Week 14

Week 14

Where We Went: Melbourne + Sale

First Moment Here: So far, arriving in Australia has been the hardest country to navigate, ironically, since it’s the first place we’ve been where they speak English.  It was harder to get a SIM card up and running with data, harder to find the uber (and they only had uber black at the airport) and harder to find a place that was open to eat at.  One of the cruelest parts of our first day in Australia were the number of Vietnamese, Thai and India restaurants to choose from (even called Vietnamese Street Food) and the fact that our hotel staff all spoke some Asian language, then our friends took us out for dinner right near Chinatown.  Could have fooled us!  

Funniest Thing We Did: Buy one of every veggie at the grocery store!  So excited to have brussels sprouts, salad and all the other goodies!

Craziest Thing We Did: Drive on the left side of the road, it’s harder than it seems with everything reversed.

Best Thing We Did: Dinner with friends we met on the Great Wall of China followed by Pisco Sours at the basement level Peruvian cocktail bar that is a big secret, super hard to locate and enter.

Tastiest Thing We Did: Our housesit (Bill and Sue) made a tasty lamb dinner then for dessert, an Aussie (or maybe New Zealand) dish called Pavlova.  The closest thing we have is merengue but this has a crispy outside and is filled with whipped cream and fruit.  Yum!  

Dumbest Thing We Did: Take a $100 uber from the airport.  None of the 1/2 priced Uber X were at the airport so Uber Black it was.

Coolest thing we Learned: All of the amazing, different words Aussies use.  Dingo (no joke) and lollies are just a few!  Here are a few other translations.
    Pond = billabong
    Bathroom = toiley
    Garbage = rubbish
    French Press = plunger
    Drunk = pissed
    
Biggest Surprise: Kangaroo meat at the grocery store.

Other Updates:

• Melbourne is like a combination of keeping Portland weird, skyscrapers of Seattle and refined vibe of Vancouver, BC.  We were lucky to have SoCal weather while we were there.  Gorgeous!
• We flew Air Asia the 8 hours from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Melbourne for $136 per ticket.  That left us room for a first class upgrade!  It was great having lay down seats on the overnight flight.
• Got to spend time with Jodie and Meredith (who we met hiking the Great Wall of China) - they took us out to dinner and showed us around Melbourne.