The Road Trip Begins (Mid Semester Break Pt. 2)

Here is the last part of my mid semester break trip and it only took me one month to post!

April 21st - Great Ocean Road

Today we drove the Great Ocean Road! The guys in our group rented a BMW for the day (because they are fancy and classy men) to drive the road and see the 12 Apostles. The road is on the southern part of Australia's mainland and is truly incredible. We left out of Melbourne and headed straight to the road. It was about a 4-hour drive there, but there were many stops to see along the road. It was nice just looking out our windows and seeing the beautiful views. We finally reached the 12 apostles and they were great. It is funny that they are named the 12 apostle's due to the fact that there only started out as nine of them and now there are eight. They were given this name in the 1920s by Victorian Tourist These incredible limestone stacks stand 50 meters high. After reaching the 12 apostles, we turned around and headed back to Melbourne (which Australians pronounce Mell-bin). We took a different route back, so it was a little shorter. We finally reached our hostel and then headed out to look around the city briefly. It was a long, but memorable day.

The 12 Apostles

Selfie with the Apostles

April 23rd - Melbourne

We began our time in Melbourne returning the BMW and picking up our campervan. We had a little trouble picking up our campervan so we chose to stay an extra day in Melbourne.

Our New Home!

After we did get the van, we walked around the city of Melbourne. Melbourne is a beautiful city. There are many pretty building and sculptures all around. The city has both modern and Victorian buildings that make up the skyline. . We even saw a street covered completely in Graffiti. While in Melbourne we went to a couple museums. We stumbled upon a Beatles in Australia exhibit at the Arts Centre, which was awesome. I really loved the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and The Ian Potter Museum of Art, and both were free which made them even better. Both were awesome and I highly recommend them.

We also enjoyed exploring Saint Kilda’s Beach and the area around it. We went to one restaurant called Lentil’s As Anything, which is run based purely on donations. We could pay whatever we wanted for our meal. We did not have the best experience since the meals took a while and were not very big, but I did love the idea of it and my meal was good. We ended up eating at a schnitzel restaurant after which was excellent. We also saw the St. Kilda penguins. They were so cute and there were so many of them. They also made a really weird sound, which made them easier to find in the dark.

The Pierce Brothers- They are fantastic. Check out one of their covers below!

Nico performing at the Art Centre in Australia

Melbourne's Chinatown

St. Kilda Penguin (courtesy of Google Images)

April 24th – Canberra

After waking up at 3 am and driving the rest of the way into Canberra, we successfully drove the night and arrived into the capital of Australia and were greeted by a beautiful sunrise and a stranger's shower. Yes, you read that right we parked the caravan at a stranger's house and used their showers. Erin met a nice family at her workplace and they said they had a home in Canberra and we were welcome to park outside it and use their showers. We were really happy for that because our camper sadly did not have a shower. They were very nice being that we came in at 7:30 am.
After getting ready we headed out to the city. The city is so different than the Gold Coast! I really wanted to go to the National Portrait Museum to see Prince William and Kate, but the others didn't want to wait to see them which is understandable. Instead we went to the Australian National Gallery of Art. I was very impressed with the gallery. It had an amazing collection with some of my favorite artists such as Lichtenstein, Pollack, Picasso, Monet, Nero, Warhol, and Close. The Gallery was huge and a tad overwhelming. While at the Gallery, we met up with a fellow UCF student and one of his study abroad friends. It was nice seeing a familiar face and he showed us around the city a little. We got lunch at a delicious Mexican restaurant and then parted ways for the time being. We then headed to Questacon, a science museum. We had a blast there and got in for free since we came right before it closed. They had this one area called free fall where we literally dropped from a pole and free fell for a second before landing on a slide and sliding the rest of the way down. It was a lot of fun running through the museum and playing with everything. After the museum, we went for dinner and then met up with our friend again. He showed us how the University of Canberra students spend their nights. We had a lot of fun hanging out with him and his friends. We didn't stay out too long because of heading to Sydney the next day. We had a great time in Canberra.

GO KNIGHTS! :)

The whole gang during an impromptu photo shoot

April 26th - Sydney

I finally made it to Sydney! we arrived in Sydney on April 25th, or as the Australians call it, Anzac Day. Anzac Day is Australia's version of Memorial Day. We didn't celebrate too much, but we did go to a dusk service which was pretty cool. We spent the day walking around and seeing the city. We saw many cool buildings, including the Opera House, and some awesome street performers. One even swallowed my bobby pin! (I was a tad grossed out by that plus I never got my bobby pin back.)  Sydney is an awesome city and I really enjoyed walking around and seeing it all. We went to the Rocks market and the Contemporary Art Museum.  Sydney was a great place to end our Mid Semester break and we all had a great time exploring Australia's eastern coast.

Contemporary Art Museum

Anzac Service

One of the street performers

Had to leave my mark on the city.

Contemporary Art.......

The artist of one of the prints I bought working on a new print!

Sorry it took so long to post, but that was my mid semester break! I hope you enjoyed reading about it and I appreciate you taking the time to read about my adventures! Now here is a video by the Melbourne musician's The Pierce Brothers. 

Bye for now,

Erica 

Mid Semester Break Pt. 1 (Tasmania)

Well the mid semester break finally came! So that I didn't feel to overwhelmed when blogging about my awesome trip I wrote each portion at the end of the days and when I had free time. So sorry if I say the phrase "today we" too often! I decided to split it up into two portions so the posts are not too long. Here is the portion focused on Tasmania "A Land Way Under Down Under". Enjoy!

April 18th - Tasmania
We made it to Tasmania. The trip over was long and exhausting, but we managed! It started with an early bus ride to the Brisbane Airport where we flew out. There we are before we boarded the plane. Since it is still Passover I had a nice matzah and deli meat sandwich. Hopefully I didn't get too many strange looks in the airport. I mainly just got them from across the table. Lol. After getting to Launceton (it's pronounced like lawn-se-ton and I am still working on pronouncing it myself), we then (Thanks for the lesson Mrs. Lansky) took a taxi to the bus stop and then a 2 hour ride to the city of Hobart where our hostel was and our tour left from. We stayed at the "Pickled Frog." It was a nice green building with tons of paintings all over the walls, needless to say I loved it. It had such a wonderful atmosphere. I am sad we were only able to spend a night there. The next morning at 7:30am, we were picked up for our tour. We then drove out of Hobart and started our drive that ends up back in Launceton. We stopped at 3 national parks today. All were beautiful full of lakes, waterfalls, mountains, huge trees, and one Tasmanian Pademelon.

Tasmanian Pademelon or Red-bellied Pademelon are basically a smaller version of wallaby. They used to classify them as two distinct types of wallabies until they found other differences and decided to give them their own name. They are very rare on the mainland due to dingos and hunters, but are found all over Tasmania.

The Pademelon!!!

We saw many crazy lookout points and learned about Tasmania's wonderful history. We also stopped at a raspberry farm which had delicious raspberries (and I'm not usually a fan of them so they must have been good). At the raspberry farm, we saw a wallaby bouncing around. The tour guide and our fellow tourees (not sure if real word but it's my blog so I'll say what I want) are very nice. We had a group barbecue tonight which was delicious. Our tour guide's friend caught a Tasmanian salmon yesterday and he barbecued them. The rest of us made a salad and veggies as well. The salmon was actually amazing. (Aren't you proud of me mom and dad?!). That night I played a game called Bohnanza with my new French and Norwegian friends. It was a weird but fun game about collecting beans sprouts and I actually won my first time playing. I am so excited to see the rest of the tour and experience more of Tasmania.

In the raspberry field

April 19th

Today started with a 9km hike to Montezuma Falls, Tasmania's tallest waterfall. It was a long hike, but definitely worth it to see the waterfall. After our hike we went to a nice fishing town called Strahan. After our lunch stop, we went to Henty Dunes where we got to jump off of sand dunes. This was probably my favorite part of being in Tasmania. Not only did we get incredible jumping photos, but we also had a blast.

Tallest waterfall in Australia

Strahan

Pan Love at Henty Dunes

Preparing for the Jump

Our trusty Jump mobile

April 20th

We started the day with another hike. This one was slightly shorter and a little more scenic. The group had the option to do a hike around dove lake or hike up to Marion's lookout. I decided to do the dove lake route because it was a cloudy day and our tour guide said the view was not guaranteed because of this. My group had a good time hiking around the lake and looking up to Cradle Mountain. After the hike we headed to the beautiful incredible spectacular city of Sheffield. (I guess you can tell I really liked it by my use of adjectives) This town's nickname is the "town of murals." Every year during Easter time, the town holds a competition where they fly in artist from across the world to compete in a mural painting competition. It was awesome to see the artist painting and be able to talk to them about their work. The murals from past years are all around the city. There was also a store just for marbles that had really cool marble traps. After leaving Sheffield, we stopped at a honey farm and a salmon farm where we got to try samples. Some of the honey samples didn't even really taste like honey (which was fine with me). They had chocolate and hazelnut ones which I liked the best. The day ended with us heading back to Launceton to end the tour, we stopped at a park in the middle of the city before the tour ended and walked around. At the park, we saw at least 6 wallabies. After leaving the park, Laura, Erin, our friend from England, and I got dropped off at our hostel for the night. We got dinner at a spud place. I got a beef curry type spud that was delicious. We are now going to bed early to catch our early flight to Melbourne.

Wombat

Wallaby

Peacock

That is the end of my post for Tasmania. Since I never got to see a Tasmanian Devil, I at least posted a video about everyone's favorite devil. Check again for my next post on the rest of my trip and sorry that the pics are not in any particular order, I just got a little lazy! 

And that's all folks,

Erica