New Zealand: To Do

We recently got back from 2 weeks on the south island of New Zealand, which was our big vacation for the year.  Did you know that New Zealand is made up of two halves, a north and a south?  I didn't, until I moved to this hemisphere and became their neighbors.

I think we struck a nice balance of activities, relaxing, sight seeing and stuffing our faces while we were there.  The activities were definitely the highlights of our trip, so I'll go through them in chronological order:

Queenstown: Skyline Gondola (+ buffet dinner with this view)

Queenstown: Shotover Jet

Fox Glacier: Hiking on a glacier

Franz Josef: West Cost Wildlife Centre

Marlborough region: Biking to wineries

Kaikoura: Swimming with dolphins

Kaikoura: Albatross feeding trip

Christchurch: Quake City Museum

Lake Tekapo: Hot Pools

Lake Tekapo: Stargazing tour

Doubtful Sound cruise

Milford Sound cruise

We also did a fair bit of hiking.  I would like a medal for this because some of those hikes were not easy!  Here's a picture of us after walking uphill for 2 straight hours:

New Zealand is, hands down, the most scenic place I've ever been.  It is so different from Australia, which I wasn't expecting at all.  The Lord of the Rings movies were filmed here, due to the scenery which I have deemed "totes beaut".

An Eating & Drinking Guide to Melbourne

I recently made my second trek to Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, again for the purpose of visiting friends.  Martin and I went in February this year, but this time he stayed home as Laura and I went down to visit our girlfriend Olena who's moved there from Brisbane to do her MBA.  Yay, ladies weekend!

I said this in my previous post but it's worth repeating: Melbourne is not like Australia.  At all.  Or what you think Australia looks/feels like.  It didn't help that there was a cold snap going on, so the warmest day of our 3-day trip was way, way colder than any winter day I have ever felt in Brisbane.  For real!

It is exactly like being in Europe!

The weather, the architecture, how people dress, the cafe culture.  All identical to Europe.

So it's only appropriate that we spend all of our time inside eating, boozing and drinking coffee.  Do as the Europeans do!

Allow me to walk you through everything we ate and drank, to use as a handy pocket guide if you ever go to Melbourne.

Snacks - boozey:
Jetstar airplane

Nothing but class (meat pie + warm white wine) for us

Brunch:
Seven Seeds

Eggs Benedict

French toast with bacon

Baked beans with cornbread

Snacks - sweet:
Brunetti

Diabeetus (part 1)

Snacks - boozey:
Miss Chu

Oops, I forgot to take a pic of the dumplings before diving in

Dinner:
Borsch, Vodka & Tears

Perogies - probably my favorite food ever

Polish beer

Booze:
Naked for Satan

Salted caramel vodka on the rocks is to die for!

Brunch: 
Made ourselves at home

We are budding chefs

Snacks - sweet:
Koko Black

Diabeetus (part 2)

Snacks - boozey:
Siglo

Love everything about this place, especially the polenta chips

Dinner:
Shanghai Village

The crowds don't lie - cheap 'n cheerful

Booze:
1806

Cocktails from every decade of the past 200 years

Booze:
Madame Brussels

Booze is best served in pitcher form

Golden Girls vibe - Miami circa 1985

Snacks - sweet:
Cavallini

Diabeetus (part 3)
Yes, that is a cronut!

Lunch:
Rockwell & Sons

Down home American biscuits and gravy

If you don't gain 5 pounds in Melbourne, you're doing it wrong.

You could spend a lifetime eating and drinking out in Melbourne and not get everywhere worth visiting.  My theory is the cafe/bar/restaurant culture is so finely tuned because the weather is such shite that people have no choice but to seek refuge indoors and stuff their faces. Not that I'm complaining!

Melbourne is great for what it is, but real Australia?  That's back home in Queensland.

Tasmania

Tasmania has a lot of scenery.  Lots and lots and lots of scenery.  Including...

A random field in somewhere in the state

Cradle Mountain

The seaside in Hobart

Bay of Fires

Freycinet National Park (but totes looks like Queensland)

Lighthouse at Freycinet National Park

Wineglass Bay

Bruny Island

Liffey Falls

Mount Wellington

Or Mount Beef Wellington as I call it, because I want some beef wellington and it's really hard to find, goddamn it.

Mount [Beef] Wellington is probably the coldest place in Australia.  I bet you could prove that.  It's a mountain overlooking Hobart, and when we were up there it was below freezing!  And blowing really hard.  Without that viewing shelter you see there it would be completely un-visitable.  It was our first and only below freezing experience, though there were a few other close calls.

Not only is there muchos scenery to be seen in Tassie, there are also super cute animals, including:

Tasmanian devils

Like a rat meets a teddy bear.  They are cute, but fierce.  They are scavengers and live off of dead carcasses (carci?).  They eat every shred of a dead animal, bones and all.  Their teeth and jaws are like nutcrackers, and sound like it, too!

Wombat

Probably my favorite Aussie animal, which I had never seen until I moved here.  They are incredibly soft and I can only assume cuddly, but they're diggers so have big-ass claws.

They are marsupials, so carry their young in a pouch.  Because of the aforementioned digging their pouch faces downward, towards their butt, instead of towards their head, so dirt doesn't get in while they're digging down.  Evolution is clever like that.

Seals

Don't let the cute, furry, fatness fool you.  These things stank.  Really, really bad.

Whatever this little kangaroo-type animal is

It lived in a parking lot and lives off the scraps of humans.  I will never tire of seeing these things.

Of course Tassie also offers a plethora of activities.  You can:

Go 'quad biking'

A.k.a. 4-wheeling.  I had never seen such a vehicle before, but this is a two-person 4-wheeler.  I love it!  It's like a Hot Wheels for grown-ups.  A fun way to cover a lot of (rough) terrain in a short period of time.

Visit a winery

I love my wine.  Drinking it in its natural habitat is only natural.

Go on a ghost tour

Even if it's not, ya know, scary.

Take a jet boat tour

It's not enough to simply enjoy nature at a leisurely pace when you can whip shitties through it instead.

I enjoyed our Tasmanian roadtrip and would recommend it to anybody who's got lots of time to spend traveling Australia.  If you're coming to Australia for a month or less whirlwind trip, though, I'd skip it.  There's just so much "typically Australian" stuff to see that I wouldn't recommend prioritizing this over that.  It seemed like most other tourists were mainland Australians, not foreigners, so I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment.

I totally missed my favorite sign in my previous funny signs post.  Though it's not technically a sign it is hilarious, and worthy of international pointing and laughing.  I present to you the King of Pop:

Ain't no way I can top that so I'll leave it there and go out on top.  Forever magical!

Funny Signs of Tasmania

I don't know what it is about Tasmania and hilarious signs, but there are plenty to be seen.  So many in fact that a blog post dedicated entirely to them seems totes approps:

What the hell is a "crackpot"?  In this context at least?

I would like to personally thank this sign for existing, because when we got out of the rental car to take it we realized that a bottle of red wine was leaking all over the floor.  Had this sign not existed we could've lost a whole bottle of wine.  Oh the humanity!

That sheep is cute!  What they're selling, though, not so much.  I don't know who is buying bags of excrement, but we've seen many signs in the farming parts of Queensland advertising "horse poo" for sale.  Sadly we've never gotten a picture of it, though.  One time we even saw a sign for "mini horse poo".  What is mini?!  The horse or the poo?  I can't die without solving this mystery!

Heh.  Is it normal to find the word "blowhole" funny?

This one is funny, but also sad.  Poor Tasmanian devils!  They are actually really adorable, and they're dying off quickly.  And they don't want to be squashed!

This one is my personal favorite.  We drove several kilometers out of our way so we could turn around and get a shot of this.  Speedo check!  They must want to inspect the Speedo like this guy is wearing (from this post):

Now, I don't know what the hell "speedo" means in this context, but I'm guessing it has something to do with speed or speedometer.  It also reminds me of this:

Taco, burrito, what's coming out of your Speedo?

These next pictures aren't funny, but a mind trip to see them in Australia:

You don't think it ever gets cold in Australia, but I can assure you in Tasmania it sure does!  There was even snow in places.  Snow!  It was the first time in 18 months I've laid eyes on snow.  Granted there wasn't piles and piles of it, but there was some.  In Australia!

In a lot of places I felt like I was in Norway or New Zealand, not Australia, based on the scenery and temperature.  Not that I've ever been to New Zealand before (next month!) but I have seen Lord of the Rings.

Tasmania is the one state not on the mainland continent of Australia.  It's a whole different world down there!

(More pictures to follow in a separate post.)