Laura and Peter Down Under

Friday, May 22, 2015

Jet Ski Tour to Daydream Island

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As promised, I'll resume recapping our Airlie Beach vacation!

We settled into our accommodation upon our arrival on Sunday, and got to bed early in preparation for our first activity. On Monday, we took a jet ski tour to Daydream Island, one of the islands of the Whitsundays not far from Airlie Beach. Neither Peter nor I had ever actually driven a jet ski before, we had only ever been passengers on one in a lake. Obviously we weren't quite prepared for the intensity of jet skiing in the ocean, but it was really fun and I'm so glad we did it!

Peter ready to go before our tour.

We booked through Whitsunday Jet Ski Tours and did the Daydream Extreme. Our guides were awesome and told some great stories about the Red Hot Chili Peppers staying on one of the islands. Spoiler: they are banned for life.

We watched the safety video and put on the appropriate gear and life jackets before setting out on our trip. I really had no interest in driving, so Peter drove the whole time and happily we made it to Daydream Island without falling off, which was really my number one goal for the day.

Absolutely perfect views. The scenery almost looked fake.

Peter, living a life of luxury.

Is this real life!?

Cute little kangaroo hopping around the island.

Our tour group walking through the forest.

We ate lunch at this colorful spot. One of the girls on the tour ordered two cakes for lunch and she pretty much became my hero right then and there. Unfortunately, I tried to befriend her but I don't think she spoke English. That or she thought I was totally weird, which is also a legitimate possibility.

These birds harassed us for our food and were SCARY. Their squawking sounded creepily like a human scream.

We had time to wander the island ourselves and then the whole group did a fish feeding, during which I didn't get any good pictures. Naturally.

A few of these next photos are from the tour company's facebook page:

This is the best starfish pose we could come up with. No one ever accused us of being creative.

After a couple hours, it was time to hop back on the jet skis and head back to the mainland.

Picture from the GoPro right before we left the island.

On the way back Peter wore the GoPro on his head and looked epic.

The whole group.

And now, some videos! Listen closely for two death threats in this first one:

In which I almost fall off:

Trying to keep up with the guy in front of us who was a certified maniac:

Overall, the tour was well worth it. Jet skiing was a great way to see the surrounding area and was more unique and exciting than the typical boat tour. Apparently we had a calm day, which was good because the waves were definitely big enough for me! I really think that the only thing that kept me on the back of that jet ski was the fact that I spent the better part of my childhood on the back of a horse. Balance was key!

Stay tuned for our Tuesday activity: snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef!

Labels:Travel | 8 comments

Monday, May 18, 2015

Giveaway!

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If you've been reading this blog for awhile now and waiting for an opportunity to get free stuff (and really who doesn't want free stuff?), this post is for you! Today I'm teaming up with three Aussie bloggers to bring you this blog's first-ever giveaway!

Ready for it? The prize is a beautiful custom watercolor painting delivered to you, anywhere in the world, from This Painted Life Etsy shop! Got a photograph of your house, family, or another special memory you'd like to display? Jason can turn it into a beautiful watercolor painting!

Here is a preview of his amazing work:

Entering is easy! Just follow each of these awesome Aussie bloggers on Bloglovin' and sign up on the Rafflecopter below. (If you have absolutely no idea what Bloglovin' is, it's essentially a platform to follow all your favorite blogs, which I was really sad to see existed because this was my million-dollar idea back when I first started blogging.) ANYWAY, everyone enter!

Alkeks Abroad

Abby's Roads

EAT All Over the World

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Sunday, May 17, 2015

Arriving in Airlie Beach

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There's so much to report from our vacation last week that I'm just going to post about one day at a time to keep it simple. So, last Sunday we set out for our long-awaited trip to Airlie Beach. For those that don't know, Airlie Beach is a small beach town that serves primarily as a port for trips to the surrounding Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef.

Here's a map I pulled from Google images. The Whitsunday Islands are between the mainland and the Great Barrier Reef.

Source

It wasn't too hard to leave Melbourne behind on Sunday morning, as it was really grey and rainy, a theme around here lately.

Perks of flying Tiger: walking ten thousand (not always covered) miles to the plane.

The flight was uneventful and we landed in 85 degree weather three hours later. We flew into Mackay, a city about 2 hours south of Airlie Beach. There are closer airports, but we got a really good deal on the Tiger flights and in an effort to be the least convenient airline in history, they only fly into Mackay. So, we hopped on the transfer bus for a relatively painless two hour trip up to Airlie Beach.

We checked into the Airlie Beach Hotel around mid-afternoon and were pleasantly surprised with our room, aside from the pea green carpet and curtains. We got a good deal-beggars can't be choosers, right?

We were pretty starving at this point, so we hit the main drag for some fish and chips. The city of Airlie Beach is tiny and consists primarily of hotels and restaurants. Like I mentioned, people just eat and sleep on the mainland and spend the bulk of their days island hopping.

Cute little block of restaurants just outside our hotel across from the beach.

We walked around the town for a bit, picked up some groceries for our room, and then headed down to check out the beach.

Peter waded in and spotted a few crabs and a stingray!

Paradise!

We fit in a quick nap before venturing out for dinner at one of the restaurants connected to our hotel.

There were tons of these cute little guys all over!

And of course, we ended the day with chocolate ice cream.

Stay tuned for a recap of our Monday activity: an epic jet ski tour to Daydream Island complete with a video of me threatening to kill Peter if I fell off while he was driving. Good times.

Labels:Travel | 1 comments

Friday, May 15, 2015

We're Back!

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We arrived home from our vacation to Airlie Beach late this afternoon. We enjoyed a relatively painless Tiger flight save for a group of drunk bros next to us. They were eventually cut off by the flight attendant after the guy we shared a row with tried to order his fifth Victoria Bitter...on a three hour flight. How do I always end up sitting next to these people? After about 15 minutes I was seriously contemplating trying to switch seats with the guy next to the crying baby a few rows up.

Also, our boarding pass was a receipt. I know Tiger is a budget airline, but really?!

The epitome of janky.

Anyway, our trip was nothing short of totally epic and I was able to check quite a few things off my bucket list! I will do in-depth posts about each of our activities, but those will have to come later this weekend when I have a chance to sift through the hundreds of photos we took between our two iPhones, underwater camera, and GoPro. For now, I'll just recap yesterday, our last day in Airlie Beach. We had absolutely perfect weather Sunday-Wednesday, but Thursday was a bit chillier and very windy. Luckily we were all done with our planned activities, so we slept in, got lunch, and sat by the hotel pool for a few hours.

Throughout the day, Peter was exchanging tweets with the Queensland Twitter account (Airlie Beach is in Queensland for those who aren't familiar with Australian geography). Peter had posted a photo of me getting ready to snorkel and the Queensland account responded, asking about our trip. Much to our surprise, they offered to buy us dinner on our last night! We chose Mr. Bones, a pizza and tapas restaurant that came highly recommended by my friend Courtney. I cannot rave about this restaurant enough. If you live anywhere within driving distance of Airlie Beach, or are ever visiting, you MUST check it out.

We ordered chicken spring rolls, braised beef cheek, and a salami pizza. Neither Peter nor I were able to pick a favorite-it was all SO good. That burger on the bottom right is actually a dessert burger! It featured doughnuts for the bun, a jelly slice for cheese, a chunk of chocolate for the beef, strawberries for the tomato and cream for mayonnaise. The fries were some kind of dough and were amazing.

So, THANK YOU whoever is behind the Queensland Twitter account! Anyone in Australia (and abroad) should follow them on Twitter if you don't already. Also, they have a fabulous Instagram account that will give you serious vacation inspiration and is definitely worth a follow.

And now I'm off to catch up on some TV shows and unpack!

Labels:Travel | 0 comments

Saturday, May 9, 2015

A Birthday and Cake!

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Yesterday was Sylvie's birthday, so of course we had to celebrate! We started the night with dinner at Sezar, an Armenian restaurant (I was thisclose to asking the waiter if he knew the Kardashians) which was really good! We then migrated to Berlin Bar in Chinatown. The best part about this bar was that you had to ring a doorbell to get in. Someone answered, thankfully.

The bar was divided into East and West Berlin and was decorated accordingly. We were seated on this bunk bed on the East side. The West was much swankier, naturally.

We shared a bottle of wine and then continued to my favorite bar, Arbory, on the Yarra River. I primarily like this bar because it's a 5 minute walk from our apartment, which is a welcome convenience after a few drinks (our building is behind the tree).

We called it a night around 11:30, which is a testament to our elderly-ness. The walk home was notable only because a rat almost ran over my feet, which was totally gross. I guess that's what I get for walking between a river and a train station at night.

Today, Sylvie hosted a tea and cake birthday party at her apartment. She and I spent the morning running around the city gathering an obscene amount of cake, which is probably the best possible way to spend a Saturday morning.

Stop one-LuxBite in the city:

The final product:

Poppin champagne and almost losing an eye in the process.

It's been a great weekend so far, and is only going to get better tomorrow morning when we leave bright and early for the Whitsundays/Great Barrier Reef! Look forward to more selfie stick photos than you ever wanted to see.

Labels:Everyday Life | 0 comments

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

To Tip or Not to Tip?

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I came across an article the other day about how much to tip in various countries around the world. I've touched on the lack of tipping culture in Australia on the blog before, but I thought I'd elaborate a little bit on tipping and dining in general, as it can be quite different from home. Also, I'm definitely going to save the above article for travel purposes. Whenever I'm in a new country I find myself fretting over whether or not to leave a tip and this is a pretty comprehensive guide.

The Tip

The article says 10% at fine dining restaurants is acceptable in Australia, but in my experience it's definitely not compulsory. I've eaten at a variety of causal and more upscale restaurants and have never left a tip nor has anyone else in my group. I suppose I would consider tipping if I truly experienced amazing service, but that hasn't happened yet.

At first I felt a little bit uneasy about not tipping. In the U.S. it would be super insulting to not leave a tip, as everyone knows that waiters and waitresses rely on tips to make up the majority of their income. Even if the service isn't particularly good, I will still tip around 15% in the States. Once I learned that the minimum wage in Australia is something like $16/hour and servers often make quite a bit more than that, I didn't feel so bad, as their salary is meant to be sufficient on its own.

Service

Because a server's income isn't determined by tips, you can imagine the incentive to provide above and beyond service just isn't there. You'll often have to order and pay at the cash register and grab your own water at a restaurant. Sometimes a server will greet you and drop off a water jug for the table. Because waiters/waitresses don't usually have a set group of tables they are assigned to serve, it can be hard to flag someone down to take your order, which is annoying. Also, I still haven't figured out a formula for knowing where/how to order and pay. It seems pretty 50/50 in terms of paying at the table vs. paying at the register. We mainly just spend a lot of time looking around for someone to tell us what to do.

Reservations

At a few of the more popular restaurants I've been to, they'll give you a time limit (usually two hours) on your table. When the end of your reservation approaches, someone will most definitely let you know your time is up. This is totally weird to me, but I guess it helps shuffle more people through!

Taking Leftover Food Home

I think I've mentioned this before, but don't expect to take leftovers home. If you ask, you'll generally be met with a confused look. Occasionally you can snag a take-away box, but it's just not something I've seen many people attempt to do. Portion sizes tend to be smaller, so this is less of an issue in general.

BYO

I think I've mentioned this one before too, but some restaurants allow you to bring your own alcohol and just charge a corkage fee of a few dollars per person. We don't take advantage of this as much as we should. Cocktails are often around $15-$20 in a restaurant, so bringing some wine can really save a few bucks.

Final Cost

When we first got here and saw the prices of food at even mediocre restaurants we were horrified. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn't be eating out much. While we still spend more on dining out than I would like to admit, the price in the end isn't overwhelmingly more than at a comparable restaurant in the U.S. While the food itself is more expensive here, not having to factor in the tip and tax (which is always included in the meal price) on top makes a difference.

Labels:Expat Life,Melbourne | 4 comments

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Selfie Stick!

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I haven't posted in a few days primarily because a member of our household who shall remain nameless used up all of our high speed WiFi for the month streaming hockey games. We only get a certain amount of the fastest WiFi per month and when it runs out we are demoted to a slower speed (read: snail pace) until the next month. Thankfully it's almost the end of our billing cycle, so only 3 more days of 1990-esque internet speed!

Anyway, I've wanted a selfie stick since basically forever so I finally ordered one for the GoPro last week in preparation for our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. I'm contemplating getting one for my iPhone as well but not sure I'm ready to be the person who owns two selfie sticks. Then again, I'm pretty shameless so stay tuned.

Here it is in all its glory!

You can use bluetooth to connect the GoPro camera to the iPhone app and take the picture from your phone. It's super easy and then the photo is already on your phone ready to upload to Instagram or wherever on the spot. Needless to say, I'm excited to try it out on our trip!

A couple other random things from this week:

1) In a moment of extremely bad luck, Peter managed to drop his keys down the elevator shaft on Tuesday. The concierge looked on the bottom floor and didn't see them there, which means they're stuck somewhere between floors 1 and 23. Fantastic. The elevator repairmen are scheduled to come on Monday and are going to keep their eyes out for them, so here's to hoping they are found!

2) Lauren and I went for cake at Le Petit Gateau and it was so good! I had been hearing a lot about this place, and it definitely didn't disappoint.

3) It was Katie's birthday on Tuesday and we celebrated the occasion at a new vegetarian restaurant called Transformers. All the food was fabulous and the presentation was amazing. I can't remember exactly what all we ordered, but here are some of the dishes: