NO WORRIES AUSTRALIA

As I am writing this, we are actually back home in the good ole U.S. of A.  However, there is still a bit more to our Australian adventure I wish to share.

Debbie and Dave left Australia two days earlier than we did (by design).  They are home now and both are sicker than dogs!  Such a bummer to get sick on a big vacation.  They had lots of challenges while on this holiday.

After planning our vacation, David’s sister Rhea moved in with them so that they could take care of her during her struggle with cancer.  Prior to leaving, Debbie arranged help to come into her home each day to care for Rhea while they were gone.  Soon after leaving, Rhea took a turn for the worst and ended up in the hospital.  When it was time for Rhea to come home on hospice, Debbie tried to coordinate her care from our cruise ship with a 14 hour time difference.  Sadly, Rhea passed away days later and both David and Debbie had to deal with their grief.

In addition, their granddaughter Anabel was purchasing her first home and David and Debbie were helping her with the details to ensure all was handled well.  Once again, with the time difference, they spent several hours during the middle of the night on the phone helping with the details.  They were happy to be a part of Anabel’s experience but the time difference made it a little more difficult than it would have been if they were home.  She did sign her life away and is now the proud owner of her first home in the Bay Area, California.

Another challenge is that David is a day trader.  He loves it and spends each day following the stock market and buying and selling stocks as well as options, puts, calls.  All that stuff that day traders do.  And he is quite good at it!  But once again, all this had to be done during the middle of the night when our stock market was open.

And then throw in getting sick with all this, whew!!  What a vacation!!  I’m sure the 15 hour flight home was fun for them, right?

LAST TWO DAYS

So Kevin and I were left on our own for two days on the Gold Coast of Australia in Surfer’s Paradise.  And we made the best of it.  

After seeing Dave and Debbie off, we headed over to the beach boardwalk to hang out for the day.  Actually both days. It is a long stretch of beach with restaurants and shops about a 15 minute walk from our hotel.  We sat on the beach, had a nice lunch and did some last minute souvenir shopping.  Very relaxing and fairly uneventful. 

BACK TO SYDNEY

On Thursday, we packed up and flew back up to Sydney to catch our flight home the next day.

Our hotel in Sydney was wonderful!!  It was right on the Sydney Harbour with a beautiful view.  We didn’t even have to leave our hotel.  We just had to ride the elevator down and walk out to the harbour.  A very nice end to our Australian adventure.

Sydney Harbour View from our Hotel Room

The next morning, our ride to the airport was once again, very interesting.  They have the best Uber drivers EVER in Australia.  

Our driver’s name was Han. And he should have been a Sydney tour guide.  He shared fun facts with us, as well as other places we should visit the next time we come to Sydney.

One fun fact:

The Aussies say when you flush a toilet in Australia, the drain circles the opposite way from here. Our drains in the northern hemisphere move clockwise, where the southern hemisphere moves counter clockwise. It’s called the coriolis effect. The Internet both confirms and disputes this, but …..

The Aussies believe it 🙂

Interesting?

I had no idea!  I thought it was all about the design of the toilet.

And get this:  On the equator the drains don’t circle, they go straight down.

WHO KNEW??!!

Another fun fact:

In the U.S. the sun rises in the east, heads a little south and then sets in the west, right?

In Australia, the sun rises in the east, heads NORTH and then sets in the west.  This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it actually screwed Kevin up.  He kept looking up at the sun, guessing the time and finding he was wrong.  He would say hmmm.  And just accept that he was wrong.  

Something very new for me to hear 🙂

It’s all about the location of the continent on the earth.  So because Australia is in the southern hemisphere, Australians can not use the Northern Star for navigation.  They can’t see it.

They have the Southern Cross.  This is 5 stars that form a cross. 

Our tour guide on the Glow Worm tour pointed out the Southern Cross to us but I had no idea they used this for navigation because they can’t see the Northern Star.  So the Uber driver put that all together for me.

The Southern Cross is very important to Australians.  It is part of their identity.  It is part of their national flag.  It is the five stars on the right side.

Sort of I guess. Doesn’t really look like a cross to me.

Well thanks to all for joining us on our Australian adventure.  To sum things up, we enjoyed the cruise around New Zealand, because cruises are just really fun!  But to see New Zealand, I would prefer to fly there and rent a car.

We loved, loved, loved Sydney and would definitely go back to explore more.  There were so many things suggested to us that we just didn’t have time for.

And the Gold Coast, Surfer’s Paradise was a relaxing, fun beach holiday!

Most of all?  Australians are awesome!  They are very welcoming and helpful!  They like us and most seem very laid back and chill!  They love their vans so they can do their “walkabouts” van style.  It takes about 3 months to circle the continent in a van.  Most Australians have either done it, are thinking about doing it, or want to do it.

No worries mate!

Maybe sometime in the near future, we’ll do that too!  🙂