Preface
Truth be told, I always wanted to start a blog. Unfortunately, I’m really not that interesting of a person. Recently, I officially left bachelorhood behind and tied the knot to the love of my life. While Dorothy handled much of the wedding planning, I was tasked with the honeymoon (even as we strolled through Australia and New Zealand, she had little care for the actual itinerary). So around 5am on 4/3/11, after the wedding reception and late night gymnastics show, I went full throttle on honeymoon thoughts and micro-managing. (It was in Cairns that I decided to write/blog about this trip … eventually you will understand why.)
Flight to Australia
Due to the fact that I am painfully committed to getting to an airport as early as possible, we had a limo come at 1pm to take us to JFK for a 7pm flight. This allowed for plenty of room for error … and drinking. We were so early that we weren’t even allowed to check in at Qantas and had to wait an hour to see if we could get an upgrade and eventually check in. Rather than paying almost $20,000 for upgrades throughout the trip, we figured we were perfectly content with Economy seating. The flight to LAX was slightly delayed (if you know me, you know this isn’t surprising). This is/was my first time in LAX … and I have to say, it sucks. Isn’t LA the second biggest city in the US? Was it the terminal that we were in? There was one “bar” in the terminal and it was the size of my kitchen, only with less walking space and more pricks. Thankfully, we boarded on time for Sydney.
(Insert anything witty here, as I slept the next six hours and woke up as the plane flew over Hawaii)
Upon waking up, I watched “The Tourist” on the seat TV. Similar to LAX, this movie sucks. I really just don’t get Johnny Depp at all. Shallow? Perhaps. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t give kudos at this point to Qantas and their international flights. We had tremendous service, good food, and free wine. Yes, free wine. The flight to Sydney, Australia is not nearly as bad as people make it seem. I assume these same people don’t like free wine.
Sydney: “Big City, Bright Lights”
We arrived in Sydney at 8am on Wednesday, 4/6 (local time). The loss of ‘the day’ is completely bewildering, but not nearly as much as driving on the left hand side of the road and having your cab driver on the right hand side of the car. Quickly, we realized how good of a decision it was to not have any car rentals during our trip. I would have driven into a head-on collision within .5 miles coming out of the airport. One other note about driving in Australia; NJ drivers would dominate the roads down there, as Australia has a ton of circles on its highways. I find this phenomenal; Dorothy, not so much.
We checked into the Sydney Hilton and were told that we couldn’t get the free Hilton Honors breakfast that morning and would have to wait until the next three nights, based on our reservation. Knowing now what I didn’t know at check-in, I would have made a huge stink/production about this. The breakfast at the Sydney Hilton is otherworldly. I really can’t overstate how nice it is. Eggs to order, 8-12 other hot dishes, fruits, those juice shots that muscle-heads take at the gym to look trendy, and a ton of pastries, including what has become known simply as, “It’s a sugar twist with chocolate in the middle!!”
Sydney, in its simplest description/form, is a cleaner version of a city that falls somewhere between San Francisco and NYC in size and décor – but more appealing than both. There were more skyscrapers than I had expected. Unlike SF, where the wharf gives you a non-city feeling, Sydney’s Circular Quay still feels “city”. (That probably doesn’t make much sense to most, but I’m not going to bother to explain it any further. You either get it or you don’t.) In any case, Sydney is a gorgeous city, but it is also very clearly, a big city, which only has so much appeal in my semi-deranged brain. Here’s a quick summary of our highlights over the next 4 days and three nights:
· Sydney Opera House – gorgeous to look at on the water and pier. Very appealing and nothing like it.
· Sydney Harbour Bridge – also very appealing. I strangely have some type of proclivity for bridges and bridge tours (Tower Bridge in London being at the top of the list). If they gave tours for the Outerbridge Crossing, I’d be first in line to take it. Maybe not. Anyway, I would highly recommend doing the ‘bridge climb’, where you essentially scale the bridge and stand on the top of it while the minions below you drive past in their cars or ride through on the ferries and boats.
· Sydney Tower – don’t do the Tower after doing the bridge climb as it is very underwhelming relative to the other. Also, don’t plan to eat at the tower’s restaurant, as they cap your time up in the restaurant at 90 minutes – incredibly tacky in my opinion. Net/net, go to the top of the tower, walk around, take pictures of all the sites, and come down and enjoy the rest of Sydney. (See: Eiffel Tower)
· Restaurants and bar tabs – good to great food options throughout the city, high prices. Repeat. Repeat again. We did really like the Darling Harbour area.
· Parks and botanical gardens – We really liked Hyde Park (another one – London, Cincinnati…) and the Governors House.
· Bondi Beach – there seems to be some internal strife and competition among the locals between Bondi and Manly Beach. We chose Bondi. We overheard someone say “we have no ozone” and that freaked the hell out of me and I immediately reapplied lotion. The beach and streets made for great scenery but there are a lot of tattoos and long hair flowing at Bondi and it seemed a bit trendy.
· Randwick race course – I love horse racing and this was my big failure of the honeymoon planning. This course only races on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s at this time of year and I completely missed this as we went on Thursday and wound up having to take pictures from the outside. We left Saturday AM for our next stop, which just so happened to be Australian Darby Day at the track. Unlike Charlie Sheen, I wasn’t “winning” here whatsoever.
· Sydney Hilton – did I mention the breakfast and the sugar twist with chocolate in the middle?!
The one surprise from the first few days in Australia, I really couldn’t find many beers that I liked. My favorites … and actually the only ones I liked, were Jack Squire’s Porter and Jack Squire’s Golden Ale. Essentially, Jack has a great brewing system and everyone else focuses on wine.
Cairns: “The Triple Lutz”
Travel snob alert! There was no free wine or TV’s on the flight from Sydney to Cairns. However, I would take a Qantas domestic flight every day of the week over anything we have here in the US. It amazes me how much US airlines screw consumers over. Yet, with no clear alternative, we have no other choice. Why don’t we have high speed railroads again? (Political rant over)
In Cairns, we continued to use up Hilton points and were treated to a very good hotel that was just off the main strip … and conveniently located right outside the casino. Remember who drew up the outline for this trip, right? While it doesn’t compare to the Sydney Hilton’s breakfast, we were able to access the Executive Lounge for breakfasts and snacks and drinks in the evenings. We quickly turned ‘snacks and drinks’ into ‘dinner’ and gorged the food/bar. Our room had a balcony out the back which provided a great view of the main street and mountains. (Thank you Hilton Honors!)
Cairns is a beautiful city with a great skyline … of green, mountains, and water. This finally felt like a real vacation. The bats come out around dusk and chirp along, which made to be a perfect setting from our balcony with some wine and cigars.
On our second day in Cairns we scheduled a snorkeling trip out on the Great Barrier Reef. In summary, I have never, ever been so seasick in my life. Here’s an equation for you: ((Todd Bonser’s BP deep sea fishing trip * 2.5) + Cold sweats through a t-shirt) / Wine + Cigar Hangover = Black plague has come back to earth and landed in Cairns. The high/lowlight of the trip was pulling off what I’ll call “the triple lutz”. To keep the disgusting barometer low here, I’ll describe “the triple lutz” as bodily fluids leaving 60% of my body’s orifices (luckily, my two ears weren’t bleeding). When I finally resurrected from that now desecrated bathroom, it was just about time to get in the water. I couldn’t bring myself to the tutorial and figured someone would just show me what I needed to do before I drown. (They did) We snorkeled the first two of three stops on the trip. What we did see was absolutely amazing. The fish that are in the water are ridiculous. The coral and the sheer size of it all is breathtaking. Not many people can say they swam in the Great Barrier Reef … and not many people can pull off “the triple lutz” either. Upon returning to land I kissed the pavement and we went on with the rest of our trip.
For our final day in Cairns we booked a trip up to the town of Kuranda via Skyrail/gondola and back home via historic train. While the city itself was small and underwhelming, the trip itself was well worth it due to the modes of transportation to/from. The Skyrail provided a ride over the rainforest with a few quick stops along the way. The train ride home was great, largely due to one of Dorothy’s greatest contributions/finds for the trip – the Gold Pass. We happily upgraded to the Gold Pass and sat in a private train cabin with only two other couples, all the while consuming wine and appetizers. Highly recommended upgrade. In both directions, you wind up passing/stopping at the Barron Falls which also made for tremendous scenery.
All in all, Cairns is a must see/stop for those visiting Australia given the Barrier Reef and beautiful views within the city itself and other cities up and down the coast. Many others that we spoke with were taking day trips up to Cooktown and Port Douglas, so those are on our radar if we are to ever return to Australia.
Alice Springs / Uluru: “Australian Fly Trap”
Apparently, nothing worthwhile happened on our travel from Cairns to Alice Springs as I have nothing in my notes from this except the fact that the airport in Alice Springs makes Dayton Ohio’s airport look like Newark Airport in terms of size and importance.
There are no Hilton’s in Alice Springs so Dorothy and I had to go searching for a hotel. We found what we thought would be a good place to stay as it was listed in the Frommers and available through Dor’s travel company from her office. The Desert Palm Resort should replace “resort” with “motel” and if there is something a step down from motel, please use that. The photographer that took the pictures for their web site should be given some type of award/reward for what they make this place look like. There were four TV stations available in your “villa” … also, very loosely defined here. Add to this the beyond poor customer service from the front desk. Example 1: General disgust and facial expressions when asked the simplest of questions for assistance. Example 2: JF: “Can we get a wakeup call?” Response, “There’s an alarm clock next to your bed”. Example 3: The front desk closes around 8pm and they lock up all the vending machines that they positioned as “a market”. The best thing I can say about this hotel is that we were able to do laundry here while we sat by the pool for an hour. Again, I implore someone to demand they take out the word “resort” from their name.
In any case, Alice Springs was certainly an interesting stop on our trip and is in the “Red Center” of the country, or the Outback. On our first walk into town, an aboriginal man was laying on the ground, picked up his head as we got close, and started yelling/moaning in our direction. I’ve since translated this conversation to “Go home white devil!!” Once in the central business district – something else that is loosely defined in this area of the country – we realized that this wasn’t going to take long and we would look for the highlights, grab a drink or two, and head back to the hotel before we lost daylight. The one additional note I have on the city/town is that everything is named “Todd”. There is a street, river, mall, bar, etc. all named Todd. I don’t know who Todd is or was, but clearly he left an everlasting impression in Alice Springs.
Upon getting back to the hotel we readied ourselves for a trip to the “Juicy Rump” bar/restaurant that was down the road from our “resort” and the one thing that we had on our must do list for Alice Springs. Whoever created the name for this place is pure genius. The location of the Juicy Rump (just to type that again) is right next to the “casino” (again, loose definition of the word by our or anyone’s standards). There were approximately five tables in the casino and maybe a couple hundred slots. We did a lap and went right back to the Juicy Rump.
Here we met a couple that told us a story of how the man was on a return visit and on one of his prior trips to Alice Springs, he was ‘jumped’ by aboriginals while walking down the streets with plastic bags in his hands from a department store. Rewind about 4 hours and this could have been us as we stopped at the local Kmart (yep, they exist in Alice Springs) and walked home with a few necessities. Thankfully, we didn’t hear this story beforehand and thankfully, we weren’t going to be spending much more time after this night in Alice Springs.
The next day we had booked an 18 hour (?!?!) tour to/from Uluru/Ayers Rock. On the tour we saw Connor Mountain, Ayers Rock, and Kantju Gorge, all of which were incredible. In its easiest explanation, this is essentially the inverse of the Grand Canyon. I would highly recommend going to see this if you are only going to visit Australia once, as the Red Center is certainly different than the coastal cities that most frequent.
Along the drive, we stopped at a camel farm. Yes, a camel farm. I had no idea that camels were so abundant in Australia. We were told, and I haven’t confirmed this, that when the Middle East is looking to import camels, they go to Australia as their camels have the appropriate bloodlines to deal with the weather in the Middle East. Feel free to confirm that little nugget yourselves. At the camel farm, Dorothy wanted to go on a camel ride. I quickly remembered that she is actually allergic to camel hair. You try to make sense of having a desire to ride a camel when you know you are allergic to it. I don’t even like going outside my front door when the pollen is starting to come out in the Spring, let alone sit on an animal that I know I’m allergic to.
The one thing I must mention is that you have to have a high level patience for flies if you are to visit the Red Center. They are EVERYWHERE. I can’t overstate this as I reached my breaking point at least three times during the day. If I have one regret from this portion of the trip, it is definitely not buying a fishnet hat from the souvenir store at our first stop. Buy the hat and accept looking ridiculous for a few hours!
This brings us to the sole hiccup of our honeymoon. The day was long and the champagne flowed during the sunset viewing of Ayers Rock, so we were dead tired on the 4 hour drive back to Alice Springs and fell asleep on the bus. Upon arrival to the hotel drop-off, I asked Dorothy if she had everything, including her purse. What I failed to specify was, “do you have the camera with 2,000 honeymoon pictures on it?” Upon going to charge the battery in the camera around 2am, we realized what had happened and what we needed to do over the next few hours – pray. We called anyone we could think of from the companies we had been in touch with. The next morning, we woke up at 5:45am (via alarm clock next to the bed …) to get to the office of AAT Tours to see if they had found/located the camera. After about an hour of no luck, we finally found the person that had the camera and breathed a sigh of huge relief. From this point forward, guess who had responsibility for holding onto the camera.
(Quick aside: thank you to AAT Tours for their service and honesty - another recommendation from the trip.)
Melbourne: “You Had Me At Hello”
After the flies and camera debacle, we were ready to get the hell out of Alice Springs. Our next stop was the one city that we were not taking off the list as we planned the trip from my perspective. I had heard a few things consistently about Melbourne: 1. It has a modern feel to it, 2. There is a hint of Europe within the city and 3. There is a huge passion for sports. Melbourne lived up to its expectations.
We arrived in Melbourne on one of the later flights that we had in the trip so only had a few hours of sunlight on our first day. We checked into the hotel (Hilton on the Park) and found out that we had similar access to Breakfast and Drinks/Snacks in the Executive Lounge. With this information, we decided to do a walk around the immediate area of the hotel and did a few of the parks and gardens in the area. Upon heading back to the hotel for the Drinks/Snacks, I made a comment similar to, “Well, now that the gardens are out of the way, we can enjoy the drinking, sports, and gambling portion of our honeymoon.” I’m not sure that was well received or not. The truth occasionally hurts.
After the Hilton cocktail hour we walked to Federation Square to see what the nightlife would be like. This area of the city seemed to always be busy with people socializing and such. After a few drinks we decided to call it an evening as we were dead tired from the night before (lost camera worries) and traveling.
The next day began our tour of sports duty. We strolled through Yarra & Melbourne Parks, which includes Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), Rod Laver Arena and the rest of the Australian Open courts, and the Olympic Park. The blue tennis courts are pretty interesting to see … but you probably don’t care about this at all. We noticed a sign that said there were a few Aussie Rules Football (footy) games at MCG the weekend we were there and my mind started wandering.
Afterwards, we made our way across the Yarra River and to the Eureka Skydeck, the tallest building in the city. The views from the center of the city were pretty amazing as you could see the entire business district on one side, but then on the other you saw the water / Port Phillip Bay. I would recommend this over the Sydney Tower … plus they had a bar on the top level where you could enjoy the scenery with a beer, unlike in Sydney.
After the Eureka Skydeck, we planned to grab a bite to eat at the Noodle House in the Crown Casino based on a friend’s recommendation. However, it took us at least an hour to find the entrance to the casino, which for all intents and purposes was located on the map exactly where we were standing. I’m not sure how it is possible to hide a huge casino and its entrance so well, but Melbourne has certainly managed to pull this off. Before eating, I decided to gamble. MISTAKE, MISTAKE! That was a quick waste of monopoly money …
(Actually, Australians made it a point to us the few times that it came up on how long it has been since the AUD has been equal to or greater than the USD. For the record, it was 1983. So approximately 30 years in the making: my wedding/honeymoon and the surging AUD / plummeting USD. Of course, thanks Bernanke! Political rant #2, complete)
We decided to skip the Noodle House as A. it was expensive (thanks Blackjack) and B. the thought of ordering a $30 meal that covered one-tenth of a plate when it came out was in the back of our minds. We wound up eating at one of the riverside restaurants that was also over-priced. However, we came to an agreement that we’d buy tickets to a footy game. On the walk back to the hotel, Dor went up to the lounge to look at wedding pictures on Facebook (surprisingly, I had yet to mention this daily occurrence) and I went to buy the tickets for the game. By the time I got the tickets and back to the lounge, Dorothy was in conversation with an older gentleman who gave us two free tickets that were much better situated in the stadium. We handed our tickets to someone else in the lounge and pre-gamed away.
Thankfully, the people in Melbourne – and all of Australia – are generally courteous. When we arrived at our seats in MCG, there were a number of people sitting around us that were more than willing to help explain the game itself and the rules. Did we look that touristy? I guess. In case you are interested, here’s a link to the rules: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football
By the middle of the second quarter, I felt like I had a strong grasp of the rules and the game itself. It was thoroughly enjoyable and I’ve since tried to convince the great minds at Roku to show live footy games and not replays a week later. In any case, Collingwood won the game as was expected. They are the defending champs of the league playing against Richmond, who is a rebuilding team (much like my favorite sports teams here in the US, I knew this wasn’t going to be close – although I had no luck in finding an Aussie bookie … if I were into things like that I mean).
The next day our plan was to go to Flemington Racecourse. Stop reading here and jump to the next paragraph if you don’t care about horse racing. As we got dressed in the AM, I think we hit the point of the honeymoon where we knew we should have gotten dressed up for the day, but didn’t bother to do so. On the train ride to the track, there were a few couples dressed up in full suits, dresses + hats, etc. We knew we were in trouble. Our attire aside, Flemington was a gorgeous racetrack, even Dorothy agreed; “If Monmouth Park looked like this, I’d be more interested in going”. (I have some doubts here; this is/was our honeymoon after all.)
After a few races, we returned to the city and spent the rest of our time in Melbourne around the bars and restaurants. We did a quick stop at the Docklands, thinking that this was going to be a nice, waterfront area to sit for at least an hour. Maybe it was the day, maybe it wasn’t, but this area was completely dead.
To quickly summarize Melbourne, any time you can get me in a 25 minute radius of sports arenas, a casino, and a horse track, you have my undivided attention but also love and gratitude.
Auckland, New Zealand: "Dor and John Go Green"
In flying to Auckland and near arrival, we quickly realized how beautiful this area of the world is. The amount of water and green that we could see from our plane was phenomenal. Rather than booking a hotel and conveniently making it a suggestion (see: Australia), we just went ahead and booked rooms at the SkyCity Grand Hotel … which doubled as the casino in Auckland.
Our first day in Auckland was really just a night, so we walked towards the water to grab dinner and drinks. Nothing to report here outside of the fact it was nice to be in a place where the USD has some value and over-indexes. For what it’s worth, I did find a really good local beer in Auckland called Mac’s Black in the casino. Similar to Jack Squire’s, my second favorite local beer in Auckland was Mac’s Golden Ale.We booked a quad tour for the following day and went to the western side of the island/country for the ride itself. This was a great time and highly recommended! The ride took us through the woods, but also up/down the beaches of the island. Naturally, there are a few high/low-lights:
1. I’ve never driven a stick shift car in my life, so the gears and going up/down hills was an adventure. A stalled adventure. At least a handful of times before I finally got the hang of what to do and when.
2. I’m glad I didn’t see this, but Dorothy flipped off her quad on a dirt path. I was in front of her and was waiting for her and the others to come with one instructor that was in front of us. I figured something happened at the five minute mark of waiting. The bruise on her arm from the spill lasted a good week and a half but thankfully, this wasn’t a bigger issue.
3. Along the trail there were a number of puddles from recent rainfall. As the lead instructor turned off a road, onto a path, and through a small pond / big puddle, I thought I would be slick and take a larger turn, do some off-roading, and over grass. What I failed to see was the wire fence that prevented this from happening and wound up driving into it and getting tangled for 10 minutes.
The instructors were not impressed with any of this. Did I forget to mention they were half my age? Oh well. The quads were fun to ride and we saw a different/unique part of the country.
Upon returning to downtown Auckland we went up to the top of the Auckland Sky Tower (right next to hotel/casino). This was our third tower of the trip and the best. They have glass floors in the walkway that you can see to the bottom. They also have ‘bungee jumping’ off of the tower (didn’t partake). Finally, they have a bar at the top for your/our convenience. Afterwards, we walked back down to the Wharf and took some pictures, stopped by the Hilton Auckland (very nice) and decided to walk back to the hotel.
In mid-sentence, Dorothy, “I wonder where that Ice Bar is. We are never going to find it, are we…” and there it was, the Ice Bar. Naturally, we stopped in for drinks. Dorothy is a sucker for paying for pictures as souvenirs. I have no idea how much we paid and I’m not sure she does either for admission, drinks, and the pictures that they take, as they don’t allow pictures in the bar itself for some reason.
For the final full day of the honeymoon, we booked a day tour that included a few different stops: Waitomo Glow Worm Caves, a petting zoo/farm, Rotorua, and Te Puia (a Maori village). The glow worm cave was certainly interesting, as these creatures consistently procreate and then die once reaching full maturity. That doesn’t sound very fun. At the petting zoo we found a number of local animals to feed, watch, etc. We saw a sheep get shaved and I must say, I was rather uncomfortable watching it the entire time. (Dorothy is also allergic to wool, so why we stood in that room for so long to watch this, I have no idea.)
Rotorua looks like a shore town along the East Coast of the States and our tour guide pointed out that tourism is key for the city. Shore house anyone? The scenery and views in New Zealand are quite breathtaking and you go from one amazing view to another quickly. Within the Maori village we were able to see geysers going off and a boiling mud pool. We didn’t see any “No diving” signs though.
After the day tour, we checked to make sure we had our camera and made our way to our final dinner; a seafood buffet at the top of the Sky Tower. Nice way to close out the trip. How do you make it nicer? By closing out the trip by winning at the casino – taking back any and all lost donations to the casinos of Australia + covering the hotel balance, room service breakfasts, + bar tabs at the hotel. Woohoo!
Flight Home
During the 11 hour trip from Auckland to Los Angeles, I wound up sleeping 0 minutes. I have no idea how that is/was possible, but it happened. You know what that means, bring on the free wine! Aside from the wine and good food on the flight, I watched “Due Date”. Whose 15 minutes end first: Robert Downey Jr. or Zac Galifianakis? We’re closing in on both. Upon arriving to LAX, we quickly realized we were in the same terminal and that the one ‘bar’ that was in it wasn’t open yet. That said, it was 6am local time and our bodies were completely reversed.
I have nothing to report on the flight from LAX to JFK as I slept the entire flight and with that sleep, my body was miraculously adjusted back to US EST timing. It just took a few days after this to train my body to sleep for more than 4-5 hours a night.
All in all, it was a great trip and I would recommend taking the time to travel to the other side of the world to experience it if you can. It was funny to hear Australians and New Zealanders constantly make fun of the other, and even more interesting to hear one state of Australia bash the others. It was like New York and Boston, only this doesn’t revolve around sports and there is real dislike across the Australian states.
Hope you enjoyed the write-up. If you are thinking about traveling to this area of the world, please feel free to ask any questions as we talked to a good amount of people from and/or visiting various cities in both countries.
