Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Brisbane Trip Part I - Byron Bay


We decided to take a last minute trip to Queensland after we found out Stefan wouldn't be starting his job until April 12th, and Edith wouldn't (originally) be starting work until the 10th!  So about a week and a half ago after Stefans nonchalant "We should go on a trip before work starts" morphed into us planning and booking tickets to fly to Queensland, rent a car, stay in 3 different locations (including one that Edith has wanted to stay at for over a year), find an amazing boat cruise and plan daily events for a week, all in less than 4 hours.  We stayed in 3 places on our trip, Byron Bay, NSW, Kinka Beach, QLD, and Brisbane, QLD.  We're splitting each place up into a separate blog post to give each the attention they deserve.

The trip was absolutely fantastic.  We got a week of beautiful, beachy, summer weather (and as we spent most of the last Australia Summer in the US Winter, we were feeling a bit sunshine deprived), and got to see quite a bit of Queensland, but left us already imagining a trip solely devoted to going further North and doing a trip planned around islands in the Great Barrier Reef (and involving little to no driving).

We flew up to Brisbane on April 2 at the crack of dawn, and arrived in Brisbane before 10am.  We quickly picked up our rental car and drove north of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast to visit Stefan's grandparents, Maureen and Eddie.  They were very sweet and welcoming, and hadn't seen Stefan for 12 years, so there was a lot of catching up to do!  They made us a fantastic lunch of steak and salad and garlic bread and dessert, we were so full afterwards! Eddie and Stefan were reminiscing about Stefans amazing puzzle skills, which he showed off last time he stayed with them, and Eddie gave us a neat puzzle that we're working on right now.  We stayed as long as we could, though of course it wasn't long enough.  The picture on the right is of Stefan with Eddie and Maureen, and the the pictures below are of Maureen showing Edith some of her sewing projects, and Stefan, back in Melbourne, working on the puzzle Eddie gave us.




After we left their lovely house in the Sunshine Coast, we headed down to Byron Bay, which is 2 hours south of Brisbane and actually in New South Wales, not Queensland.

Byron Bay is right on the coast, and is a bit of a hippy town that attracts a LOT of tourists, especially backpackers and people traveling around Australia in camper vans.  We stayed at the Arts Lodge, which is a neat hostel that we had read about in a book of short stories Kelley gave us last Christmas.  It's a really neat quirky hostel a bit outside of town that has 2 teepees, dorms, tent cabins, and (as we found on our exploration mission of the grounds) a huge campground and vegetable garden.  The grounds are extremely lush and built near a swamp/mini lake, and there are hammocks strung near the lake with plenty of people reading or napping.  We stayed in one of the big teepees, which was really fun.  The teepee was very centrally located, which made it a bit loud the first night, but on the second night gave us a great chance to listen to the Talent Show without braving the cold and the mozzies (mosquitos).







As we didn't get to Byron until almost 8pm, we didn't see anything outside the hostel on our first night in town.  The next morning we woke up bright and early and headed straight out to a breakfast joint mentioned in our severely outdated, yet still helpful guidebook.  The breaky place was called Byron Beach Cafe, and it has a great outdoor patio that overlooks the beach. It wasn't crowded at all when we were there, and we both had the fantastic breakfast special and a cup of excellent coffee.  If you ever visit Byron I definitely recommend this place for a great breakfast away from a lot of the backpackers.  Here are two pictures from their website, because I forgot to take some while we were there:



After breaky we made a short detour back into town to see all the shops and to check out Vinnies (we'd forgotten beach towels!), which is Australia's version of Goodwill or the Salvation Army.  There we found not just beach towels ($3!), but also a great CD of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Mozart's Toy Symphony ($1!), and some dress pants that fit Stefan really well ($2!). With Stefan's height finding clothes in a thrift store rarely happens, and he just magically stumbled on this pair when he wasn't really looking. It was quite a find! After our short thrifting adventure we picked up some groceries for the next few lunches, and hit the beach.  We stayed in the shade for much of the morning, and applied lots of sunscreen throughout the day.  The water was absolutely amazing!  Very comfortable temperature, although a bit shallow for swimming, Stefan had lots of fun playing in the waves.



After the beach we went back to the hostel to shower and change and get out of the sun for a bit by exploring the hostel and reading in the shade of the trees by the lake.  Late afternoon we went back into town and walked around a bit, checking more of the area, and ending up grabbing a beer at a little bar called The Rails (it's right by the train station), and hung about there doing crossword puzzles.  We went back to the hostel for dinner and turned in for an early night of reading in preparation for another early morning.  From the teepee we could hear the Talent Show going on, which was actually really quite impressive.  We even heard one song that ended up stuck in our heads for the rest of the week, that was sung by an indie/folk artist from Canada named Dan Mangan.  The music video is below if you'd like to experience a bit of the sounds we heard our last night in Byron.   We had a really fantastic time while in Byron Bay, although we were surprised at how commercial much of the downtown was, as we saw a lot of the same stores we have in Melbourne and Sydney, whereas we expected a bit more of an eclectic variety, though I guess Byron's reputation as a tourist destination has promoted big businesses to move in.   Despite this we still had a really lovely stay, and would recommend our hostel for anyone looking for a unique place to stay while in Byron Bay.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012


One of the days we were staying with Neil and Noreen out in Blackburn, Noreen took us wine tasting! We went to 2 or 3 wineries, Chandon, TarraWarra Estates, and Train Trak. Chandon is where we started right when they opened and enjoyed a lovely champagne tasting and a neat self guided tour of the champagne making facilities.



Stefan with our lovely host Noreen


TarraWarra Estates had lovely grounds (just like Chandon) with the tasting room overlooking a pond, and a lovely art museum.  We caught some of the William Delafield Cook Survey, a photo of one of my favorite pieces is below.  The wine at the adjoining winery was pretty good, but not great so we did not purchase anything there.




Our last winery of the day was Train Trak, a really small winery that was built right next to some abandoned train tracks that you actually had to drive over to get to the winery.  They had some really yummy wines and we picked one up and enjoyed it at the house one day.


Overall our quick trip to the Yarra Valley wine region was fantastic, and it was so nice having Noreen show us all around (and drive!).  We hope to make it out to the wine region again, especially as it's only about 45 minutes to an hour away.  


Introducing Our Home!

When we first arrived in Melbourne we were lucky enough to get to stay with Neil and Noreen, friends of Stefan's mom, Chris, who we had met once before.  They were amazing hosts, we had agreed beforehand to stay for 2-3 days and in the end they let us stay for 7!  They have a beautiful house not too far from the city, so that was our home base while we searched for more permanent housing.

After much searching and seeing quite a few houses and taking copious notes and photos along the way we finally found the perfect place! We have 2 flatmates, Erin and Simon, who are both really cool people that we're enjoying getting to know.  The suburb is Brunswick East, so its a 20 minute tram ride to the heart of the city, and we're a 3 minute walk to Lygon St. which has a lot of great cafes, bars, and restaurants.  There's also a park nearby where we have gone jogging and slacklining, and the grocery store is about an 8 minute bike ride away. Basically we're loving it.   













This photo features a wild Stefan seen in his natural habitat!


 And that's our new home!  We are absolutely smitten with it. We have a couch! And carpets! And don't have to brush our teeth in the kitchen! Ahh the little things in life. (Although if you remember our old place in Sydney you can understand how this is a serious upgrade.)  And it's not really a part of our house but the quickest way to the tram stop/main street is through this adorable little park with gorgeous overhanging trees. More updates coming soon!



Sunday, February 12, 2012

Melbourne



So, we've moved to Melbourne!  Get ready for some upcoming posts on the epic drive from Sydney to Melbourne, and on our fantastic new house.  (hopefully the post after that will be about our fancy new jobs...)

Melbourne is absolutely fantastic.  Much flatter than Sydney so it's easy to bike all over, and probably the best coffee in the country if not much of the world. We're loving it so far!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Our Tasmania Trip!

Wooowww.... so it turns out that this is the first post in 364 days! (Maybe 365? Was 2011 a leap year?)

This post was originally just going to be a quick rundown of what's happened in the past year but a few events I just couldn't sell short, so our trip to Tasmania get's its own post.  About 11 months after we actually took the trip, but who's counting?

So Tasmania, fondly referred to as Tassie, is a state of Australia that is actually an island off the south of Australia.  (Sort of like Hawai'i).  It's very rural, with two "big" cities--Hobart and Launceston.  To call Launceston a city is really pushing it, although Hobart definitely did fit the criteria.  We camped for part of the trip in Freycinet National Park, and couchsurfed in Launceston and Hobart, staying at a hostel for the last night in Launceston before our flight.  We absolutely loved everywhere there.  We even talked about how neat it would be to retire there.  Everyone we couchsurfed with was absolutely amazing and did all sorts of neat things.  The people in Launceston had an amazing garden and they did compost and worm farming to help with the garden (and of course to cut down on waste).  Some of the people we stayed with in Hobart were vegan/freegan, so they'd eat vegan unless of course they found it (usually via dumpster diving) and then it didn't have to be vegan.  We also stayed with a family in Hobart, and the mom taught French at a school and shared all sorts of neat French music with me.  Even without touring the area we had quite an education just from the people we stayed with!

But below are some pictures from the trip and rundowns of some of the highlights.  The trip was all in all absolutely amazing.  The pictures are a bit out of order in terms of when they happened in the trip, so please don't use the order below as any sort of idea about our itinerary because geographically it would make 0 sense if we did it this way.

Going to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania. - Where ancient artwork (old arrowheads, ancient Egyptian artifacts, etc...) is interspersed with contemporary art.  The museum was very new when we visited (less than a month since the opening), and it was fantastic.  The tour was all self directed with information being delivered on an ipod touch with headphones.  The device would geolocate your spot in the museum and you chose which piece you were looking at.  They would have music to coincide with the piece, or an interview with the artist or museum curator, or other interesting things to add to learning about the piece.  Truly an amazing museum experience.








Visiting the Boag's Brewery in Launceston, Tasmania. Got the full brewery tour and a tasting to boot!

Wineglass Bay - Long, strenuous hike in, but you're rewarded with one of the best beaches in the world (Outside magazine said it, so it must be true), shaped like the bowl of a wineglass.



Bruny Island Cruise - Bruny island is an island off the southern tip of Tasmania.  (We joked that we were on an island off the south of Tasmania, which is an island off the south of Australia, which is an island off the south of Asia.  We're not sure anyone else thought this was as funny as we did.) We took a ferry over to the island and drove to the boat cruise place we'd booked!

Our adorable rental car that was our trusted steed through our Tasmanian Adventure!


The water was absolutely this blue, it was amazing! Also this is the southernmost Stefan and I have each been!

Drive from Hobart up to Launceston - this meant driving straight through the middle of Tasmania, from bottom to top.  We saw a lot of great landscapes and had some crazy weather changes along the way.
SNOWWW!!!

And then about 15 minutes later blue skies and green grass.

We got this great pic (yeah dual citizenship!) at an American style diner somewhere on the road. 

We went to go see some awesome caves I read about. They were closed because of flooding. But we saw a goat. Totally makes up for it right? Yeah I didn't think so either.


Cataract Gorge - in Launceston


So thats all for the Tasmanian trip.  A lot more happened over the course of 2011 but we may have to breeze through them.  Get ready for an update on what's happening now very soon!
- E & S