Testing on my iPad

So with the possibility of my netbook not working for my upcoming trip I couldn't resist the opportunity to test out a blogging app on iPad. Would take a while to get used to this typing though I think!!

 

 

Home Sweet Home…Again – Sunday 24th July

This morning I’d offered Franzi two choices – an early start and a visit to the Museum to see the Tutankhamen exhibit, or a bit of a sleep in and then some wandering around shops. Franzi preferred the second option, and as this was maybe the first decision Franzi had made all week this is what we did!

Oh the sleep in was good. It was only until 9am but this was luxury compared to most of the past three weeks. So cosy, lying in bed with the rain outside the window.

Pancakes for breakfast at 10am, and then off to catch the City Circle Tram to Melbourne Central Shopping Centre. We weren’t there too long – Franzi had no money or space to buy clothes, I bought three tops, a cardigan, a necklace and some earrings. Oops :)

Back to the hostel to pick up our bags and then off to the Airport. No problems here at all – a Bolognaise Foccacia for lunch and on the plane perfectly on time. The plane trip was full of blogging and sleeping – wow, where did all my energy go?

And finally, home again for the end of my crazy three weeks. Now I feel like sleeping for a few days – oh wait, what was that? 5.30am start tomorrow and then a full work week? Maybe the craziness continues :)

Melbourne and Musicals – Saturday 23rd July

The first thing we did today was clean ice off the windshield of the sexy red beast, at 8am in the morning. Franziska should have been the expert at this but we didn’t have a ‘thing’ as she called it – therefore we cleaned off the ice using tissues and hot breath… needless to say it took a while!

Off to sunny Salamanca Markets – we were there right from the opening at 8.40am. I think Franzi will always remember the markets as ‘that place that was absolutely freezing’. It was around 3 degrees when we got there and we lasted about five minutes walking around before we dashed into a warm coffee shop for breakfast. I had a Bruschetta, Franzi had a Panini and it was all very Italian, warm and delicious.

At around 9.30am we were out in the markets again for a quick look around – the weather wasn’t really conducive to standing in one spot and looking at things… power walking was required! There were lots of wooden things and lots of hippy things and lots of donut smells… very typical Salamanca :)

10am we met up with the mother of another exchange students that stayed with Franzi – this was a very quick chat but with a warm coffee that was enjoyed very much! Everything has seemed very rushed here… before long we were back in our little car and heading towards the airport.

The trip there took very little time and we found ourselves with an hour to wait at the very small Hobart airport. Oh well, we gloated at the Virgin Australia flight to Melbourne that was three hours delayed.

On the flight to Melbourne I bought a glass of white, cheese and crackers and sat reading Agatha Christie on my Kindle. There have certainly been worse flights.

And then – after a quick bus trip we arrived in the city and found our hostel with relative ease. This place is a bit amusing, our room is very very small (bunk bed!) and for the first time we don’t have our own private bathroom.. Ah, $35 a night plus breakfast included, we aren’t complaining. 

First stop, the Crown Casino. It was across the road and on our way so we strolled through for a bit. So many shops I want to throw all my money at! It was all very shiny and Franziska was all very impressed and decided she is going to come back when she is 18 (and in summer – a comment she’s made a lot lately!).

We soon reached the SkyDeck… apparently the highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere? Well there you go. It was smoggy and the view wasn’t amazing – still I was able to use my broken knowledge of the city to point out a couple of sights to Franzi. Soon, back down again.

At this point we still had three hours to kill before we had to be at the Regent Theatre so we headed off to get some food at the Hard Rock Cafe. After much much walking we arrived and discovered it had closed down around three years ago. Oh. Back we go.

After walking around in a big circle we ended up at a classy Italian restaurant recommended on Trip Advisor. This really was a nice little place, and keeping with the spirit of things, I ordered a wild rabbit ragout. Because I could. And a glass of wine and semifreddo afterwards. The whole thing only came to about $40, which was surprising considering the general calibre of the restaurant. The owner even poured sherry on our desserts for free :)

 

Then finally time to go see Love Never Dies at the Regent Theatre. This was glitzy, big and impressive in true Andrew Lloyd Webber style – you couldn’t fault the sets or the costumes or any of the voices. Franziska really loved it, more than the last musical. I…well, it didn’t blow my socks off like Mary Poppins did. I have to admit it was executed wonderfully. But the story? Really? I won’t spoil anything in here, but it just completely warped so much of the first musical… and I wanted to laugh in the final scenes. Everyone around me was getting very emotional though, so maybe I was just being overly picky! Still very glad I saw it :)

Our walk back to the hostel took us through the throngs of drunken people coming back from the footy. This prompted a discussion about the word ‘bogan’ (Franziska says she is not one because she goes to art galleries)which soon moved on to a discussion about a variety of other Aussie slang words. Good times.

Tomorrow, just a little bit more Melbourne. This still isn’t my favourite city in Australia but I have to admit it has personality and way too many things I want to buy. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

Rainforests, Art and Chocolate – Friday 22nd July

We are getting increasingly worse at our early mornings. After a bit of a slow start and a lazy breakfast we were out on the road by 9am, headed towards Mt. Field National Park.

This was quite an interesting trip – we were relying on the GPS which kept cutting out and forgetting to tell us where our turn offs were. It also kept directing us down invisible, non existent roads- all these factors meant quite a few scenic detours and we arrived at Mt. Field almost three hours after our starting time! Quite the road trip.

After that big epic drive we weren’t actually in Mt. Field very long – a quick walk down to Russel Falls and then a climb to see Horseshoe Falls up the top. Franzi had never been in a rainforest before, so that was something new for her :) It was sufficiently green, cold and wet…. and the falls looked the same as they always do!

Toasted sandwiches for lunch before getting back into our sexy red beast - back to Hobart just in time for a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. I had recently discovered that Franziska had no idea what Cadbury was at all – therefore education was needed. There was watching of videos, demonstrations and eating of chocolate flake shots and unsweetened chocolate base. We got a free big block of chocolate with the tour and as such didn’t end up buying anything in the shops. Franzi has now been converted to our chocolate ways :)

Afterwards we dropped our bags off at Dad’s (very clean due to having house inspections) and headed off to the new Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). This is a new art gallery that was privately built by a man who gained all of his fortune through gambling. Geoff had told me I HAD to go – so off we went.

I’m really not sure what to say about what we saw. It was all very captivating and quite confronting. There was a room that recorded your heart beat on a light bulb – the room was full of the flashing heart beats of all the visitors. There were boxes full of recorded voices saying ‘I love you…. there were many very naked images, nothing was held back. Franzi and I spent a very long time in a room full of videos of people singing Madonna songs – very funny.

It was also all very high tech – there were no labels on the paintings but you had an iPod that detected your location. There were soundtracks you could listen to with each painting, artist analysis, interviews with the artist….

It is such an intriguing gallery because it feels so modern and so out of place with sleepy Tassie. Very slick, complete with a classy wine bar, outside space for concerts… I think I will definitely have to go back sometime.

Back to Dad’s house for bolognaise and wine in front of the fire – this was much enjoyed. And then a movie – The Castle… very Australian!

Grandparents and Ghosts – Thursday 21st July

7am start as usual this morning. I depressingly calculated that my next proper sleep in would be…in August. Sigh.

Up in time to have a quick breakfast, coffee and to see Sienna and Anita off to school! And then off to the nursing home to see Nanna and Poppa – with a quick stop off at the post office (all of Franziska’s postcards cost $45 to spend!!) and the supermarket to pick up some flowers for Nanna’s room.

Not too much to say about this visit. We looked at some photos, heard that my cousin just proposed to his girlfriend in Spain (!) and mused at the snow on top of the mountain in the distance.

Before too long it was out on to the road again, heading towards Richmond. There isn’t exactly much to see there but it was on the way so I thought we’d have a look. We drove to the Richmond Bridge – the oldest bridge still being used in Australia – but it felt entirely silly trying to tell Franziska that something built in the 1800s was ‘old’.

 

We took an obligatory photo of the bridge and headed off to check out the little model village they have in Richmond – cute, small, but $14 to get in?? Oh well, it was something to see.

Whilst there I managed to break our car – or rather, I walked past the front of the car and somehow managed to bend the number plate in half? Not sure how that happened. There was some hasty pushing the plate back in to place. There, like new! (almost).

And then I discovered Franziska had never had scones before. That needed to be fixed so we headed off to a tea room to drink English Breakfast tea and eat scones, cream and jam. The scones were perfect and fluffy and warm and yummy and Franzi was very impressed. The shop owner was a bit odd and not quite all there – he made me a calligraphy bookmark… for Jessicka. Hmmm.

Around midday we began our hour and a bit trip down to Port Arthur. I actually really enjoyed this part, driving through the Tassie countryside in our mini automatic car listening to the radio and just taking in the view. Even if I couldn’t figure out the speed limit and was going 60 in a 100 km zone for quite a while!

Eventually we got to Port Arthur without the GPS (phone signal/internet had completely gone by now) and found our Comfort Inn – ah, such a old lady hotel. Old lady bed covers, old lady smell… and certainly no internet. Ah well, it’ll be comfy for one night.

Back to buy our entry tickets and off to see the buildings. Again, it was a very odd feeling trying to present our past two hundred years as ‘history’ – its really not that long in European terms at all. I think the most interesting part about our history for Franzi was that there isn’t very much of it! She kept taking photos ‘for her Dad’ and I’m not really sure what she thought of it all overall.

The weather held out, it was very chilly, but not unpleasant strolling around the grounds – all very quiet, of course, in the middle of winter. We took a nice little harbour cruise for 20 minutes and spent quite a bit of time in the Separate Prison (a solitary silent prison that was easily the most interesting thing there). A good three hour effort in the end.

At around 5pm we settled in for dinner next to the heater in Felons restaurant – where seafood is a speciality. Hmmm, Chicken Parmys for both of us, followed by a stupidly delicious chocolate pudding with berries and ice cream. Nom.

At 6.30pm time for the ghost tour! I’m really glad we did this, it really is a good one – our tour guide was a young woman which some sort of speech impediment. At the start of the tour I would have been quite interested to see a ghost – at the end, after all of the stories, I think I would have passed out. Just a little spooky. Franziska enjoyed it very much too.

Finally back to our not so warm hotel at just after 8pm – a wonderfully reasonable time… even in time to watch the end of Masterchef! The room took a long time to heat up but we soon discovered the electric blankets – an ironically new experience for Franzi.

Ah, the relaxing evening snuggled in bed watching television was much enjoyed.

Sydney to Hobart – Wednesday 20th July

Today when we woke up it was if the pouring rain had not stopped once during the night. Hmmm, what to do?

The day before we had bought two city sight seeing bus tickets, with the intention of going to Bondi Beach. With no other real options and an expensive ticket in hand we decided to brave the rain – off we went to catch the big red open topped double decker bus.

It was a very touristy bus, complete with recorded commentary by a Jules-Lund-sounding-person. After about half an hour, sitting downstairs and being nice and cosy, we arrived at Bondi Beach. This was just funny. It had stopped raining at this point but…the wind! This was one of those wind forces that tries its best to knock you over and happily blows sand into your face! As I said, going down to the beach was just a bit hilarious.

 

We ran down to the beach, took a few obligatory photos, and then ran back to the bus before it left again! We had originally planned to wait for the next bus, which was an hour later, but um….no.

We were on a bit of a good thing with the dry bus so we ended up staying on it as it drove all around lots of different coves and beaches. Then we hopped onto another that went around Sydney centre. At this point, Franzi decided to go up top with her umbrella and enjoy the view from there – she tells me she enjoyed this immensely and was pointed at by lots of people on the sidewalk. After all, she was a lone girl sitting on a very red bus with a very hot pink umbrella out in the pouring rain.

Back to the hostel around midday after a surprisingly successful morning. A bit of time for internet before catching our transfer bus to the airport. I was a bit nervous about this transfer – I had booked it so we had half an hour to check in but hadn’t really left “things going wrong time”. The bus was four minutes late… these were a very fidgety four minutes! Our driver was a weird little old man with a walking stick who didn’t look particularly fast, hmmm.

It turned out I didn’t have to worry at all. The hour drive to the airport was actually 25 minutes. And then, oh look, our plane was delayed 45 minutes. There was much eating and shopping and waiting – then finally on the plane.

After an uneventful flight we went to pick up our rental car – a little red 3 door Hyundai Getz. It is an automatic, which threw me for a bit, and it took me a a few funny minutes  to figure out how to get it into drive. I also got a bit lost trying to navigate my way in the dark – we went around a big roundabout twice. Apart from that, we got to my Aunt and Uncle’s without incident!

 

Dinner was lovely, as it usually is here, my cousin is still adorable and it was lovely to see family. I also met the new Burnese Mountain Dog puppy Frodo. I was smitten in a heartbeat. If only he stayed like a small fluffy puppy forever.

Some looking at photos after dinner and then bed just before midnight (not before writing a blog of course!).

And Then The Wind Changed – Tuesday 19th July

Today we looked at lots of things in displays and cages.

This morning alarms came and alarms went. We ‘slept' in’ until 8.30am – very late in holiday time! After some yummy toast we headed off to catch the ferry over to Taronga Zoo. Brrrr, it was cold this morning – nine degrees on the wharf and very windy. This meant that the hat, scarf and gloves came out pretty quickly – fashion statement, perhaps not.

 

The sun was still shining at this point and Franzi and I enjoyed basking in it as the ferry crossed the harbour. A pretty trip. We arrived at the zoo just in time to see the Seal Show. It was very cute – of course, I have seen it all before (well, perhaps not the seal doing the double back flip) but it was all new for Franzi and she certainly enjoyed it.

After that we walked pretty quickly through the Australian Animal section (very much been there, done that now, even for Franzi!). We DID see a Platypus though, which was lucky cause they are usually so hard to spot. There were also spiders, possums, snakes and some very cute sugar gliders – Australian Animals done and dusted :)

We saw giraffes, elephants, snakes, lizards – you know, all the zoo things. Franziska had never seen gorillas before, which was fun. The spiders and snakes also made quite an impact.

We were there for a good two and bit hours, including a mission for hot chips at lunch time. We took the ferry back – sitting inside this time, the weather was beginning to turn (and it pretty much got progressively worse across the day).

So off we trekked to the Powerhouse Museum, through the rain and the freezing wind (with our flimsy feeble umbrellas). I made lots of jokes about the Museum being closed or being renovated when we got there seeing as we had to walk so far. When we arrived – oh look, half the museum is closed for renovations! Ah well, we’d come so far we were going to look around

Franziska and my version of ‘looking around’ basically consisted of finding any exhibit that had buttons to push. I don’t think we read one bit of information. We became rather preoccupied playing Frogger, PacMan and Donkey Kong on an old video game station at one point and there was also some random iPad game that we spent way too long on.

We also spent a very long time in a rotating tube that makes you feel like the whole room is spinning – something about simulating weightlessness in space.

After a solid hour and a half pushing buttons on things we headed off to the Aquarium. Franziska liked the sharks and the fish. I liked the dugong. I nearly bought a dugong soft toy that rolls around on the floor laughing. There was much purchasing of souvenirs in the shop before heading out into the now pouring rain. Hmmm, taxi back.

Pizza for dinner! There was Saltwater Crocodile Pizza on the menu so of course this needed to be ordered (plus a safe cripsy bacon pizza just in case). It was very bizzare. A mix between chicken and fish. I can’t say I would order it again but it was certainly edible. Eaten crocodile and kangaroo – tick. it was nice just sitting there, drinking wine, chatting….and planning next year’s holiday!

Finally back to the warm hostel for a night of internet, relaxation and book reading whilst we listened to the rain. So cosy :)