All that pesky Australia planning!

Australia has been another bucket list item of mine since I was about 18 years old.  The only destination I wanted to visit more was the big apple but now that it's done, it's all about the Land of Oz!

Out of all the travel I have done, Australia has taken the most research - seriously, it's taken me hours and hours!  This is firstly because the country is absolutely massive and when you have to narrow down where you're going, you need to be sure you're making the right choices.  Secondly, due to the size of the country, different regions are like visiting completely different countries, so it actually depends what your are looking for when you visit.

Finally, I had to consider the time it would take to get from one city to another.  Usually this is as simple as jumping into a rental car or getting a bus or train, but not in the land downunder.

Take, for example, the distance between the neighbouring cities of Sydney and Melbourne.  Check them out on a map.  Pretty close right?

... yeah, you're actually looking at 878km or 545 miles (approximately the distance from England to Germany).

Okay so, there I was knowing that the average one-stop-over-flight to Australia is between 22 and 27 hours, and direct flights are not only rarely offered, but are several hundred Pounds more pricey than the already £800+ return ticket. How do you even decide where to start, or what to miss when a flight out there takes longer than a whole day of your life?

The first thing I did was read numerous travel blogs, spent ages looking through Australian Instagram accounts, and reading sites like Trip Advisor to find out what the 'must sees' in the country are.   Once I'd done that, I had a list that looked like this:  Alice Springs, Perth, Cairns, Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, and Darwin. No biggie - apart from the fact that those are just about all the major cities and the distance between - let's take Dawin and Sydney is almost 2000 miles/3000km.

Image from Google search

So it was back to the drawing board for me for the second time.  Eventually I had to admit defeat and realise that I can't do it all in one trip.  It would take weeks of travel and hundreds of Pounds and I'd just have to stop being a brat and draw the line somewhere.

After much deliberation, pouting, and looking at pretty pictures, I eventually decided to take 15 days in Australia, and visit only the cities that are nearest to one another - or perhaps I should say the cities that are in the same hemisphere of the country? 😏  My trip looks like this: Adelaide, Barossa Valley and Kangaroo Island, Sydney, Hobart city and Mt Wellington, and Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road.

As my time was limited, I didn't want to waste any time travelling and so I began looking up domestic flight companies.  Almost immediately I came across a company called 'Jet Star' who are absolutely amazing.  Not only are their flights very economical (all my domestic flights cost me less than £130), but they have all sorts of optional extras to keep the prices down.  The only downside is that, as with economy carriers in England, you only have 7kg of free cabin baggage.  If you want any more, you have to pay for it. Was I going to pay for it?  Hell no.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

My sister in law has been showing me these 'ranger roll' army-style packing videos on You Tube and I have decided I am only taking a small back pack containing the following items: 5 x pairs of leggings, 5 x tshirts, 1 x pair of trainers, a toothbrush, underwear, socks, and I will wear my winter coat, gloves, hat and scarf (believe it or not it gets really cold in southern Australia in the winter!).

And so, after two months of planning, I'm finally ready to go.  All I have to do now is wait ... 😞

That Big New York Trip (part 3 of 5)

Spending 10 days in the city was a wonderful experience.  It meant I had time to see all of the city, as well as have having a few days off just to chill on the beaches or just relax in the local parks.

I was worried that I'd see everything in less time and then have nothing left to do for the rest of the trip, but NYC is just a never ending dynamic city which never gets boring! Every day I went home and checked off my NYC bucket list items I'd do a few Google searches and find a whole plethora of items to see or experience!

With only about half my trip left, I decided it was time to see the more famous parts of the city starting with Joe's Pizza.

Not only is Joe's rated one of the best pizza slices in the city, but it is also frequented by celebrities as well as making an appearance in the Spiderman movie.

I was saving my NY pizza experience for a special place so I decided breakfast pizza at Joe's was the perfect time.

Day 6 - Wall Street, the 9/11 Memorial, Ghostbusters, Friends, Trinity Church and Brooklyn Bridge

From the outside you wouldn't suspect this is one of the city's most famous pizzerias. 

Once inside though, it becomes quickly apparent when you notice the collages of celeb photos lining the walls

This might not look like much but it was definitely one of the most amazing pizzas I've ever tasted - not to mention the slice was about as big as my head!  An interesting thing in NY is that all pizza seems to be served by the slice instead of the mini or personal pizzas we have in England and also in South Africa.  I've seen the single slices in some parts of London before but it seems that it is the general way of being served in NY.

Next stop was the 'Friends' apartment - I'm a mega fan and it was really cool standing in front of 'their' building!  Of course the show was never filmed in that building and the coffee shop 'Central Perk' is not even a real thing, but that's okay. It was cool to get this shot anyway.

  

I walked about a mile across the sweltering city to get to the Ghostbusters' Firestation building to make sure I saw this puppy only to get there and find out it was being renovated and was covered in a huge black net.  Typical!

Until I saw that Ghostbusters symbol painted on the floor, I literally walked past this building three times whilst glaring at my Google Maps which kept telling me I saw standing right in front of it.  Took me a while but you can see why!

Onto the subways to visit the 9/11 memorial and see Wall Street.  I might look calm and peaceful but I can tell you that it was as hot as hell on that subway platform and I was melting.

Subway ticket machines - so colourful.

One World Trade Center

Ground Zero Memorial pools: they have one for the North and the South tower. You can see the vast size of the pool from the size of the people on the opposite side of the memorial to me.

An aerial view of the pools.  It's hard to think that hundreds of people lost their lives in this green, peaceful place.

At around this point, I started becoming quite emotional which I admit I wasn't expecting. These names go all around both pools and there are just hundreds and hundreds of them.

This is the survivor tree.  It was the only thing that was still standing from the blast.  When they found it, it has been blown down to only 8ft and it is a symbol of rebuilding what was lost.  If you can see the lock on the tree that is where the tree regrew from into what it is now.   At this point it was all too much for me and I had to leave the memorial.

For the firemen

Trinity Church which looks out of place just around the corner from the 9/11 memorial and the glass fronted buildings of the financial distract.  It is across the road from Wall Street.  This is the third church built on this site with the first one being rebuilt into a more spacious church, and the second having to be torn down because of damage from bad weather.  The church that now stands was completed in 1846 and has been refuge for survivors of the giant debris cloud following the 9/11 attacks, as well as serving moral and practical support for protesters during 'Occupy Wall Street' for which they got into a bit of hot water!

The South Churchyard of Trinity Church where Alexander Hamilton, William Bradford, Franklin Wharton, Robert Fulton, Captain James Lawrence and Albert Gallatin are buried.

The New York Stock Exchange building

The Charging Bull or the Wall Street Bull which is not actually on Wall Street at all but rather near the Bowling Green Station..  I don't actually know any of these people standing with the bull but it is actually impossible to get a photo of this thing without someone hanging off of it! 

After hours and hours of sight seeing I made my way to the Liberty viewing deck but decided to stop and visit a New York movie theater instead.  They really do sell those awesomely massive buckets of popcorn that you see in the movies.

Look at the leg room you get in these seats! And it wasn't even premiere seating.  I also love that you get a little school desk type table on which to hold your gigantic popcorn.

The building that the movies was in was a very strange place.  It has about three massive storeys that seemed to hold nothing other than elaborate marble flooring and this bizarre apple thingy which seemed like a good place to stop and take a selfie.

After the movie I continued my walk towards the viewing deck but got side tracked by this beautiful view of the Hudson River and the city in the background

I decided to keep walking to see if I could find Brooklyn Bridge to tick it off the list.  En route I found yet another magical building that looks like it was hand carved, causally sitting among the other modern buildings.

Brooklyn Bridge lovers have adopted the European idea of 'love locks' whereby lovers immortalise their love with a lock attached to the bridge and throw the key into the river below.  Sucks if they break up!

I'm a big fan of this type of sentimentality and was going to put one up for my son to remove one day when he visited the city as an adult, however I read an article the night before about a team from the DOT who have been employed to remove the locks so it seemed a bit pointless.  You can read more about that here if you're interested http://gothamist.com/2015/04/07/brooklyn_bridge_love_locks.php

It's very impressive!

From this and a few other things I saw, I am guessing that the health and safety in New York is not nearly as over board as it is in England.  People were actually sitting on these bars over the road to take photos and selfies.

In hindsight, knowing that the Brooklyn Bridge is just over a mile long, it would have been a better idea not to walk across it after spending hours walking around the city.  I made it to the end but after that it was straight on home for me with a tub of ice cream!