Australia down under to the max

Sorry people for being MIA!!! We haven’t been blogging the way we used to do:) Thing is, we didn’t have enough time. Every single day was filled and oh yeah you had to pay for the WiFi…;) We really liked Australia, beautiful country and easy to exlpore. We traveled the East coast from Brisbane to Melbourne in one month. Stopping along the way at Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay, Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. 

  
It is incredibly easy to travel around Australia. We booked the cheapest bus aka Grey Hound. Perfect way to explore the country if you are on a budget. We arrived in Brisbane early in the morning. We had already booked a hostel room in the city. 

But what we didn’t know was that the hostel we had booked had been raided by the police a couple of weeks ago!! Apparently the building and the people running the place had made a big mess of things. Took a guy a whole day at the police station to get his stuff back. So we migrated to the hostel next door. Brisbane is a nice city with its fare share of architecture and history. But the highlight was the viewing point of Brisbane and the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. We got to hold and cuddle a koala, unforgettable, and looked at them for hours.

   
  

 
   
  

  
 
   
  

 
Next up was the famous Gold Coast with it’s white sandy beaches. Went to Surfers Paradise and checked out the local beaches. Really glad we saw that, but it’s also a strange place to see. You can really notice that this is a place where the Australians themselves go on a holiday to, so not many people live here permanent. 

   
  

 
Next stop Byron Bay. We really loved this place. There’s such a laid back atmosphere with hippie places to visit and we even saw some hippies in the wild:p We got ourselves a free bike and drove around like real Dutchies to the lighthouse where we saw whales and white sharks and fishies. We even booked a whale watching boat ride. ’99 percent chance of spotting a whale.’ Well the first day they even couldn’t get the boat from the beach out onto the water. The next day in five hours, we saw a turtle and two whale tales in the distance, epicness… 

   
  

  
  

  
  

 
Port Macquiree was also one of our stops. Apparently in winter time the city is almost abandoned. One of the positive things is that we got our own room in the hostel. Negative point was that the city seemed almost dead. Had great fish and chips there. We even went to a Koala Hospital, so sad and cute at the same time. Tried to go to an observatory but as allways with the dutchies we were too late for the presentation and couldn’t see anything through the telescope. Succes!!:p

   
  

  
  

  
  

 
The off to Sydney. Stayed in a very nice hostel, ten people in one room, nice!!:) Explored the city, saw The Rocks and the Sydney Opera House. Unbelievable to that in real life!! Had a couple of days there and enjoyed every single minute of it. Even went to Bondi Beach, too bad we didn’t needed to be rescued by one of the local lifeguards, wink wink. We also went to the Blue Mountains, walked for hours through the woods and up and down a thousand step stair!! Defenitely the highlight of our trip!! 

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
 

After that on to Canberra. Well that was a different kind of city. Did go to the Parlement and walked around the city on the non excisting sidewalks;) Couldn’t find anything to eat outside the eeny tiny city center and to see everything we ended up walking for allmost 10 km. 

   
  

 
Last but not least came Melbourne. Great city and we had more than a week here. Liz loves her sweets aka “dingetjes” so with every coffee a dingetje was introduced.

   

  

  Also visited Saint Kilda and waited for the penguins to make their way onto the beach again after a day swinging with the fishies. Too cute!!

   
 
We also checked out the Queen Victoria market and had a lovely Borek there, nom nom nom. 

   
 

First we stayed a couple nights with Liz’s second cousin and the last couple of nights we spent with our highschool friend Eva and her husband Craig. Thank you so much guys for letting us stay with you guys!!! 

   

The month in Ozzieland went by in a blur, we saw so much, walked so many miles, ate so many dingetjes, hihi:) So glad we could see the East Coast of Australia! 

G’bye mates!! Xxx