Melbourne Hotels
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Aussie adventures
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Ok its been way too long!!
After seeing in the New Year in what I hear was impressive style and having a great time chilling out in the capital, I travelled back up the North Island to Auckland ready to fly to Oz. I put in a quick visit to the ice bar (very good cocktails and the fur boots were pretty cute!) before heading for the airport to fly to Perth. Sounds simple enough but involved spending about 15 hours in 4 different airports! Lesson learned - always fly direct!
Anyway I eventually landed in Perth and met my mum ready for 4 weeks of travelling together. Having only spoken a couple of times in 9 weeks there was a lot to catch up on, I dont think we drew breath for the first 48 hours. We had 4 days in Perth which involved a lot of beach time, the tan was nicely topped up pretty soon! We were lucky to have a hotel situated close to Kings Park so spent time exploring that by bike and also enjoyed a particularly stunning sunset there one evening.
Then it was back to the airport for a slightly shorter flight across to Adelaide and hello to one of the nicest hotel rooms I have ever stayed in! I will now always be able to class Adelaide as the city where I finally began to appreciate good wine thanks to a wine tour around the Barossa valley, I certainly learnt a lot and really enjoyed the day. We ended up seeing a lot of extra places around Adelaide for one reason or another but also spent time in the city centre taking it all in! We then had the exciting part of picking up a car ready to spend 4 days driving the Great Ocean Road. It all went smoothly getting out of Adelaide but a wrong turn fairly soon into the journey resulted in us finding ourselves on a ferry, not quite where we expected to be!
The first couple of days driving was... different. We went through maybe one village/town every couple of hours and didnt pass many more cars. I knew it was a huge country but wasnt quite prepared for that. After a couple of days driving we reached the highlight of the road - the 12 Apostles. We decided to get a helicopter ride over them which I am so glad we did, it was an amazing view, it was a lovely sunny day so that definitely added to it. A little further along, the road went into rainforest and we started spotting koalas. We had been told that they have a pretty loud roar but I wouldnt have believed how loud until I heard it, think of the noise of a chainsaw and you're getting close!
At the end of the Great Ocean Road we arrived in Melbourne and lets just say I was glad I wasnt behind the wheel, the roads were pretty crazy. Melbourne has the quirkiest road rule when it comes to right turns! The Australian Open was taking place while we were in the city so Federation Square was always full of people watching that on the big screen which made for a good atmosphere. We were also in Melbourne on Australia Day which was a lot of fun. The top of the Rialto tower was the perfect place to catch probably the best firework display I have ever seen, it lasted ages! Melbourne bought the end of our Australia trip but I can safely say that I will be returning to this amazing country.
An extremely early morning flight took us back to Auckland where I spent a couple of days showing mum around the city before we hired a car and headed north to the beautiful Bay of Islands, and this time I was driving! New Zealand's roads are so much fun to drive! In Paihia we went out with the hope of swimming with dolphins but unfortunatly the conditions werent right, still saw quite a few though so that was pretty cool. The trip then took us up to the most Northern point of New Zealand and where the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea meet, you can actually see it and I felt like I was on the edge of the world, what a feeling! We had a couple of sand toboggans with us ready for 90 mile beach so had a lot of fun going down the hugest sand dunes, the photos are the funniest!! We headed back towards Auckland down the west coast which certainly threw up some interesting situations... its too fresh to want to talk about it!
Arriving back in Auckland signalled the end of mum's trip and very nearly the end of mine. Saying goodbye again was tough but as I headed to domestic departures and mum headed for international I was excited about the final section of my trip, cant wait to see what adventures are going to take place......!!
Will tell all soon
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