Monday, January 26th was Australia Day down here (which commemorates the day the first settlers arrived) so we had a three day weekend. We were supposed to fly Friday morning to Melbourne and I was going to work from there for the day but our flight was cancelled so we got on an afternoon flight which got us in in the early evening. Friday night we went to see the Australian Open…we saw Jelena Dokic play in the first match (she's an adopted aussie so the crowd was really into it…she ended up winning) and then saw Federer play Marat Safin in the second match. Federer won pretty easily but the third set went to a tie breaker and there was some good action so it was a good match to see.
Saturday we got up early and rented our car and drove south and west of the city down to the coast. Some really nice beaches along the drive during the day but the real highlight of the road is the "12 Apostles." The 12 apostles are rock formations out in the ocean right along the coast…really a pretty scene, especially at sunset when we were there.
Sunday we kept driving west (it was a cracker of a day as the aussies would say!) along the coast. The water was a pretty striking blue. We ended the night across the state line in south australia (melbs is in victoria) and stayed in a dumpy little town called Mount Gambier. Monday we drove back to Melbs via the inland route…it entailed a lot of driving in the middle of nowhere. I kind of like that and australia has a lot of it out on the open road. You pass a tiny little town every once in a while and when you go through these towns you kind of feel like you've gone back in time to the 1950s or something. Anyways, we stopped off in Geelong (which is a neighboring city to Melbourne and the second largest city in Victoria) before getting to the airport and saw their Australia day festivities on the waterfront…kind of a fun scene. Got our flight back to Sydney and made it in record time from wheels down in Sydney to the head hitting the pillow at home (something like 40 minutes…couldn’t get that kind of time coming back from newark!)
Some more pics from the Great Ocean Road:
And a map of our approximate route:
View Larger Map
The week sped by pretty quickly and we went the following weekend up to the Blue Mountains, about 2 hours west of Sydney. We’d gone to the area before, way back in August, but this time we stayed at this cute out of the way spa type place. It was a fantastic setting, you felt like there was nothing around. We did a few short hikes and took the “zig-zag” railroad, which was an old railroad that literally zig-zagged its way up and down the mountain back in the day. We spent most of the day hanging out at our cabin though where there was a pool and tennis court. And in the evening we BBQed and sat out on the deck…it was the perfect way to end a hot summer day…I really couldn’t imagine a more relaxing spot.
Sunday we hung out in the morning and headed back towards the city in the afternoon stopping at a few lookouts and viewpoints. We saw a bit of the Chinese new years parade that evening which was kind of fun. Monday, Michelle’s mom arrived in town. I managed to get out of work at reasonable times for most of the week so Monday night we saw an opera in the opera house (while it was cool to do, it confirms the fact that I don’t really care that much about opera). Tuesday night we ended up going back to the open air cinema and saw Vicki Christina Barcelona which was fun. And Wednesday night we went out for dinner at Philip’s Foote which is the grill your own steak place we’d been to before. It was quite a fun week! Michelle and Suzy left on Thursday up to Queensland so I was pretty low key for the rest of the week and the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment