mnmhull
The Many Adventures of M&M Joined: April 28th 2007
Logged in: January 5th 2012
Logged in: January 5th 2012
If you're at all curious about where we stay when we travel, please check out my TripAdvisor profile at http://www.tripadvisor.com/members/mandi2doors.
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Thanks for reading!
Travel Blog Posts
This morning Matt got up at o'dark-thirty with Rowelly. He was letting us borrow his car for the day to go to Australia Zoo, which meant that Matt had to drive him to work. Better him than me. Rowelly has an SUV and the roads here are narrower than the States. Combine that with driving on the wrong side of the road and that would just be a recipe for disaster if I got behind the wheel. I've driven on the left before but it's always been a compact rental car...not a huge, nice SUV that belonged to someone I knew. Matt came back from dropping off Rowelly and I got up and got dressed and ready. We went to breakfast with Rowelly's brother, Keith. We had actually met Keith before this trip...he had come to ... read more
Uncle Matt and Jackson
Sunday morning (the 28th) we got to the train station bright and early and settled in for our 4 1/2 hour train ride from Sydney to Canberra (pronounced "CAN-brah", not "Can-BEAR-ah"). It was pretty uneventful...I got breakfast from the dining car and Matt had gotten pretzels and juice from the vending machine before we left the station. I read most of the way and Matt stared out of the window trying to spot kangaroos. We got into Canberra Station around 11:30am and saw Dan, Ali, and Jackson right away waiting for us. Matt told me to go ahead and he'd get the bags so I ran right out and gave Ali the biggest hug I could...without squishing her 8 1/2 month old pregnant belly :) It's been almost 4 years since we've seen each other and ... read more
The Monorail running to and from Darling Harbour
Today is our last day in Sydney and we were without our wonderful tour guide, Meg, so I hauled out my Lonely Planet Australia to see what it recommended. Darling Harbour sounded like it could be interesting and then we planned on heading back to the the Rocks later in the day to hopefully catch the market that we kept missing. We were still resisting the $20 per person breakfast at the hotel but discovered that the huge hostel across the street had a restaurant on the ground floor and they served a very reasonably priced breakfast so we went there for food. I wish we'd gone sooner! Matt got eggs benedict and I got what resembled a full English breakfast (eggs, toast, tomato, hashbrowns, mushrooms, beans) and we both got juice...for $24 for the two ... read more
Matt on the ferry to Watson's Bay
This morning we woke up a little late, which was wonderful, got ready and headed out to find some breakfast. Breakfast buffet at the hotel was $20 per person, which was a bit much for us, so we ended up eating at Hungry Jack's, which is the Australian version of Burger King. Hopefully we'll find better breakfast tomorrow but we just really wanted to get moving. Hungry Jack's was down George Street so we kept moving in that direction and ended up at Circular Quay. Meg had already texted me the ferry schedule so we hopped on a ferry to Watson's Bay. Watson's Bay was near Bondi Beach and also near Meg's house so she was going to drive down to the docks and meet us. It was another bright sunshiney day and we enjoyed the ... read more
Matt in front of the Opera House
Our flight to Sydney went really well. We left out of LAX about 15-20 minutes late and ended up arriving in Sydney a few minutes late as a result, around 7:45am. We cleared immigration and customs with no problems and right outside of the arrivals gate was a Vodafone shop where we bought our prepaid SIM cards. The prepaid plans have changed a bit since we left Germany and data is now included since so many people have smart phones. I think my little pink Nokia phone will have to be retired and make room for a Droid after this. We took the train from the airport to Sydney Central Station, which is only a few blocks walking distance from our hotel. We stayed at The Great Southern Hotel. It's in an older building and seems ... read more
After being up so late the night before hanging out with our new Belgian friends we slept late this morning and missed breakfast, which I'm still upset about! After the fabulous dinner the night before we were very angry at ourselves that we missed breakfast. Hopefully I'll get to come back here someday and try some more of the food :) We took a taxi into town to the bus station and caught our bus into Florence. We were staying at hostel here called Plus Florence that we had very high hopes for. They had a swimming pool (not that we brought our suits, but still) and a Turkish bath, but really we were more interested in the price, location, and good ratings that we read online. We checked in and had the room to ourselves ... read more
Hillary and I decided to take one last trip together before I moved back to the States. She had never been to Florence, which is pretty amazing considering how much she loves Italy, so we decided to make Florence our final trip. We decided not to spend the entire trip just in Florence and I had heard a lot of great stuff about Siena so we decided on a night there first. We flew into Pisa in the morning on the 17th and took the train directly to Siena. We had booked a room at Agriturismo Marciano which, of course, had fabulous ratings on TripAdvisor, and we certainly weren't disappointed! We found a taxi that knew where it was located (it's a little outside of Siena's city walls) and headed there. It's in a gorgeous location ... read more
I've got probably 10 blogs that I need to catch up on but I just had to tell you all about our ice cream man. He comes around every day between 7:30 and 8:00 in the evening in his little truck playing typical ice cream truck music. He's from Italy...Sicily to be exact. He speaks a little bit of English but speaks fluent German and Italian so our conversations are a mix of all three these days. I'm sure you've heard me talk very highly about Italian ice cream...gelato. Well, what he sells in the truck is pretty close :) Once I found that out I became a pretty regular customer and I'm now greeted with a 'Ciao Bella!' when I come out. It's €1.70 for two scoops in a cone and the past few times ... read more
Okay, just so you know, most of this entry is going to be about dinner. It was really fantastic! But, before we get to dinner we have to get up in the morning. We didn't have a lot on the agenda for today. We visited some outdoor markets, I got a new leather coat (yay me!!), and we wandered and ate gelato (of course). One thing I did want to do since we had the time was visit a few more museums. I really wanted to go to the Uffizi Gallery but the line was wrapping around the building. I'll just plan on going another time with some friends and make reservations beforehand. We went to the Bargello, which is a museum with pretty much only sculptures in it. It's one of the lesser-known museums so ... read more
Matt in Pisa
I know...it's been ages since I've been on here to write more about our trip. Let's see what I can remember 2 months later :) So, I believe that I left off with our last night in Cinque Terre. The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and caught the train to Florence. We had to change trains in Pisa anyway so we just allowed for a little bit longer of a layover there so we could pop over and see the tower. You know which tower I mean right? The Leaning Tower of Pisa :) Thank you Rick Steves for including information in your guide book telling us that there's a bus you catch from the train station out to the tower! We asked around at the train station and ... read more
Planned Trips 
Matt Visited 
Both Visited 
