Category: Travel

Travel

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Melbourne, Australia

For our first morning in Melbourne, we’d signed up for a vegan food tour that Yanmei found on Airbnb. It was a warm sunny day. The other tour participants didn’t show up, so Yanmei and I basically got a private tour. What we didn’t realize was food and transportation wasn’t included. We ended up having to buy myki cards and put $10 on them, which basically gave us a day pass on the public transit. The good thing was we learned how to use the transit system as part of the tour.

Yanmei and our guide outside a vegan store. The problem with the tour was we were supposed to buy something in each store and we didn’t really want to, so we kind of stood around awkwardly then left each time. Eventually we finished at a restaurant called Lentil as Anything where we had lunch. It was pretty good. Yanmei had a Chai Latte, which she really enjoyed and wants to replicate when we get back to California.

After the tour when went back to our room for a rest. One interesting thing was while we were on the tram heading back some enforcement officers go on the tram. They use an honor system where you are supposed to swipe your myki card when you board. The enforcement officers were checking if we had swiped our cards. Of course Yanmei and I had, but two young women sitting behind us hadn’t. I was trying to eavesdrop on the conversation. First they started with excuses “I was in a rush and didn’t have time to reload my card”, then they tried to avoid the fine by claiming not to have any ID, the officer suggested their phones might have emails on them that could prove their names and addresses. I couldn’t really hear very well but after a long time they got written up for their fine. I looked it up, $238, ouch.

Later we decided to take the tram down to the beach and marina, since we basically had unlimited use anyway.

We headed out onto the pier for the sunset. It was pretty good. The best shot I got was actually when a drone flew overhead and I quickly tried to get a picture of it (spec in the top right).

We headed back as it got dark.

The next day we decided to walk to South Melbourne Market. The day was really hot, it got up into the mid-90s. Anyway Melbourne seems to love markets. It was fresh meat, fruit and veggies, as well as food stands, clothing shops and other miscellaneous stuff. Yanmei got some nice soaps.

Later I checked out the Shrine of Remembrance, which we could see from our apartment.

It is a World War One memorial. One of the best memorials I’ve seen. I like how the park surrounding it mutes some of the city noise.

For dinner we cooked yellow chicken curry with rice with the supplies we got from the market. After dinner we went to the Queen Victoria Night Market. Normally it is a day market, but Wednesday it converts to a night market with mostly food stands and live entertainment. It was quickly obvious that Eat Street in Brisbane was based on this night market, but this one was at least 10 times bigger. It’s supposedly the biggest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere.

You can see a letter K on the roof on the right. There is a J, I, H down to A, to give an indication of how many more rows like this there are and how big it is.

David

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Towards Melbourne

I forgot to mention in the last post that we finally had some Vegemite, provided by our host for breakfast. There isn’t much “Australian food”, but Vegemite is one. I spread a bit on toast. I didn’t care for it much, it is salty and bitter. Yanmei liked it a bit because it reminded her of soybean paste from China.

Anyway we stayed the night in Narooma, which is a little coastal town. In the morning I walked down to the Bay where they have a rocked called Australia rock for the shape of the hole.

If I’d gotten there a couple hours earlier, I might have gotten a picture of sunrise through the hole. Oh well.

For our next Airbnb, we booked on a farm in a placed called Calulu. We finally crossed over into the state of Victoria, after having been in New South Wales all the time so far.

On the way we stopped at placed called Eden for lunch. They had a wharf and we went there to look around. There were two restaurants across from a seafood wholesaler. We decided to try the fancier one, and it was pretty tasty, grilled fish with rice and some salad. Then Yanmei wanted to try the cheap place too, so she ordered a fried sweet potato cake for $1 and found it was super delicious. There also appeared to be a lot of locals ordering large takeaway orders, so we probably should have just had the fish and chips at that place.

It is always interesting to see smaller working farms. This one was 115 acres. The host had moved from Sydney 3 years earlier to try farming. He found it wasn’t economical, so he and his wife both have at least part time jobs to make ends meet.

After the farm we continued to Melbourne. Yanmei took a turn driving, her first time on the left side.

We arrived in Melbourne and checked into our Airbnb downtown. This time we have a whole apartment, instead of living with a host.

David

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Sydney and Wollongong

On our last day in Sydney we decided to head to Manly and take the ferry into the city, since several people had recommended it. It is a very scenic ride.

Manly beach is another in the long list of great Australian beaches.

After that we headed south to Wollongong, which is only 1-1.5 hours south of Sydney. After staying the night in Wollongong, we backtracked a bit, but not before a quick stop at a mall to buy a USB adapter for the car. We should have bought this back in New Zealand, since it has been an annoyance since then with our phones running low on charge. We use them for navigation. In New Zealand it wasn’t as bad because the RV had a GPS included. Anyway, while in the mall I lost my parking ticket somehow. Normally it is free parking if under 2 hours, which we definitely were, but the price for a lost ticket is $20. I wanted to pay the fee but Yanmei wanted to look for the ticket. We searched the electronics store twice without luck, I wanted to give up, but Yanmei remembered I went to the restroom, so we headed in that direction and miraculously I found the ticket in the main concourse near the restroom. Yanmei’s persistence saved us $20. 👍🏻

Then we headed to Sea Cliff Bridge, which is a new coastal bridge the only opened a couple of years ago.

After that we started to head south again, but as we drove along the coast just south of the bridge we saw a sign for an open house, from 1pm to 1:30pm. It was 1:30pm, so why not? We quickly pulled over and went to have a look.

The house was somewhat dated, but the design was good and view was incredible. We thought it was strange that the open house was only half an hour and we were lucky to just get there at the very end. The agent came over to talk to us, and it was a strange conversation.

Yanmei: “How old is the house?”

Agent: “I don’t know. From the construction I’d stay it was probably built in the ’70s.”

David: “How many square feet, I mean square meters, is it?”

Agent: “The lot is 950, the house I don’t know.”

Yanmei: “How much is the price?”

Agent (hesitation): “…2 million.”

It was bizarre, he doesn’t know the age or size of the house he is selling, and doesn’t even seem sure of the price. That, plus a half hour open house was a quite a contrast to how things work in the U.S., although to be fair this might not be typical since we’ve only looked at one house in Australia.

After the open house we continued down the coast to Narooma where we’ve stopped for the night.

David