give my baggage to was much nicer.

Then I said good bye to mom, and got in line for security. Which I totally have down to a science. Always slip on shoes, always sweat pants. Of course, me being prepared didn’t mean anything considering the lady in front of me had like a thousand bags and complicated clothing. I mean, wiper blades? Really? THAT is one of your 10,000 carry ons?

Whatever. My destination was k19. Which was  long ways down the terminal. I got down to the end and tried to find an outlet to charge my phone. Which I always think is going to be easy and it never is. But then a man abandon his outlet, so I swooped in.

Prime Outlet Real Estate

I seemed to get a lot of dirty looks. I never determined if this was because:

1. I was sitting on the floor
2. I was kind of blocking a bubbler (I didn’t know…. until someone used the other and I got rained on…)
3. Because I had one of two outlets between about K16 and K20. Hehehehe

Heaven in a bag...

It was a long hike to get it, but it was worth it. I was all worried (after I bought it) that they would take it away when I tried to get into Aus, but all that happened was they made a cute little puppy smell it…

Then flight number one. I had an isle seat, and no one had the middle seat. So the guy in the window seat and I had bonus room. We used a combination of  dirty looks and Jedi mind tricks to deter people from sitting there. He looked at me like I was nuts when I said “Jedi mind tricks.” Come one man, you’re not cool…

I stayed awake for that 4 hour flight. Even though all I wanted to do was sleep. I figured though that I wanted to have lots of tiredness for the next huuuuge flight. I succeeded with the not sleeping, thanks to Dan Brown’s Deception Point. That man can write a book, seriously. I wanted The Lost Symbol, but beggers can’t be chosers when you’re shopping at Savers. Which is like a Goodwill.

I got mighty confused when I got to LAX. The terminal I was in was off in it’s own little world and I couldn’t figure out how to leave the American Airlines Planet to get to Qantas World.  Considering I booked my Qantas flight through American I figured it couldn’t be too complicated. I did finally find the bus that took us away. Driving down the runway past signs that say “yield to airplanes.” Yikes. The dumped us out at the International terminal and I figured I’d be right by my gate. Silly me. I found a sign: Melborne at 11:30 – Gate 101. HECK YEAH.  Then I realized I was right next to gate 122. Dang. Long hike again. By now it’s 10:00 in LA, so WAY past my Chicago bed time and all I wanted was sleep.  But I walked. And walked and walked. And made it!

Success!

Then I saw the plane. And there were verbal profanities. That thing was HUGE. I knew it was an airbus, but I guess I didn’t know how big they really are. DOUBLE DECKER PLANE. And I don’t even know if I sat on the 1st or second floor. I do know I was in row 84. Which is about 5 rows from the back. Haha.

Unfortunately… no more pictures. My phone died from the lack of airport outlets. (And that I abandon the one I did have at O’Hare to go buy popcorn…)

But the seats were niiiice. The TVs were awesome. And there were the little head rest wings which are the greatest invention ever. I had a 9 hour flight once that didn’t have them. I kept falling over as soon as I fell asleep. Yuck.

We sat on the run way for a long extra time. First we were missing people. Then we were behind so we had to wait our turn for a run way.  Then we had to get our tug-bus to pull us to the run way. Something about construction and couldn’t start the engines… I don’t know I was tired.  We finally took off and I was like YES NAP TIME. Then of course flight attendants don’t care what time your body thinks it is. My body thought it was 4 am and they though I should eat some chicken. Which I did because I soup for lunch and a holiday pie for dinner…. The food was quite delicious. Chicken and veggies and salad (which was corn and lima beans on a piece of cabbage – so I had corn not salad). And then a delicious chocolate cake caramel cream thing. I don’t really know. So tasty.  THEN I finally got to sleep. And the first time I woke up the flight path thing said 9 hours remaining. HECK YEAH! 5 down. Then I woke up again and it said 6 hours remaining! HECK YEAH! Over half way. But then I was pretty awake, so there was a combination of music trying to sleep, more Dan Brown and movies and tv. Then breakfast! YAY. Always excited for food. An (chicken?) omlet with tomatoes and mushrooms and some fruit.

I was starting to get over being on the plane around 3 hours left, which I thought was pretty good. But brekkie was about that time so I got better again. And then there was some seriously nauseating turbulence. Then I REALLY wanted off the plane. And eventually… We landed! Although we did do a nice U turn. Came from north of Melbourne Airiport, drove past, and landed heading north. The little map on my tv showed me so.

OH MAN. I forgot the coolest thing! There was a “SKYCAM.” Which means there is a camera on the tail of the airplane and you can see the outside! I was supposed to watch it when we were landing… I forgot. I was too busy with “arrival time: 10 mintues” and what not.

Customs…. a new stamp! That is NOT on top of another stamp, thank you very much. My mexico stamp has NO BUSINESS being in the middle of Ireland…

Then I walked out of the doors and there were 10,000 people. But Tadd saw me which was good cuz I sure didn’t see him. And what makes him the greatest boyfriend ever? He shaved the creepy mustache, JUST FOR ME. YAY. I was hoping this would happen, however I didn’t tell him for fear he would rebel and not do it :)

Then I got to ride in the front seat, on the wrong side of the car. That was fun. And he didn’t even kill us.

We walked around campus a little bit, got some burritos for lunch, went to the grocery store… FOOD IS EXPENSIVE. WOW. And by this time I was doing my best not to fall asleep standing, so we watched tv for a little while, had some Macaroni and Cheese all the way from the USA. Yum.

Of course, I fell asleep at about 730 pm. I call that pretty good. Granted. Then I woke up at 3:45am and was wide awake. By 6 I gave up and got up to write a blog.

Today we’re going into the city. Doing some shopping. And hopefully some eating. It’s 7:45 am, but as I’ve been awake for 4 hours, I need breakfast.

Talk to you all soon :)

Anyway, this is how my packing started.

Productive Packing

This got boring rather quickly, and transformed.

On to the FUN PACKING.

Clothes Pile!

Dresses! Shorts! Swim suits!

Yes this is much more fun. And yes, I threw all my blankets off my bed to make room for the pretty dresses.

However I must return. Or I will be snuggling with fourteen tanktops tonight.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Second Ammendment: I just read the post. And it only goes to the end of day one, we were there one more day which covered the Louvre… among other things. See this is why I’m not adding anything else to it. I would be a list of things we did with no fun details.  Or witty humor.

But a mini list of day two not covered below:

• Mona Lisa – giant let down
• Wedding at Cana which was right behind the Miss Mona, WAY impressive. And I now know that in The DaVinici Code that is the painting that the key-thingy as stuck into. Just so you know.
• We carried around back packs. All day. Until our train at 8pm.
• Notre Dame. With I’m fairly certain every clergy in France as it was the first Sunday of Advent. Obviously we couldn’t fit inside. France’s clergy were filling it up.
• Rain. Always rain.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Our trip to Paris actually allowed us to sleep in the morning. What a great idea! In stead of having to leave on the 5:14 train to get to London, we needed to take the 9:24 train to get to Ashford.

Why, I can hear you asking, did she need to go to Ashford instead of London?

Because we were taking the EuroStar, in the Chunnel!!

We got to the Ashford pretty early, we didn’t know how long it would take to check in.We went through security and customs. Got stamped out of Ashford. :)

The train before us hadn’t left yet, and it was headed for Disneyland in France.  All of the trains that go to Disney go from this same platform, so the whole giant waiting area was decorated with Mickey Mouse and friends.  When it was time for them to load, Mickey Mouse came on the intercom and said so.  I was nearly as excited as the millions of little kids that started cheering. Then I remembered that I wasn’t going on that train and was a little sad, but only for a minute, because we were gonna go to Paris!

We waited, and then we boarded.   We were sitting in our seats, waiting to leave and I decided to take a picture of our excitement.

Leaving for Paris!

Before I could get my camera back into my bag, the condtuctor guy comes on the intercom and says that “the Chunnel is closed. We will be waiting here at Ashford International indefinitely.  I apologize for any problems this may cause.”

OH NO! WHAT?!?!

OH NO! We're NOT going to Paris!

Once again, before I could get my camera back into my bag, he came back. “The Chunnel is back open! The fire detection system was faulting, but apparently it was a 5 minute fix!” So off we went!

We ARE going to Paris!!

I’m giving a thumbs up, you just can’t tell.

Two hours later we got to Paris.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get stamped into Paris.  Next step was to get to the hotel.  We had heard from friends that the Paris Metro was pretty easy to figure out, and we’ve got plenty of London Tube experience, so we thought we’d give it a go.  I had a map on the back of my Paris street map and I had already figured out what lines to take, so we just had to buy tickets.  That was a bit complicated, partially because the line was 8 miles long, but we found another machine tucked away in the corner that was shorter.  The next part was the interesting part.

You stick your ticket into the little machine, and then the two little doors open up like elevator doors.  Or they’re supposed to.  I stuck my ticket in, and one of the doors opened. I didn’t want to have to buy another ticket, so I did the logical thing, and pushed it.  Well the door certainly didn’t like that and it tried to shut on me but I managed to get through.  What didn’t manage to get through was my back pack. The doors squished it. And I was stuck.  Luckily, Abbey hadn’t gone through yet. When ever we go through in London, we go next to each other, but for whatever reason she decided to go behind me that day.  And it was a good thing. She tried pushing my backpack, which obviously didn’t work. Then we sat their confused, me trapped in the metro doors. I coudln’t really move, or move at all for that matter. But then I realized she should just put her ticket in and we both run for it.  Thinking about it now, it’s a good thing those doors cooperated the second time or we sure would have had a problem! Once we both got through, we realized just how funny it was. We stood there and laughed for quite a while!

Other than that incident, the Metro is basically just like the Tube, other than it’s a lot more crowded (the trains are SO much shorter) and they don’t announce what stop you’re at so you have to pay attention.  We make our one transfer and then got off by our hotel.  When we got to the hotel, the manager spoke some English, so that was good.  We got checked in and he stuck us in the elevator.  Well, it was a little tiny elevator, kinda sketchy.  It didn’t really want to come down to the ground floor to begin with.  And the we got in and we barely fit.  We were both wearing backpacks.  It had two doors, both the creepy accordion kind. The one went to shut, and we screamed and squished to the other side.  Then the other went to shut and we squished the other way.  Then it rattled up the 5 floors and we jumped out, fast, vowing never to ride it again.  And after all that we still had a flight of stairs to walk up anyway.

The room was cute, but the bathroom strange.  Which we should be used to by now though.  We have seen a million different kinds of showers, but this one took the cake.  It was only the shower head on a string.  Well not a string, but a hose.  And it didn’t have a wall bracket. I sure didn’t want to hold it the whole time a showered, and neither did Abbey.  We figured we’d be wearing hats both days so we’d just wing it and skip the scary shower.

We rested for a bit, and then headed out! First stop? Duh, Eiffel Tower! But this was actually a strategic plan.  The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomph are on the far side of Paris from our hotel, so we figured we’d go over there that day and do the rest of the stuff the next.  We took the Metro again; it was quite a ways away.  Once we got there, imagine that, it was raining! Go figure, the rain follows us all over Europe.  But it was still exciting, we took loads of pictures as we got closer.  We thought about going up, but 1) the line was insanely long (it was maybe 4, so it was getting dark and people want to go up at night) 2) it was raining 3) it was windy and 4) it costs money. Haha. After we wandered around and took a sufficient amount of pictures of all sides of the (symmetrical) Eiffel tower, we thought it would be a good idea to go over to the Arc de Triomph until it got dark enough for them to turn on the lights on the tower and come back later.  We were walking back and Abbey turned around and what-do-ya-know, the lights were on! So we turned around and went back, to take lots more pictures!

We got over to the Arch de Triomph, and luckily it had stopped raining, but we were pretty wet and cold by this point. There was a band or something under neath it, never did figure out what that was all about. And it was loud. Haha. Lots of cars honking everywhere!

Dinner time! We didn’t have so much luck ordering. I tried to order me and Abbey’s sandwiches. But tit didn’t go so well they like didn’t have the one we were trying to order or something, she didn’t speak much English, we don’t speak French… But we got sandwiches. Not the ones we originally ordered, but it worked. And they were delicious.

Then I saw a Ferris Wheel. And I wanted to go to it. Abbey said it was farther away that I thought, but I wanted to go to it anyway.  Aaaand she was right. It was a long ways away.  And there was lots of mud on the way (to this day my Pumas haven’t recovered-poor shoes). There was a Christmas Market, but it was waaaay out of my price range. But we just kept walking. Abbey wanted to abandon the trek and take the next metro stop back to the hotel.  We found a map and and she said that there should be one coming up.  I was convinced we were waaay past it, but she didn’t believe me. Whatever, I said we would get on the next one – partially because I knew we would get to the pretty Ferris Wheel before any more metro stops :)  And then we made it there! And I was cold and wet but it was okay because it was so pretty! We could also see the Eiffel tower from there. And, we found a metro stop for Abbey and headed back to the hotel.

As you may or may not know, my amazing boyfriend has been there for four months already, and I get to go visit. Finally. The good thing about this is, I have a built in tour guide.  He’s got all sorts of plans, of which I only know a few. For example, vineyard, beach, Great Ocean Road, beach, kangaroo for dinner… And I am excited about all of them.

So. In one week, I will be off to Melbourne, Australia.

Way Down Under

That’s waaaaaay down there.

So how long does it take to get waaaaay down there, you ask?

A long time. Longer than I prefer to think about, but if you insist.

Some number type things about my trip.

• Total planes in 8 days: 4
• Total hours spent on plans in 8 days: 39 hours and 10 minutes
• Number of suitcases: 1
• Percentage of planes that feed me food for free: 50 (not good enough)
• Number of electronics that will accompany me on my 14.5 hours flight from LAX to Melbourne: 7. So far.