windingwillow

Day one: After arriving very early into San Fran I checked into one of the best hostels I have ever stayed in, the Green Tortoise. Its greatest appeal is the free internet and free bagel breakfast every morning but it also has little touches like a sink in the room and every dorm bed has its own indivdual light -seems like heaven to backpackers!They also do other free stuff like meals and live music and films...I could go on but perhaps I should start telling you the other reasons why I love San Francisco! Whilst enjoying my free bagel breakfast (last mention of free stuff I promise) I met Mary, another english backpacker and we agreed to meet later to do a bit of a tour of San Francisco together. We started by visiting the Coit ... read more

Supremely jet lagged and in shock at being in a country with such a huge population again, I checked into a hostel on hollywood boulevard!Ended up staying up to try and power through the jet lag chatting to a nice girl in my room who gave me a bit of advice what to do with my time here. Day one (31st July): So today I explored Hollywood and did all the typical tourist things, the Walk of Fame (all of those stars in the pavement down Hollywood Boulevard - apparently, the stars have to pay for these stars $5000 and then they have to be famous for a certain length of time, several years I think, before they can have their star put on the walk of fame), took photos of the Hollywood sign, visited the ... read more

Well thank you very much to Jayne and Glenn who let me stay in their flat whilst I was in Melbourne, especially as it was Jayne's first week back at work! They also took me to see an Aussie rules game at the Telstra Dome which is something I've wanted to do since before I arrived in Australia! It was the Mighty Western Bulldogs vs the Carlton Blues -it was a very tense match and at times very close. The sport it is most closely related to is Gaelic Football but there are one or two differences, for example it is played on an oval pitch. Thanks to Glenn and Micks tutoring, I had just about figured out the rules by the end of the match! Thankfully the team we were supporting won but as always ... read more

I had a lovely day and a half visiting alice springs, I wish i'd had a day or two extra in the murder capital of australia(I'm not being sarcastic!)! There is actually a lot to do considering its in the middle of nowhere and is quite small if you compare it to Sydney. Kangaroo rehab centre: I visited a centre for rescued Kangaroo Joey's (baby kangaroo) which is well worth a visit - basically when kangaroo's get run over the joey often survives in the pouch and if not rescued will be eaten/ die slowly. This centre takes in rescued joeys and rehabilitates them until adulthood when they are released into the wild. They have a very careful rehabilitation programme to make sure they do not become tame and grow up as close as possible to ... read more

Well I've been to Fraser island before but it was part of our package and I just about had time so decided to do it again!obviously i've already done a blog entry for this place so won't say much about it and I think the photo's speak for themselves (not to mention the captions!). Rainbow beach: However this time I went from rainbow beach which is a lovely place and whilst there Eva finally got to do her sky dive and we also went sea kayaking in search of dolphins! The sea kayaking was fun although unfortunately we only saw some turtles, no dolphin's. However we did get to do some wave surfing in the kayak's which was brilliant fun! Visited the Carlo Sandblow at sunset which was beautiful, the next few blogs will have quite ... read more