A few of my favorite things

I've been getting a lot of questions from native Australians about my favorite (and least favorite) Aussie things. I want to share some of these answers with you:

Fave food - Chicken & chips -- not completely an Aussie thing but better than any I've found in the states

Least fave food - Vegemite. Sick

Fave street - Lygon in Carlton

Fave place we've visited - Seeing the Sydney Opera House was awesome. So was Cairns. Cairns wins because I held a koala there.

Fave drink - Cider- it's not your mama's apple cider.

Fave clothing store (that I can afford) - Cotton On

Fave clothing store (that I can't afford) - Review

Fave thing about Melbourne - the rain and the large variety of shops

Least fave thing about Melbourne - public transport

I"m going to work on getting Hyatt to fill out a fave questionnaire and if you have any questions you'd like answered, leave them in the comments section!

Cheers!
Brandi

Great Barrier Reef Trip #2

Most people don't get to see the Great Barrier Reef in their lifetime and this can be attributed to several things:
1 - Australia is way the hell far away from any other landmass except Antartica and Indonesia. There's a lot of water between us and the states, check it.

2. Most people aren't too keen on swimming with the fishes - ya know, da big ones.  We didn't see any sharks while snorkeling but we did see a few smaller ones while scuba diving. The big ones gotta eat something. Small sharks = dinner for big sharks.

3. It's bloody expensive to get across all that water.

4. They don't have the travel bug and are content to stay on their home continent - which is totally fine. There are many times that I wish I was on my home continent.

5. Did I mention it's a helluva long way over here?!

So, very blessed to have taken back to back trips to the GBR. This time it was with Lenny, Candace and Jenny.  We didn't roadtrip this time but rather flew there and back so that we had more time in paradise.

Our room deluxe huge suite was flippin awesome - look.

I"m not kidding when I say paradise. Look at all the cool stuff we did while we were up there:

Went to the oldest rainforest on the planet - The Daintree Rainforest. We took a monorail to get there (I'm petrified of suspended heights) and a somewhat antique railway to get down.

Jenny and I were very excited to hold koalas - it was the highlight of our day!

We also went on a snorkeling/scuba trip. This was our ship

Catching some rays

Lots and lots of fish.

Perhaps one of the most spectacular sites during their visit were the things we saw on the Great Ocean Road.  The London Bride, 12 Apostles (there are only really 6 or 7), koalas in trees, a gorgeous lighthouse and sunset over the ocean.

All in all - wonderful trip. So glad we got to see our friend if only for a short time.

Another post tomorrow - promise!

Until next time,

~ Buzzard ~