"I choose to be Amused!"-An Epic Trip to DL with a side of Oz(3/17-4 NEW POSTS pg17)

[PrincessInOz]

You did see a lot of animals at the zoo! And that seems to be a very 'suspiciously bright' picture of Perry..........Hmmmm.


The area in Melbourne we met was at the QV and we had our drinks and snacks at Max Brenner's Chocolate shop.
I felt the same....meeting you (and your family and BFF) was like meeting an old friend, not quite a stranger but strange to finally put 3D-ness into the friendship!

[skier_pete]

Originally Posted by PrincessInOz

You did see a lot of animals at the zoo! And that seems to be a very 'suspiciously bright' picture of Perry..........Hmmmm.


The area in Melbourne we met was at the QV and we had our drinks and snacks at Max Brenner's Chocolate shop.
I felt the same....meeting you (and your family and BFF) was like meeting an old friend, not quite a stranger but strange to finally put 3D-ness into the friendship!

I can see the ads now

DIS friendships - NOW IN 3D

[skier_pete]

It's a busy week this week, so I think this will be my only new update for week. Late-October gets pretty crazy, what with Halloween and several friends children's birthdays as well, there are a lot of parties going on.

This day was one of the big days of the trip – the day I got to check a big one off my bucket list. “Skiing in Australia”. Actually, for those that didn’t follow my PTR – one of the few items on my “bucket list” is to ski on 5 different continents before I die. Well, I have two under my belt, North America and Europe, but the others remain elusive, especially considering I haven’t actually BEEN to any other continent. So, not knowing if we were ever going to return to Australia, we had to do it this trip. We had decided to make the drive to Mt. Buller, which is approximately 3.5 hours away from where we were in Melbourne. Plans were to leave by 7 AM, but we were perhaps 20 minutes behind on that. We got out of town and it was approaching 11 AM by the time we got to the mountain.

We had travelled with our ski clothes (except for a snowsuit we borrowed from BFF for Adriana), but didn’t have any equipment. We got to the bottom of Mt. Buller and found that (1) you had to rent chains in order to drive up the mountain, whether you would use them or not and (2) they charge you $35 to drive up the mountain. Nice rip-off. So, we got up the mountain and there was actually no snow on the ground on the drive up, so we never needed the chains. It was a fairly sunny day, though this dark ominous cloud hung over the mountain most of the time we were there. We needed to rent equipment. This didn’t go so smoothly as DW has problem finding boots that will buckle onto her calves, so the first place we went to didn’t have boots her size. We rode the shuttle from the parking lot up to the mountain, and found a rental shop there that we could use. By the time we were buying our lift tickets, it was noon, so we got the afternoon rate. I wanted to be coming off the mountain by 3 PM, and we hadn’t yet had lunch, so we decided to ski about an hour, stop for lunch, and then ski a bit more. While we were walking to the lift, DW slipped and tweaked a pulled muscle in her leg, so after all this she wasn’t sure she could ski, but she managed.

In the end, we stuck to skiing the main hill only, as DD is still learning the ropes. Considering we barely got in 2 hours of skiing at a cost of around $600, when I was skiing down that mountain I was so thrilled I was doing it. This was big-time highlight of the trip for me, and well worth the cost and effort. Some pictures from the adventure below:













I didn’t take a ton of pictures as there was this big grey crowd covering around. Ski photos never come out great anyways, as the light is usually so flat it just looks like a big white patch.

We stopped partway through our ski-day and ate lunch at a tavern called the “Ball and Chain Restaurant”. Prices were very expensive, but portions were big. I had a bowl of chili with chips (not fries chips – chip chips), DW had the salad and DD had her go-to Spaghetti Bolognese. No pictures, but I would be shocked should someone from these boards ever eat there based on this recommendation!

After another hour or two of skiing, we had to reserve all the effort we did to get there. DW took her skis back to the rental shop while I took DD to the OTHER rental shop to return OUR stuff. The good thing about only skiing 2 hours on the bunny slope is I wasn’t really very worn out from it. We got back to the car, and apparently I had left the lights on and the battery was dead! (What! We’d only left the car for maybe 4 hours! I could not "choose to be amused" over this one!) Anyways, we had to get a truck to give us a jump, which led to a delay getting down the mountain. We also bought a few souvenirs, including a T-shirt for me and a stuffed “Blake the Buller Flake” for DD. (Below is NOT stuff version!)



The drive back wasn’t too bad, about half of it was very back-road, and because of the delay getting down, we ended up driving the last hour or so in the very very dark, which I wasn’t too thrilled with. Once we got to the highway though, it was pretty smooth sailing. It took us a while to decide where to stop for dinner, but ended up eating at the Hotel KalKallo just off the highway and only about an hour out of Melbourne. Food was OK, again a "go to the counter to order" restaurant. It was probably only about 8:30 PM when we pulled back into the house we were staying, but we were beat, or at least I was. At this point we were pretty well used to the time change, but if nothing else, this pushed us to really get a good night sleep.

[PrincessInOz]

I know it was on your bucket list and I'm glad you ticked it off. But I think you've found another reason why Aussies travel overseas to ski. The cost of 5 days on mountain skiing would more than cover my costs of flying to the US, my food AND spending money.

But your pictures on Buller look great.

Originally Posted by skier_pete

I can see the ads now

DIS friendships - NOW IN 3D

We need to wear the special 3D glasses.

[miss.potatohead]

oh wow I love the photos from Mt Buller. I've never been to the snow, as you say it gets rather $$$ quite quickly, but it looks like you had good weather for the day trip! Friends of mine who are ski bunnies leave Melbourne at crazy hours in the morning (think 4am) and return home at 11pm the same night, I'd be exhausted!

Just quietly I think you've experienced more of Australia in your short trip than I have in my entire life!

[battymum]

So glad you enjoyed your day, cause that's a huge effort!

[Aussie Wendy]

Glad you made it and got to tick something off your bucket list-sometimes hang the expense-its something you have to do. We're more of those who have never skied. Left it too late now, DH knee and back would never stand it. Know plenty of people from here who swear by the ski packages in Japan...the area where they have the cute snow monkeys in the pools too...unless you live in Melbourne/Canberra I think everyone else in Aus goes elsewhere to ski '*** of the expense...and yes, now you know why we all drool over the US food and prices so much! Though I still argue good food for (Ok not as good as US) prices can be found over here -its just not easy to find as a tourist (and that includes Aussie's travelling interstate too)...for example I had a superb Turkish meal Monday night with a group of work mates, generous serves for around $24 a main meal.

[skier_pete]

Before I get to responses I should mention...yesterday we got our package of ski clothes that we shipped home back on August 5th. Those clothes must have had quite an adventure taking almost 80 days to get here...Phineas Fogg would've been proud! (Phineas and Ferb as well.)

Originally Posted by PrincessInOz

I know it was on your bucket list and I'm glad you ticked it off. But I think you've found another reason why Aussies travel overseas to ski. The cost of 5 days on mountain skiing would more than cover my costs of flying to the US, my food AND spending money.

But your pictures on Buller look great.

We need to wear the special 3D glasses.

Next time we get together I'll be sure to break out my 3-D Specs.

I knew the skiing wasn't going to be great, but it's really about saying we did it more than than the quality. If I had to do it over again, I would do it somewhat differently. I would have travelled up the night before and then stayed in Mansfield overnight. Then you could get up and ski in the morning, get a full day in, and wrap up and get home in the evening. (Though honestly, the odds of their being a next time are extremely low - for skiing anyways.)

The drive 3 hours each way and ski all day is not any different from what we used to do growing up in New England to drive up to Vermont. The difference is back then you could get a full day lift ticket for $35, not $100.

Originally Posted by miss.potatohead

oh wow I love the photos from Mt Buller. I've never been to the snow, as you say it gets rather $$$ quite quickly, but it looks like you had good weather for the day trip! Friends of mine who are ski bunnies leave Melbourne at crazy hours in the morning (think 4am) and return home at 11pm the same night, I'd be exhausted!

Just quietly I think you've experienced more of Australia in your short trip than I have in my entire life!

That's sort of what happens though when you travel, isn't it? I'm sure most of the Aussies coming over to the US see a lot more than most of us Americans ever do. I mean, I've traveled extensively in the US, but a lot of Americans don't. They tend to stick very local.

Originally Posted by battymum

So glad you enjoyed your day, cause that's a huge effort!

It was a pretty big effort. It kind of resulted in us killing some other plans, too, but I'll be getting to that.

Originally Posted by Aussie Wendy

Glad you made it and got to tick something off your bucket list-sometimes hang the expense-its something you have to do. We're more of those who have never skied. Left it too late now, DH knee and back would never stand it. Know plenty of people from here who swear by the ski packages in Japan...the area where they have the cute snow monkeys in the pools too...unless you live in Melbourne/Canberra I think everyone else in Aus goes elsewhere to ski '*** of the expense...and yes, now you know why we all drool over the US food and prices so much! Though I still argue good food for (Ok not as good as US) prices can be found over here -its just not easy to find as a tourist (and that includes Aussie's travelling interstate too)...for example I had a superb Turkish meal Monday night with a group of work mates, generous serves for around $24 a main meal.

Skiing in Japan is my someday target for checking of Continent #4 - or more likely #5. (Argentina is probably #4.) There's a large portion of Asia that has very little interest for me in terms of travel, but I hope some day to go to Japan. (I have to live a while yet, though.) Seeing those hot-tubbing monkeys would be so cool too!

As far as reasonable food prices, it seemed that Sydney and Melbourne it was possible to eat decent food at a reasonable price. It wasn't until the later legs up in Cairns/Airlie Beach that the food price/quality ratio got really bad. Overall, we only spend about $2,500 on food for the entire trip, though admittedly about 12 meals were covered with BFFs family. However, that does averagea to less than $100 a day, so really not too bad.

[skier_pete]

I apologize for the delay between posts, but the last few weeks have been killer busy, but here we go.

Today we had decided that BFF would take us into Melbourne again, this time to check out the Victoria Market and also tour around the town a little bit. In the evening, we had our dinner plans with “Princess In OZ”, so we had to be back home in time to get over to there. BFF’s MIL volunteered to keep DD home. She was wearing down a bit and was looking for a decompression day where she could just sit and play videogames. We knew we’d be doing quite a bit of walking and stuff that would be boring to her.

So, again we got going about 10 AM into the city. It was about a 30 minute drive and we parked by the Victoria Market.





This is an indoor/outdoor market with a variety of food shops as well as knick-knacks and clothes. Of particular interest to us was the food!







I feel like “Princess in Oz” with all these food pictures!


We did some serious souvenir shopping here, it was a great location to get small knick knacks at a very low price. Certainly beat many of the tourist shops! However, I would wonder if a lot of tourists would know about these markets, so it sort of surprised me that there was as much here as there was. I don’t really take pictures of souvenirs, though, so no pix.
We then stopped for lunch. DW got a meat pie and a pasty (To recap: Meat Pie, yum! Pasty, yuk!) while I got a sausage from a german market shop. This was very tasty and very filling.

Next up we headed down towards the river, touring some of the highlight buildings. DW was hoping to get some sort of souvenir that commemorated Queen Victoria 60th jubilee. Someone had recommended going to the old town hall, but there was no store there. So instead, we continued to walk down to the Yarra River.
There is a wonderful network of public transportation in the city in their trolley service.


However, this also partly leads to one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen, a form of traffic control called the “Hook Turn”. From the Wikipedia page on Hook Turns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_turn

The procedure illustrated below is that used in Melbourne, Australia, where cars drive on the left. In a country where cars drive on the left, it is the right-turning cars making the hook turns; in countries where cars drive on the right, it is the left-turning cars making the hook turns. The general procedure is as follows:
1. Approach and enter the intersection from as near as possible to the left. If there is insufficient room to enter the intersection due to other cars waiting to hook-turn then you must wait until the next cycle of the lights.
2. Move forward, keeping clear of any marked foot crossing, until your vehicle is as near as possible to the far side of the road that you are entering.
3. Remain at the position reached under Step 2 until the traffic lights on the road you are entering have changed to green.
4. Turn right into the road and continue straight ahead. Cars on the cross road must give way to hook-turning traffic before commencing through the intersection.

The short version of the hook turn is that stay in the LEFT lane to make a RIGHT turn. Pulling into the middle of the intersection and waiting until the light turns red to do so. Suffice it to say I was extremely happy NOT to be driving in Melbourne, but instead to be walking. As we got to the water, we saw a few famous landmarks.

Here’s where I play the game from that famous movie – “The Mel-Bourne Identity” and try and identify what I took pictures of! (and yes, please correct me if I’m wrong here Melbournians!)

First up – and I know this one is right – Flinders Street Station, which is really a beautiful old building that I think is the main transportation hub in the city.


Next up, St. Pauls Cathedral, which is kitty-corner to the above.


Then, Federation Square. My view on Federation Square is someone in the Melbourne City Council said – “Hey them boys in Sydney got that Opera House, we need a signature building too that really unique. I know, let’s do that with Federation Square.” Only it turned out kinda, well, ugly.


But the free trolley service drives right by it!

Past that is the bridge o
ver the Yarra River @ Swanston Street – the main waterway through Melbourne. This is looking Southeast, toward I think is the cricket grounds.


This is looking West from the same bridge. I think the tall building is the Eureka Skydeck, which is the 2nd tallest building in Australia. (Again, thank you Wikipedia.)


Then, some weird people posing on the bridge for pictures:



Here’s the Melbourne Arts Center – which looks like an Arts Center or the broadcast location for Radio Free Melbourne.


Another view down the river to the west:


The back side of Flinders Street Station:


And a couple more views of St. Pauls:



We did a little more walking around and continued to look for the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee prize, but was never able to find anything. I tried to exchange money, but again found that everyone wanted to charge a huge penalty for travelers checks, so I decided to just try and exchange them all at once.

By about 3 PM we were heading back out of the city back to BFF’s DMIL’s house, and getting ready to go to Princess In Oz’s house for dinner. I think we left about 5 PM.

Well, I am about 3 months behind PIO’s posting of our DISmeet – and since she took all the pictures, I am going to refer to her report/blog post for those of you that want to see all the wonderful food we had.

http://www.disboards.com/showpost.ph...4&postcount=72

But, here’s the view of the evening from our point of view. We used the GPS combined with instructions and a map from BFF to get to “Princess’” house. We were invited to dinner with her, her DH and DS. DS was only a few years older than DD, and they had a shared love of videogames, though we had a bit of a struggle getting them to actually *play* together. (She still talks about having a link to him on here Nintendo 3DS.)

We got there and got a tour of their beautiful house. It’s an older home, but one that they had re-done and an addition put on, and it’s just gorgeous, looking both old-fashoined and modern at the same time. We sat and chatted in the kitchen while “Princess” cooked. What’s funny is though we met through the DIS, we really didn’t even talk about Disney much at all for the first hour or so, really just talking about all different things. (Travel in general, their house, what we all do for a living, differences between America and Australia.) It’s really amazing how you make a bit of a friendship over the internet, but then still when you meet in person, it can still click pretty well.
Over dinner we told them about our trip so far, including our impressions of Carsland. I had bought a set of magnets from Carsland as a “thank you” gift for her hospitality (also a bottle of wine) not knowing that she had a Fridge COVERED in souvenir magnets, so it was the perfect gift. I had waffled between the magnets and the coasters, and glad I went the way I did. She and her family are planning a trip for next fall to Disney World, but it’s a little too early in the season for us to co-ordinate. It’s right at the start of October, which is only a few weeks into the new school year, and our DD always seems to struggle with getting back into gear for school, so I really don’t dare pull her out that early. She did mention a possibility of coming up to NYC as well, though that may have changed. If they are within a few hours drive of us, we may have to get together again.

We didn’t stay really late, probably until about 8:30 or 9 PM. We would’ve loved to stay longer, but it was a pretty long drive back across the city with yet another busy day ahead of us.

Next up, Philip Island!

[khertz]

Love the pictures from your Opera House tour! After seeing the iconic building from the outside for so long, I bet it was really interesting to see the inside. I didn't really have an idea of how it should look to begin with, but it still wasn't what I expected, if that makes sense!

Originally Posted by skier_pete

(People have asked us why we didn’t go to a show, the only thing playing while we were there would’ve been cool to see…the Symphony was playing live in front of a showing of Lord Of the Rings: Return of the King – but I don’t think DD would’ve tolerated that movie.)

That sounds AMAZING!!

It's really cool that you were able to ski while you were there. I don't know, what other continents are good for skiing that you haven't tried yet? (I guess there's a trip to Antarctica somewhere in your future? ) Kinda sucks that they made you pay all that money just to go up there though!

Very cool that you were able to have a DIS meet down under! And very kind of Princess to host you guys for the evening and cook you dinner.

Sorry I was so behind, getting ready for & then going on a Disney trip and coming home to Halloween and work will do that to you!!!

[skier_pete]

Originally Posted by khertz

Love the pictures from your Opera House tour! After seeing the iconic building from the outside for so long, I bet it was really interesting to see the inside. I didn't really have an idea of how it should look to begin with, but it still wasn't what I expected, if that makes sense!

That sounds AMAZING!!

Yeah, I don't know what I expected the inside to look like, but it certainly wasn't that. It really was cool to see...has to be one of the top most recognizable buildings in the world. Maybe in America it would be #1 outside of America. (Perhaps Eiffel Tower or Big Ben would be ahead.)

Originally Posted by khertz

It's really cool that you were able to ski while you were there. I don't know, what other continents are good for skiing that you haven't tried yet? (I guess there's a trip to Antarctica somewhere in your future? ) Kinda sucks that they made you pay all that money just to go up there though!

Very cool that you were able to have a DIS meet down under! And very kind of Princess to host you guys for the evening and cook you dinner.

Sorry I was so behind, getting ready for & then going on a Disney trip and coming home to Halloween and work will do that to you!!!

Understood - you've been busy yourself. You CAN actually ski on all 7 continents. The skiing in Africa is very limited, and while Antartica is covered with snow it's not really easy to access, which is why I've always targeted the other 5. Japan would count as Asia (remember they had a winter Olympics there a few years back) and actually South America has some very accesable skiing, particularly Argentina and Chile. http://www.welcomeargentina.com/ski/index_i.html (Remember the Andes are very high mountains and extend all the way down to the bottom of South America.) It's actually been almost 30 years since I skied in Europe though, so I want to get back there when DD is old enough to enjoy it, and before DW is too old to enjoy it.

All the people we met in Australia were great and so nice and generous, there's no doubt there friendly reptuation is well deserved.

[michellekcm]

Yay - glad to see you back. I'm really enjoying this trip report.

Originally Posted by skier_pete

We did some serious souvenir shopping here, it was a great location to get small knick knacks at a very low price. Certainly beat many of the tourist shops! However, I would wonder if a lot of tourists would know about these markets, so it sort of surprised me that there was as much here as there was.

..................................

There is a wonderful network of public transportation in the city in their trolley service.

..................................


Past that is the bridge o
ver the Yarra River @ Swanston Street – the main waterway through Melbourne. This is looking Southeast, toward I think is the cricket grounds.


..................................

The Vic Market is a pretty big tourist attraction - it's in all the guide books and most hotel concierges would recommend it, so it does get a lot of tourist traffic.

We call them trams, not trolleys

Yep, that's the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the left in the background, where we also play footy (also known as Australian Rules Football / Aussie Rules / AFL), soccer, held the 1956 Olympics there, and have big rock concerts there. It seats just over 100,000 people. On the right, the white building you cam just see behind the boat sheds is the tennis centre complex where the Australian Open is played.

That last picture is the Town Hall, not St Paul's

[PrincessInOz]

Glad to see that you're up to our DisMeet. Coincidentally, I had one today at the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio in SF with 3 Dis-sers from Sacramento. And your comments about meeting in 3D/real life are spot on.

I'll be back home at the weekend; so I'll post that picture of the two families on your TR when I get back.

Glad you liked "my" market. I go shopping there every fortnight and those prawns/shrimp and the beef dish that I cooked....the ingredients were bought at that market.
The Vic Market is one of the major tourist attractions in Melbourne. Lots of tourists go there.....and even some locals (like me) go there to pick up gifts for overseas friends.

[khertz]

Originally Posted by skier_pete

You CAN actually ski on all 7 continents. The skiing in Africa is very limited, and while Antartica is covered with snow it's not really easy to access, which is why I've always targeted the other 5. Japan would count as Asia (remember they had a winter Olympics there a few years back) and actually South America has some very accesable skiing, particularly Argentina and Chile. http://www.welcomeargentina.com/ski/index_i.html (Remember the Andes are very high mountains and extend all the way down to the bottom of South America.) It's actually been almost 30 years since I skied in Europe though, so I want to get back there when DD is old enough to enjoy it, and before DW is too old to enjoy it.

You learn something new every day! Never would have guessed skiing would be so easy on continents associated with hotter climates.

[skier_pete]

Originally Posted by michellekcm

Yay - glad to see you back. I'm really enjoying this trip report.


The Vic Market is a pretty big tourist attraction - it's in all the guide books and most hotel concierges would recommend it, so it does get a lot of tourist traffic.

We call them trams, not trolleys

Yep, that's the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the left in the background, where we also play footy (also known as Australian Rules Football / Aussie Rules / AFL), soccer, held the 1956 Olympics there, and have big rock concerts there. It seats just over 100,000 people. On the right, the white building you cam just see behind the boat sheds is the tennis centre complex where the Australian Open is played.

That last picture is the Town Hall, not St Paul's

That would explain all the cheapo souvenirs!

Trolleys/Trams. You say Lorry, I say truck.

I watched a bit of footy while there...my favorite of the 3 sports I watched (Rugby and Cricket being the other two).

Oops on the Town Hall. I knew that one too, since that is where we looked for the Jubilee stuff. I just didn't look that close at the picture after I posted it. D'oh!

Originally Posted by PrincessInOz

Glad to see that you're up to our DisMeet. Coincidentally, I had one today at the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio in SF with 3 Dis-sers from Sacramento. And your comments about meeting in 3D/real life are spot on.

I'll be back home at the weekend; so I'll post that picture of the two families on your TR when I get back.

Glad you liked "my" market. I go shopping there every fortnight and those prawns/shrimp and the beef dish that I cooked....the ingredients were bought at that market.
The Vic Market is one of the major tourist attractions in Melbourne. Lots of tourists go there.....and even some locals (like me) go there to pick up gifts for overseas friends.

Neat, your back here again. You go to California more than I do.

I have the pictures from you of our families, I was just being lazy and didn't include them.

The Vic Market was very nice. The prices for the food seemed much better than most of what we saw in Grocery stores, though admittedly many of the stores we went into were in tourist areas.

I am not sure if I will get another post in this week, but will try to pick up the pace again next week.