Australia Pictures
Proof. We came, we saw, we conquered, the Gold Coast of Australia
1 comment August 22nd, 2008
Archive for August, 2008
New Zealand, here we are!
We landed in Auckland this afternoon and we’re just getting settled at the hotel. We opted for a GPS and a name brand rental car this time and on both counts we’re feeling they were worth the extra couple of dollars. The New Zealand dollar is much nicer to us than the Australian dollar was; The NZ dollar is trading at a 19% discount to the US dollar. So far touristy things seem cheaper here than they were in the place we were at in Australia. Tomorrow we’re going on a sail boat in the late afternoon to go see the city from the water. Compared to a similar cruise near our hotel in Australia (which we didn’t do) it’s about half price here.
We’ll be here in New Zealand for 10 days before venturing off to Japan. I have the pictures from Australia uploading but the internet connection here isn’t fast like a rocketship, instead its fast like something that’s not fast. I’ll post the link later.
Add comment August 22nd, 2008
We’re in Australia!
We took the 14 hour flight out of SFO last night in style, 1st class! The flight was great, we slept the majority of it and relaxed the rest of it. We landed around 6:30AM in Sydney and then found our way over to the domestic terminal to hop up to Brisbane. The rental car we got was from this company that’s definitely not a huge multi-national. You take a shuttle for some parking lot to a parking lot, and then they have a handful of rental cars there. We hopped in to our slick Hyundai something-or-other and quickly noticed that the prior renters had definitely been purchasing rental insurance. The power steering pump is definitely on its last legs and somebody has hit a curb or two at speed (it pulls to the left). The brake rotors are warped bad enough that the car feels horrendous under braking. It’s nice 
The hotel is pretty darn nice. We’re right on the beach and there are good size waves breaking just off the shore. The water is a pretty light blue and well, it feels a bit like Florida. Except that it’s kinda cold (it is winter) and not humid.
1 comment August 17th, 2008