Australian Adventures: Chapter 5 – Blue Mountains National Park, Introduction to Cairns

Greetings readers! Taking some time tonight to capture some thoughts on the next installment of our journey through Australia. This chapter will focus on the Blue Mountain National Park Range as our “last day” in Sydney (we come back to Sydney at the very end for a day trip before home), and then our journey onward to Cairns.

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Day 3 – Blue Mountains (Sydney)

For this day trip, we opted ahead of time to do a guided tour for this option. Located about 2 hours outside of the Sydney central downtown area, there were really only two ways to get to this destination – either by a guided tour, or by renting a car and making our way there. We were a little too nervous to drive a car in Australia for the main reason that you drive on the opposite of the road, so we felt a guided tour was best. Looking online, I can’t pinpoint the exact trip we chose on Viator, but there were several to choose from that pretty much did the same thing — full day trip of a scenic drive through the park, a few bush walks, and then a cruise back to Sydney.

The morning of the trip, we woke up a little after sunrise to wait for the tour bus to pick us up at the hotel. While waiting we learned a few other hotel guests were also on this trip for the day, and got the chance to have some light conversations with them. Once the bus arrived, we hopped on for about an hour drive to stretch our legs at an Australian Trading Post (it’s basically like a Walgreens), and then another hour to our destination. At the Trading Post we tried some unique junk food AKA chicken-flavored Lay’s Chips. Another fun oddity – in AUS, Lay’s Potato Chips are actually called Smith’s Chips. They had pretty much the same flavors as we have back home in the states, but there were a couple out-there flavors. Trying them out, you’ll probably be disappointed to hear that they didn’t really capture the chicken flavor – it really just ended up tasting like sour cream and onion (still tasty).

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Once we got to our destination, Mother Nature started playing some games with us by providing on and off downpour. As result, we actually never got to go out to our first destination because the storms created a lot of fog and our scenic view was pretty much…unseeable. Our tour guide was smart enough to call a few other drivers to see which areas had at least half visibility, and headed over to another scenic view that was deemed visible.

When we got there, it took a few minutes for the fog to roll through, but finally got a clear look of a side of the mountain and a reaaaaallly tall waterfall. An interesting fact – the Blue Mountain Range got its name for the sheer fact that when people look at the range, the mountains emit a blue hue. We tried looking for the “blue” in the mountain range but the fog made that really hard. I have to imagine on a clear sunny day it’d be much easier to see.

Waiting for a raincloud to pass, we then went for a bush walk. Prior to this trip, I thought a bush walk was something special…but I probably should have googled what a bush walk was (lol) because there is no difference between a bush walk vs. a normal walk. It’s just that when you walk in the Australia forrest scenery, it’s just automatically a bush walk (figures). We took a short (bush) walk to another scenic view, snapped some photos, and then the bus pulled up and took us to the next destination, which was lunch. We were taken to a close-by town for a bite to eat, where we got to try a kangaroo burger. This was the first time we’ve ever had kangaroo, and in reflection it was good, but it’s not beef. It tasted more like turkey in my opinion; the restaurant we went at did a pretty good job dressing it up though with veggies and sauces (beets pair really well with roo meat).

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Another fun fact – exiting lunch, our tour guide provided an insight that apparently Australia has a major camel overpopulation problem (wait for the connection here). A while back a bunch of camels were brought into the country, and like what all animals do, they reproduced resulting in a lot of camels living across the lands. Aussies, however, don’t want to just killing camels for sake of population control, so they have been creative in the last few years on how to control numbers and to utilize the animal as a resource:

• The first one is of course for transportation (utilization)
• The second one is for textiles (common utilization)
• The third is actually for food (the tie! Camel burgers apparently are popping up as a meal option around the country. Our tour guide said it was good, but he needed a lot of BBQ sauce to finish the job)

And then finally (and the weirdest one), people have been getting really into camel-based fashion competitions. Apparently there are extremely popular beauty pageants held annually where individuals choose their prettiest camels and head them against other camels (the contest is held in Abu Dhabi and Aussies will bring over their competing camels). They focus on things like the hump size, how plump the lips are, etc. What’s even crazier is that our guide said apparently a couple years ago some camels were involved in a scandal for their owners injecting cartilage into their lips, disqualifying them from the pageant. Talk about cut-throat!

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Anyway…back to the day details 🙂

After lunch we made our way to the main attraction of the day, which was a scenic world package to see the blue mountains in a couple unique ways. The first way was a scenic skyway several thousand feet above one of the main valleys. At this point, fog had pretty much cleared and with having some intermittent rain we were lucky to get a good view of the area as we cleared the gap.

Hopping off, we then took a scenic railway into the actual valley. At the time I thought this was going to be an easy ride down, but was definitely mistaken the second they put on the Indiana Jones theme music. Hearing that classic line we immediately were rolling down like a roller coaster into a mine shaft. It was a heart pumping 5 minutes! I really should have paid more attention to what was going on, because inside the car, you had two choices of seating angles – relaxed, and cliffhanger. We did not put two and two together, and was closer to the cliffhanger seating…which pretty much meant i was holding up my arms against the next seat in front of me while trying not to drop my backpack. Mom – if you’re reading this, I’m fine and nothing was lost. I promise I’ll read the instructions more closely next time.

Once we got to the valley, we had a short scenic “bush” walk, and then a slow-moving cable car back up to the visitor center. Once off, we took a few minutes to gather everyone and headed back home. A nice treat to end the day, our guide got everyone Tim Tam biscuits to share. A couple things to note on this:

1. Biscuits in AUS (and England, and anything British related) are cookies. For example, we noticed in a couple stores that Oreos were called “Oreo biscuits”. Tim Tams are the same – they are chocolate covered cookies with chocolate filling inside.
2. Tim Tams are delicious and if you go to AUS you have to try them. Seriously.
3. We learned (but never got to try) that if you bite one corner of a TT and then the opposite corner on the other side (so it makes a diagonal) it’s supposed to create an easy pathway to drink milk through the cookie like a straw. I’m very tempted to buy very overpriced Tim Tam’s on Amazon to try this out at home.

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Overall, I think we had a few things out of our control with the weather, so for what the day was, I think it was a pretty good trip. In retrospect, however, I personally felt (Ted will probably disagree with me) that we should have just bit the bullet and tried driving. This was just a kind of trip that I wanted to spend more time in certain places than the tour guide wanted us to. Being frequent hikers, I’m a big fan of walking and smelling the flowers (or in this case…bush wildlife), and this day trip was just not for that.

One thing I always do appreciate about guided tours though is that if you have the time (and people are friendly enough), you get a really unique opportunity to connect with individuals around the world. During this trip we got the time to get to know an older married couple from Chicago (not too far from home), and a young backpacker from Germany. The Chicago couple was taking 6 weeks to travel all around Australia, so it was cool to talk with them about what they had already done, and what they were planning to do after Sydney. The biggest insight I got from them is that they started their trip with the 3 day Indian Pacific train tour from Sydney to Perth, which is apparently a very iconic ride. We didn’t do a lot of research about it back when we were planning this trip because taking 3 days out was a lot for our already tight schedule. Hearing about their experiences, however, it’s on the top of our list when we return someday.

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The young backpacker (let’s call her Mia) was a definite pleasure to talk to. On the ride back to central Sydney, we had the opportunity to chat with Mia on the bus as we ended up sitting together. Getting to know her, she was taking a gap year between her primary school and university, which is apparently a very common tradition for german youth today (and maybe in the past too). She was currently in month 6 of her 7 months total we was planning on backpacking, and had spent all of her time traveling across all of Australia. To keep her going, she would stay at working youth hostels and of course share common dorms. She told a few stories of her experiences, from her times working in Tasmania, to even dealing with being stranded on one of the remote island for a few days during the monsoon season.

Something that was the most insightful from taking with Mia, however, was getting her perspective on the world today. I’m always interested (and a little scared) on hearing what outsiders perceive the environment/temperament of the United States. These questions always come up organically in conversation, as I asked her at one point in the conversation if she had ever considered backpacking in other countries that Australia, such as the US. Her response to that question was that there is a very clear fear of her and her friends and classmates of traveling to the US when there are so many violent gun shootings with little to no regulations. I don’t blame her for that reaction, as it’s extremely frustrating and at the same time deflating that we live in a country where there are so many mass shootings with no progression forward resolving the situation.

For example (citing source – http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/) since 1982, there have been 91 documented “mass shootings” that have occurred in the US (and i’d like to note that this is a dated article from 2017, sadly this does not include documented shootings in 2018/19 such as the Tree of Life incident and the Jackson Landing Video Game Tournament Incident). And due to the volatility of our government and heavy involvement of the NRA, there just hasn’t been a major bi-partisan agreement that has moved forward on handling this issue. A couple small victories, which is always a good step in the right direction, was the banning of bump stocks after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting and certain states raising minimum age of purchasing a gun (as well as large business chains removing specific guns from purchase in their stores), but my personal opinion (not fact), is it’s not enough to stop there.

The idea of banning ownership of any automatic rifles is a primarily strong direction I feel we need to take, though I’m not sure how realistic that choice will be given the balance of members on our Supreme Court. A positive direction towards this concept being theoretical is that with New Zealand’s prime minister effectively banning all AR’s after the tragic mosque shooting could create a case precedent to be taken into closer consideration by the court. Individuals may argue that it’s lawful to own these types of machinery for hunting, target practice, and other field based scenarios. However, the biggest argument I always hear is for sake of self-defense, which I feel may be either the barrier or tipping point for our country.

The most iconic case tied to this argument is the Heller case in 2008 that was deliberated and eventually voted to retain the belief that the Second Amendment aligns to the practice of possessing firearms to protect oneself in their home, specifically for self-defense. The ruling does not provide much criteria on types of guns, however, other than handguns being constitutional, so that’s where that grey area exists and if another landmark case comes in the upcoming year(s) it may either overturn or strengthen the precedent this ruling has created. (Other cites for reference — http://time.com/5556964/assault-weapons-ban-us-new-zealand/)

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Getting back on topic, it’s just overall sad to hear that our newest generation that is moving into adulthood holds this image/heuristic/whatever you want to call it of our country. This could hurt us in the long run from a tourism standpoint alone if individuals are too afraid to visit, which if you boil it down, is a $ impact and impacts our economy (to the simplest of simplifying things). And above all, I personally love our country and the natural beauty it has to offer. So my immediate knee-jerk reaction was to tell Mia about all the amazing National Parks we have across the country. Hopefully she will someday feel safe and comfortable enough to journey here and make it to Yosemite or Shenandoah to see it for herself.

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OK back to the fun travel stuff! I hate to get all political sometimes in these posts, but again a major benefit of traveling internationally is the essence and value of human connectivity and community. This is just something invaluable to the wonders of travel.

Getting back to our hotel, we grabbed a quick bite and packed for our early flight out to Cairns in the next morning. One last thing to note because I can’t remember if I stated this in the last article — the morning of the flight, I finally got another real coffee at the local coffeeshop. In our walk along the rocks the day before stopping for an afternoon coffee, I learned that drip coffee doesn’t really exist in AUS. There’s also like no Starbucks (It’s kind of eerie, but somewhat freeing). The closet thing they could give me was a long black, which is essentially an Americano. I also learned that it’s pretty common to not put a lot of caffeine in their coffees, so it was a lot weaker than what I was used to. This time around, I opted for a cappuccino with two espresso shots. It was the correct balance, and have been drinking cappuccinos for the rest of the vacation.

I took this picture solely for the insta (and the fact that the lion face in the coffee is adorbs)

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Day 4 – Travel/Introduction to Cairns 

I’m going to make this section pretty short as I spent a lot of type on the day before. Just a couple interesting things on our travel day.

1. We got to try that other unique chip flavor in the airport – Spag Bol (which is Spaghetti Bolognese for short). This really tasted like spaghetti
2. We discovered the Spirit of Australia – JetStar. If you ever use them, make sure you read all their fine print. On the night before in our check in I had to finagle my baggage to avoid any overweight fees. It’s not as bad as Spirit…but it’s up there.

Driving into Cairns, it was a stark contrast from Sydney. Located in Queensland, it was an incredibly small city that prided itself on tourism. The city was majority hotels and summer home/apartment rentals, and many tour shops were open for your pick of reef, rainforest, wildlife, etc. tours. We came right at the end of the season so not everything was open, but the main attractions were, so we had a nice blend of quiet atmosphere with open attractions. As well, we got a great deal snag for a nice hotel on the esplanade and moved up to a bigger room and a King Size bed to spread out for a few days (Mantra Esplanade) We mostly spent our first day walking around and getting acquainted with the area, stopping at a couple local breweries for a long sit. My personal favorite was Hemmingway’s Brewery – we frequented it during our time in Cairns.

During the dinner time, we opted for some local seafood cuisine as well, which was pretty fantastic. I tried for the first time, coral trout, which was a very tender white fish with a pop of citrus-y flavor due to its garnish accompaniment. The waiter said it was his favorite dish on the menu. Ted tried barramundi, which was another local white fish to try. His was much more seasoned, so it was a more peppery taste. Overall, both were fantastic and if you ever get to the region you need to try both.

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That’s it for tonight’s chapter. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, or interested you in starting any thoughts. I welcome any dialogue. I believe I stated this above, but again, the views in this blog are entirely my own. I referenced a few sources above for reference, but I am a sole individual that has formed her own opinion from her view of the world. You may agree or disagree with me, which is the beauty of opinion – it is individualistic. Cheers!

Australian Adventures: Chapter 4 – Continued Sydney Journeys

Hi readers! This is the next chapter of our Australian adventures. This is a quick chapter, as I’ll be focusing on the the second day in Sydney.

Day #2 – Bondi Beach, The Rocks, Chinatown

Waking up from a really long sleep, we set out fairly early in the morning for our first destination of the day – Bondi Beach. To make things simple, we just grabbed an Uber from our hotel, as it wasn’t incredibly expensive. In Sydney there is public transportation called “Opal,” but we were a little hesitant to use it, as we didn’t completely understand the routes. As well, we didn’t want to spend a bunch of time towards commuting so Uber was the way to go!

We rolled into the beach for a quick breakfast (note – we totally played a tourist card and had breakfast at Hungry Jack’s, which is the Aussie Burger King. I don’t care; it was great, greasy food) and then started the coastal walk down the beach. The walk spanned a total of 6 miles (out and back) and provided us extremely picturesque portraits. It was, however, a very hot walk and was thankful for a quick sprinkle at the end towards our next destination – The Rocks. An interesting thing to note – Aussies are really into lawn ball, which is a mixture of bocce ball and bowling. During our time walking on the coastal walk, we passed by a couple lawn ball courts, where several individuals were indulging in a quick game.

The Rocks is a central shopping district that acts as a layover stop for major cruises. Nothing super unique to write home about, other than good food, pretty scenery on the other side of the harbor (opposite from the Sydney Opera House), and moderately affordable souvenir shops. We took some time walking around and grabbing lunch (Spicy Noodle – really tasty fast casual pad thai spot), and then starting a further walking tour of our own. After exiting the initial tourist area, we took a quick walk around the harbor to walk by all the major hotels on the pier as well as their centralized mall. It was nice to walk around and smell the sea air.

Awesome pad thai!!

We continued walking, taking a quick coffee break at one of the pier docks due to a pop-up shower. Once the rain cleared we continued walking around the Oceanside through Barangaroo Park, and then eventually snaked our way to Chinatown.

Chinatown was a cool spot that centered on their main building, Paddy’s Market. Paddy’s Market was a really cool spot that spanned over four floors of shops, restaurants, and arcade games. The bottom floor acted as a no-frills flea market, which was really fun to walk through and pick out cheap gifts for friends and family members.

Entrance to Paddy’s Market

At this point we were pretty tired, and made our way back to the hotel. We stopped for a quick bite at a close-by Irish pub, and then got some early sleep for our first tour of the trip. In total, we ended up walking 17 miles across the city that day – we were exhausted, but very satisfied with our own walking tour.

Till next time readers!

Happy Husband 🙂 

Australian Adventures: Chapter 2 – Packing and Preparing to Fly

Greetings readers! Writing to you the standard, obvious, “yes I am writing that” sort of blog post on packing. I thought I would take a moment to share how this weekend has gone for packing for the weekend, and what things we’re trying to combat the long flight commute.

The 411:

• Traveling from Columbus to Sydney
• 2 Layovers (2-4 hours in each layover)
• Flight to Sydney is an overnight trip
• Total Travel Time – 28 hours
• AKA….Yeeeeesh!

When I’ve been talking to a lot of friends about this trip, I always get the same response, which is “Wow going to Australia is once in a lifetime! I don’t think I could make that flight though.” Well friends…my goal is to change your thinking 🙂

But first – packing packing packing!

 

IT BEGINS.

For those who know me, I’m a total Type A personality; therefore, what better way than to start with a list? Ted and I started on Friday on looking at our itinerary, and analyzing what we would need on this trip. Since we’re going to highly populated cities, I felt already a bit of comfort knowing that if I forgot something, there would have to be a store somewhere where I could easily grab something. This wasn’t like Alaska (a blog post for another time) where if I forgot something I’d be SOL.

Making this list, I started from the bottom up. I tackled these penultimate questions:

1. What shoes should I bring? What sort of activities will we be doing?
   1. This is probably the only vacation where I have packed a lot of shoes. We are going to ranging from beach activities, to indoor tours, to rainforest hikes. As result, I’m packing 5 pairs of shoes including hiking boots.
2. What types of outfits should I pack? Will I need to change during the day/night?
   1. This where you have the most risk of forgetting something. I ended up with a heavy mix of outfits where I can switch bottoms to dress up/down. We have made a formal decision that we will not go to any extremely fancy places, so the dressiest outfits are what will fit with my walking sandals.
3. What’s the weather like? What type of eye/head protection do I need?
   1. Since this will be the end of Australia’s summer, we’re expecting a consistent 75 degree and sunny weather. That means sunglasses, hats, and bandanas!
4. What accessories are needed as I travel day by day
   1. We learned this the hard way on our honeymoon that forgetting to pack accessories can really impact a vacation. Always pack a stringed backpack for your day trips. Other great options include a mini-umbrella, a stringed purse, a light coat, and a rain jacket/poncho.

Once we got out of the way of those questions, then we tackled toiletries and medicines. This pretty much resulted in us ransacking the target travel toiletry aisle, but are packing a couple other things as precautions:

1. Ear plugs
   1. I never pack ear plugs, but I think this is going to be helpful for us in the long run, as we’re going to be on many plane rides this trip.
   2. Ted opted for just standard pharmacy CVS ones; I ordered a higher-line option as before this trip I was looking for a good plug option while performing live (as I play violin with bands outside of work). These plugs are called Vibes Hi-Fi and I can already tell that they’re going to be at least helpful while performing at shows. Not sure about flights yet, but we’ll see.
2. Sleeping pills
   1. Because the longest flight time is our last layover to Sydney and it’s an overnight, we are packing an option for some sleeping pills. Talking with the pharmacist at our local store, she recommended to take a Benadryl as a best option. I’m not sure if this will work well, but worth a try!
3. Nausea Medication
   1. This is a must for me as I get pretty seasick on small boats. One of our days we’ll be on a small boat for snooba (scuba-snorkeling). You best believe I bought 2 packs of Dramamine just in case.
4. Allergy Medication
   1. My allergies are in full swing this time of year so packing essentials in case it carries over in the first couple of days. This includes the standards like sudafed and Afrin.
5. Compression Socks
   1. This is a must for long plane rides, especially if you’re at risk of getting blod clots. Ted is at a low risk, but since I take daily birth control I do have an elevated risk. In talking with my OBGYN she highly recommended compression socks, but as well to drink a glass of water and get up and walk for 5 minutes every 2 hours. This helps bring the risk way down.
6. Eye Mask
   1. I’ve never had an eye mask before but this was the item I was really missing in our long flight to Spain for our honeymoon (another blog post for the future!). My brother recommended to get this particular brand called Alaska Bear Eyemasks. They are incredibly soft, and already know they were a good investment!
7. Neck Pillow
   1. Duh. Nuff Said.
8. Foot Rest
   1. This is something new we’re trying for this trip. Ted and I got them as christmas presents from his family. How it’s used is you attach the foot “hammock” to the back of the chair in front of you and allows you to kick up your feet. No idea if this will work or be a total bust. Risking very little space, however, in our carryon so worth trying it.
9. Refillable Water Bottle
   1. I would say this is a “duh” thing, but I actually didn’t start packing a refillable water bottle for trips until as of late. This really isn’t for Australia but for long layovers and flights. Water bottles are expensive and I feel bad ringing the flight attendant every hour for a complimentary water can. This is a way to fix that. I even got a cool water bottle with a BRITA filter in it, in case the water fountains at any of the airports don’t have a filter already installed.
10. WIFI Hotspot
    1. This is a must for international travel, and it’s surprisingly affordable to rent a hotspot from the country you’re going to. You pay a flat or daily rate and you get a very small box that pumps out high speed internet while you’re vacationing. This has been helpful for us in the past as it gives a way to stay in touch with our parents to let them know we’ve arrived safe, and as well use Google Maps, look up information real-time, etc.
11. Adapter converter and backup batteries
    1. Another duh.

Finally…entertainment. This will be how I’ll get past the long flights, and hopefully instill confidence that you can too:

1. Neftlix Netflix Netflix
   1. I love that we live in the age of technology and will shamelessly use this to my advantage. I downloaded a couple full seasons on my phone through Netflix to watch online.
2. Bose Headphones
   1. These headphones were a christmas gift to myself and i’m so glad I bought them because they’re AWESOME. They’re noise cancelling, blue-tooth headphones and I can probably have these on the entire 28 hours and its battery life wouldn’t run out. When getting them, I tried seeing how long it would last since purchase; since December, I’ve only had to charge them twice (once in February, and then today for the trip). Best. Purchase Ever.
3. Spotify on Phone
   1. Again, love technology. Use the donwnload buttons on Spotify to download your favorite albums and podcasts. I downloaded all of John Mayer and Coldplay albums (yes I’m that basic), but also grabbed some new recommended playlists and my favorite NPR podcast, Planet Money.
4. Movies on Ted’s Laptop
   1. Ted and I downloaded the entire LOTR trilogy for us to watch over the flights. If you’re traveling with a buddy make sure to get a headphone splitter to share.
5. Books
   1. A timeless classic – Ted and I have downloaded a bunch of books on our respective Kindle/Nook. I like to pick a series that is fully out so I can immerse in its universe while vacation. This time I’ll be reading the Crazy Rich Asians book series.
6. Adult Coloring Book
   1. You laugh, but I’ve heard that having something like coloring is actually a great way to practice mindfulness on flights. It gives an opportunity to shut your brain off and focus on something very simplistic. I’ll be using this in pinches where I’m feeling really restless.
7. Foldable Yoga Mat
   1. This is not for the actual flights (I promise) but actually for the layovers. While I may look kind of stupid in the moment, I think it’s really important to stretch out between flights. Be sure to find me in the wings of Vancouver doing my sun salutations.
      

      (Stock photo – i’m not that flexible yet)

Once this list was written out, then we got to packing. We ended up with 1 checked bag each (ranging 35-45 lbs), 1 carry-on duffel bag, and 2 backpacks for under-the-seats. A couple insights:

1. Use those Ziploc packing bags – they do wonders with packing and help with organization
2. Pack to only half of your carry-on. We’re doing this to bring back souvenirs
3. Check weight and size requirements of alllll your planes. One time we didn’t do that and didn’t realize that the airline had a 40 pound checked bag requirement. Hidden Fees suck right?
4. Wear your light coat/jacket on you, and your heavier/bigger shoes — it’s kind of common sense, but still worth saying. It’s like free luggage!

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Coming to a close on this chapter, we are geared up and ready to go now for this trip! Looking forward to sharing our experiences with you all as we go through this adventure. Until next time readers!

Australian Adventures: Chapter 1 – Itinerary Planning to the Max!

Greetings! This Sunday’s weather isn’t cooperative with us to go for a road trip (high winds warning of up to 60 mph winds – yeesh!), so Ted and I are staying in for the day. I thought this would be a great start to introduce one of our larger trips that we will be doing this spring:

*Drumroll*

This spring we will be going to Australia and New Zealand (ah!!!!!!), which is actually probably one of the biggest vacations I’ve ever been on in my life. As I write about this, I’ll be breaking this trip into many chapters, as I feel there will be a lot to talk about.

What I’m focusing on this week is to provide our planning process and high level itinerary as to where we’re going and what we’ll be doing. I know a few friends of mine are traveling to the great down under a little later in the year as well, so friends (if you’re reading), here are some ideas for you to consider as well if you’re still figuring out what to do while there.

Disclaimer — our planning and decision styles are of our own as I’m speaking from personal experience. What we do may not fit for you and that’s totally cool!

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The Starting 411:

How many days? 15 days. That is the most we’ve ever been out of work, and was only able to take that much time off this year as we both got an extra week of vacation from our companies (thank you service awards!). A lot of people that I’ve talked to say 2 weeks isn’t really even enough, but after doing our research it was the most we felt comfortable taking off and still get a good experience of the area.

Where are we going? Sydney, Cairns, and Auckland (New Zealand). We are not sure if we’ll ever come back so checking out New Zealand was a must on our list.

How did we budget for this trip, and why Australia? Last year when we started planning, we didn’t have Australia initially in mind. We knew we wanted to take an international trip and had several options we were considering in addition to Australia/NZ including Japan, Italy/Greece, and Ireland/England. Our priorities in mind were that we wanted to take a trip that would be perfect for where we were in our lives – individuals in their late 20s with still a considerable amount of energy, and no kids yet.

We started actually by using a handy app in our phones called “Hopper” to help us make a decision. Hopper is a really cool piece of software that lets you watch trips based off of desired destinations and the timeframe you’d want to go. The tool will then watch when there are price drops for those destinations for the initially picked timeframe, as well as flexible dates around the time and nearby airports that could offer a price cut (so for example, instead of flying out of Columbus the hopper app could recommend you to fly out of Cincinnati).

Seriously, this app is super awesome and it’s free to download.

Note – The one disclaimer I will say with this app is make sure you read the fine print when looking to purchase the actual tickets. This tool works awesome as a data aggregator/analyzer, but when you buy the tickets I would recommend to actually purchase on the airline’s website. We were about to buy through the app and then saw at the bottom fine print that purchasing tickets through hopper made them non-refundable, which is a big NO for us. If you’re going on a huge trip like this you need to make sure there’s some wiggle room (and travel insurance/protection) because you never know what may happen!

We segmented Australia and Japan as favorited destinations in April/May and the European countries in early fall (September/October) and watched for the right price alerts to appear. And sure enough, after a few weeks we had two price alerts for Japan and Australia at about the same airfare price.

At that point, we started contemplating our options – which one was the best for us? This was really a gut feel, and at the end of it we were split with Ted on Australia and myself on Japan. The tiebreaker was essentially the argument for the Great Barrier Reef – due to rising ocean temperatures, half of the reef’s coral has been unfortunately destroyed, and as we age in our lifetime it will most likely continue to get worse. We felt if we had the opportunity to see the natural environment’s beauty before even more of the coral died, we would be very lucky.

Therefore *ding ding* Australia was the winner. We grabbed the plane tickets quickly before the price increase and started planning our trip. We used a previous budget tactic from our honeymoon to help us plan further, which was to dedicate a first budget of $ to airfare, housing, transportation, and tours, and then a separate budget for food and other expenses. We expected to pay up from 100% of the first budget within the first 30 days of planning, and then section of a portion of our monthly incoming savings for the food/other budget.

In my experience, it’s most important that when you start planning for a large trip, you know you could pay out of pocket the majority of your trip expenses the day you say “yes” to the trip. The two main questions in mind when planning is

1. If I remove X from my savings, what’s the risk I assume?
2. If I do this trip how does this effect my cash flow?

These questions are incredibly important to answer, as they help you determine if it’s really the time to take a trip or sit back and let your financial health grow. Per the first question, I feel it’s dependent on your gut check to your savings — if you take out X, what’s remaining? Do you feel comfortable taking out 25% of your liquid savings? 10%? Less than 5%? Dependent on your answer, that will help you dictate as to how much you could pay upfront when planning for a vacation.

To the second question, if you don’t understand your short term liquidity position, then you shouldn’t go on a vacation until otherwise feel comfortable. To get a simple feel, I just look over your last three months to understand what your fixed (mortgage or rent, bills, etc.) and variable (groceries, gas, etc.) expenses were and compare to your fixed/variable income to determine your net cash flow. Once calculated (and hopefully positive), it’s a gut check as to whether your current liquid savings could support you after taking a X% out of your liquid savings.

Piggy bank planning at its finest!

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The Golden Itinerary

Travel – 3 days

Part of the “fun” in a vacation is getting there itself. Coming from the midwest, we’re expecting a very long flight time to get to our destination, which unfortunately takes a few days out of our schedule. As well with the time zone change, we will lose a day going there. The only silver lining is the day we leave to come back home, we will leave 10 AM in Sydney and land in our hometown at 11 PM on the same day (even though it’ll be about 26 hours of flight time – crazy, right?)

Sydney – 4 days

The way we like to do trips is a blended mix of guided tours and unguided exploration. During our time in Sydney these are our two guided activities that we’ll check out:

1. Guided tour of Sydney Opera House
2. Day trip to Blue Mountain National Park

For our own exploration, here’s a highlight of a couple things we’ll be seeing in Sydney:

1. Bondi Beach
2. Bangaroo Reserve

Cairns – 4 days

Guided Tours:

1. Daintree Rainforrest
2. Great Barrier Reef – Scuba Diving & Snorkeling

Unguided Exploration – Unknown! The world is our oyster at this point.

Auckland – 4 days

Guided Tours:

1. Rangitoto Island
2. Winery tour on Waiheke Island
3. Hobbiton (to get second breakfast of course)
4. Glow Worm Caves

Unguided Exploration – Unknown! The world is our oyster at this point.

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That’s it for this week’s post, but we are really excited to experience this trip and hopefully inspire you to potentially check out these destinations as well. Australian Tourism seems to be really pushing individuals to come check out their cities so there are still pretty good deals to view if you’ve always wanted to go.

Until next time readers!

P.S. – Have you been to Australia/NZ before or currently living there? Please let me know in the comments on any good food/brewery places we should check out while there!