Yo Ho Yo Ho a Spanish life for me... - En casa, but still need one last update!

Hello from Salem OR!

You may be wondering, hmmm some travel journal lame-face. you're in your hometown. you're not allowed to update from there. You are right. But I have many reasons why this update is necessary...

1. I can't sleep. I feel like it's 5pm, not 12am. Probably because it is 5pm in Australia.
2. I never updated about the end of my trip.
3. I need to finish up the trip because of my new BRILLIANT journal publishing idea and book I bought.
4. I just poured myself the rest of the wine bottle... I won't mention when I opened it.
5. This wins over the chick-flick marathon on FX that I was getting super sucked into about an hour ago.

So here we ready, set, go--

My last entry was from the Gold Coast. We left later that day that I updated. We didn't really bring our "A-game" in travel organization that day. (Example- waited at a bus stop for about an hour only to find out that our bus was never coming to that particular stop)  So by the time we got to Brisbane, we were pretty pooped. We still got to meet up with Naomi and Dave for dinner though. Ended up going to a gourmet burger place. We split 2 burgers, a salad and a side of fries between the four of us. (We are learning how to save money slowly but surely!)

On Thursday Amanda got up for a run and I stayed in bed. The End. hahahahaha.

No but really, she did and I did. Running is hard for me now that I am used to having super fun dance workouts. I get bored and my run turns into a merengue march. It's not a pretty sight.

Naomi came to our hotel after her baby yoga class. (cute, I know) We went for a quick lunch and "carbed-up" for our afternoon to come. Rented bicycles and rode them around the Botanical Gardens and near the water. Super fun! Brisbane is definitely made for pedestrians and bikers. They have a couple of beautiful pedestrian only bridges. I was impressed. We have one of those in Salem, we need more!
So bike rides, sore bums and a scoop of gelato later, we were off for our next activity- a hike to the lookout of the city. We missed our bus though so this hike turned into a bus ride to Naomi's apartment. We waited for Dave to get off and then walked to a really yummy pizza joint and had the works- appetizer, pizza, desert. AMAZING.

On Friday us girls all caught the early train to a town outside of Brisbane called "Cleveland". From there it was a bus, a ferry and then another bus to get to "North Stradbroke Island". So worth the trip! It was absolutely beautiful. Sparkling turquiose water, big rocky cliffs, tons of wildlife! We hiked along the coast and saw TONS of whales, dolphins and sea turtles! It was the perfect conclusion to a great trip.


Australia is a beautiful country... love the nature and the wildlife.... and the weather! Was it really supposed to be winter there? Sure didn't seem like it. (I'm not an Oregon fan in that way, I just LOVE the sun) Everyone in Australia is super friendly. I actually got upset during
my layover in LAX when I observed how rude some people were to eachother. in Burger King. Then, right after, I sat down and shared a table and some chicken nuggets with 3 Aussie Elders and we were instant friends talking about traveling, jobs, life, and laughing a ton. I'm not saying that all Australians are friendly and all people from the States are not... but I do think we (Americans)  need to learn to come out of our individualistic, ego-centric bubble a little bit. Wow, ok... allow me to step off my soap box and down the last drop of wine in my glass.

On a different note, I have one complaint about this trip. I had 0% culture shock... which i thrive off of when I travel. Everything seemed so familiar, so easy. The only hard thing was learning how to walk on the left side of the sidewalk. It's hard coming from experiences like Argentina, Spain and Italy where the language, food, fashion, people, timeliness, and overall "feel" of the country is a moving experience in itself to going somewhere so far away yet so similar to my life back here. Just my thoughts.

I wonder where the next plane I get on will take me.

B

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Nena Daconte