We’ve now been on the road for more than 2 months, passed through 3 countries, stayed in more than 20 accommodations, rented 5 cars, and eaten many meals out. You might be wondering how the overall experience has been as opposed to the highlights we write about. The answer is “so far, so good.” Because we are essentially “homeless,” we don’t really miss “home” in the way one might want to return to sleep in their own bed.
Does that mean it’s all been easy? No way. Travel days can be brutally tough. Nearly every flight we’ve taken has been delayed. For example, it was incredibly stormy when we left Adelaide and lightning strikes managed to take down the luggage conveyer belt system leading to a huge delay and a bit of chaos. We do our best to roll with it when these types of things happen – and they do happen. Not every lodging is 5 star – some are far from it. Not every meal is a gem. It’s been interesting to say the least and without a dull moment. Overall we’ve been lucky meeting nice people and finding our way without too much difficulty.
After six weeks in Oz – the longest amount of time we have ever traveled in any one country consecutively – we made a few personal observations. Australia is beautiful, but more like the United States than we expected. While the wildlife is unique, the cities and lifestyle are not that different from North America. The Aussies (pronounced “Ozzies”), on the other hand, are distinct and, in our humble opinion, a bit odd – albeit not in a bad way. They love to shorten words – breakfast is “brekkie,” sunglasses are “sunnies,” an umbrella is a “brolly,” and so on. It was amusing at first and then started to grate. In addition, we found the Aussies to be overtly conflict averse and with limited problem-solving skills (at least in the hospitality sector). Instead of acknowledging even a small issue or problem, they keep on smiling, saying nice things, but not addressing or fixing the issue. So, even if you want to be angry or simply express frustration, their niceness is an amazing diversionary tactic. We imagine Aussie children being trained to be so nice that they can tell you to bugger off in the kindest way and with the biggest smile. When explaining this observation to an Aussie, he responded, “that’s just our level of customer service,” and laughed.
We ate great Asian food all over Australia, but the real revelation were the cafes, which are open only for breakfast and lunch. We had some of our best meals in cafes, and we’ve never eaten more poached eggs in our lives. Many cafes had some wonderfully creative menus and beautiful presentation. Australia’s reputation for great coffee is also well-founded. Cafes and coffee are a continuing theme in New Zealand. We also found the best gelato we had ever had outside of Italy in Brisbane, of all places (it's called Messina; if you are ever in Brisbane, try it!).
We would return to Australia, especially to Kangaroo Island and to explore more wine regions.
For now, we have moved on to New Zealand and so far, it is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.
More to come shortly,
Shana & Jeff
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