The Games of the XXX Olympiad (et Paris e Roma!)

Greetings from Roma, Italia! This will be the last blog entry written from foreign soil… how crazy is that??? My goodness, 13 ½ months has gone by quite quickly. I’m currently on day 6 in Rome, my last full day here. I’ve already done all of the tourist sights that I wanted to tackle, so I thought I’d use day 6 to write the blog and leisurely pack before heading out later on for one last night out on the town. So let’s start the European recap, shall we? WARNING, however: this might be a long one…

I arrived in London via Abu Dhabi after about 24 hours of flying. The flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi was 14 hours, and then I had just enough time to get to the adjacent terminal in Abu Dhabi for the 7 hour flight to Heathrow. I enjoyed my brief time at the Abu Dhabi airport though. It was heaps of fun trying to read all the Arabic. After the 14-hour flight, the 2^nd one seemed like a drop in the bucket. A few dozen pages of journal writing and we were in London. Suzy met me at the airport, and despite my fears about landing in London on the day of the Opening Ceremonies, our tube carriage wasn’t exactly full:

That’s me swinging like a monkey in the densely populated train.

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. Went to get a UK sim card, took a nap, and attempted to watch the Opening Ceremonies, but we were both exhausted and didn’t quite make it till the end. I happily collapsed into my bed that night – One of Suzy’s roommates was away for my first 3 nights, and the girl was nice enough to loan me her bed. It was SO nice being able to curl up in a real bed when I was exhausted from jet lag. What a difference in reception from the last time I got off a long-haul international flight! When I landed in Sydney in July of last year, I was alone, spent the night in a hostel, and ate a bad, overpriced sandwich from 7 eleven before passing out. This time I had a wonderful friend meet me at the airport, a comfy bed, a couch with a tv and a home cooked meal. A much nicer reception!

The next day Suzy and I tackled some tourist activities. We went on a duck tour and had lunch at a real, old-school type British pub. Here I am in front of Tower Bridge, all decked out for the Games!

Wandered around town a bit, and then later on in the afternoon we headed for the CoSport will-call office so that I could pick up my tickets for the next day’s competition!

That’s where the drama started.

Let me start off with a bit of background information. First off, CoSport is the official ticket distributor for the Olympic Games for like 10 different countries: The United States, Canada, Australia, Norway, Austria and a few others. So basically, if you live in one of those 10 countries and you wanted official, non-scalped tickets, then CoSport was the only option. The lottery for obtaining Olympic tickets was a long, arduous process that started at the very beginning of 2011. I put it bids for all of the women’s gymnastics events, which tallied about $5000 worth of tickets. I knew I wouldn’t get all of that, but I was hoping for at least some. I was awarded with $300 worth, which was disappointing. I wasn’t going to bother going, but then I met Suzy in New Zealand last December, who was nice enough to offer up her couch for accommodation, and the rest is history.

Women’s gymnastics is divided into several days of competition. The first day is the long one. It’s the preliminary session. No medals are awarded, and every gymnast who qualifies for the Olympic Games gets to go. It’s a super long day, starting at 9:30 am and finishing about 12 hours later. Two days later the top 8 teams from the prelims compete for the medals in the team finals. Two days after that, the top 24 girls who competed all 4 apparatuses in the prelim session compete for the individual all-around title, which is the highest individual award you can achieve in gymnastics. You become the queen of the sport. There’s nothing higher than winning the gold in the all-around. A couple of days after that, the individual event finals start. The top 8 girls on each apparatus from the preliminary session compete for medals on that specific event. So the preliminary day of competing, while essentially a weed-out process, is super important. You goof up there, and forget about the rest of it. Most gymnasts from the weaker countries don’t see any competition past that first day.

As I said, the prelim session is about 12 hours long, since everyone competes. In terms of the spectators, they split up the day into 3 ticketing sessions. There was a morning session that went from about 9:30 am until noon, and evening session that went from 8 pm until 9:30, and a super long mid-day session that filled up most of the middle of the day. I got tickets for 2 of the 3 prelim sessions, although unfortunately I got the short evening one and the slightly longer morning one. But hey, I was still going to the Olympics! I wish I had kept the email that CoSport sent out when they released who was awarded tickets. Women’s gymnastics, although far from a mainstream sport in non-Olympic years, is one of the marquee events of the Games. Everyone wants to go, and us loyal fans get a bit shafted in having to compete for tickets with people who can’t tell a pommel horse from a balance beam. Something like less than 1% of people in the United States who applied for gymnastics tickets for the medal finals were awarded with seats, and the data for the prelim sessions was only slightly less depressing. So really, I was extremely lucky to have gotten anything at all.

The line to pick up the tickets at the will-call office, which was a makeshift office set up at a university just outside the city center, was about a half hour long. When it was finally my turn, there was a bit of trouble locating my tickets at first. I hadn’t printed out the confirmation form since I didn’t have a printer, and there was some information they were looking for that I didn’t have on me. Luckily I was able to pull up the pdf file on Suzy’s smartphone. Those things really do some in handy sometimes! I wasn’t surprised that there was confusion in locating my tickets. I had originally asked for them to be shipped, since you had to select the option back when you applied for the tickets. I did all that long before I had even made the choice to go to Australia. Once I firmed up plans to fly to London from Sydney to go to the Games, I asked them to make an exception for me and cancel the shipping. I explained that shipping them to New York in early July was going to cause problems… They agreed, but I figured that because of the change in plans perhaps the tickets had ended up in the wrong spot or something.

Little progress was being made. Suzy and I stood at the long table, while the girl who was unfortunate enough to have been the free counter when I was next in line disappeared for ages behind the closed doors. Eventually they put us in the auditorium that was filled with other people whose tickets they were having trouble locating…

It was sort of like the auditorium of despair. Based on the snippets of conversations we heard between potential Olympic spectators and CoSport employees, there were a lot of unhappy people. The girl working with me was convinced that the tickets were accidentally shipped, despite my request to have them picked up instead. I knew that couldn’t be true since I would have received an automated tracking email from Fedex if they had mistakenly gone out, and my Dad is pretty on top of the mail. If Olympic tickets randomly popped up in Queens, I would have been informed. So we sat for ages, passing the time by playing scrabble on Suzy’s phone while the girl searched the black hole of the CoSport office for my missing tickets. I eventually got up to go to the bathroom, since I figured that as soon as I left someone would come out with an answer. Sure enough, when I returned to the auditorium of broken dreams, there was a CoSport employee, a different one from whom I had been dealing with over the past hour and a half, sitting in front of Suzy. The employee looked dejected, and was holding one ticket in her hand. I sat down, curious as to what the story was.

At first I misunderstood what the girl was telling me. She slowly explained that my tickets were unavailable, but here was a different ticket to the evening prelim session, and they would refund me the cost of the morning session, along with the price difference for the evening session, since this new ticket was in a higher section and therefore cheaper. I was confused and irritated. How can you tell me I’ve been awarded tickets and charge me for them, if I really never had them??? How can you tell customers they’ve got certain tickets if it wasn’t true? I made plans to come to London, I said to her, based on the fact that I had 2 events with semi-decent seats. Then it was clarified. I was awarded those original $300 worth of tickets. They were mine indeed. But CoSport lost them.

That was all they could say to me. There wasn’t even any excuse; they simply did not have one. The official ticket distributor for the Olympic Games lost my tickets.

I didn’t get dejected. I didn’t get sad or frustrated or anything even close. I wasn’t even nervous that things wouldn’t be fixed. Instead I got angry.

I started off by telling the girl that I wasn’t yelling at her, and I knew it wasn’t her fault. I always appreciated that when I worked in customer service, and I hope she did as well. But I said no, no I will not accept a refund. This is entirely unacceptable. It’s garbage. I flew to London to go to the Olympic Games, and there is no way that I am walking out of here without my tickets. Go fix this. I told her I’d be in London for the first week of the Games, and could attend any women’s gymnastics event that they had available. If they had that random crappy nosebleed seat lying around, then maybe they had something else a bit better lying in a random pile as well.

She was gone a while longer. Other people seemed to accept CoSport’s mistakes and left without much fuss. Me? There was NO way that I was going to have flown to London for an hour and a half of gymnastics in a nosebleed seat in the absolute last row of the arena. When she came back out, she looked happy. I thought maybe she found one of my actual tickets, but that wasn’t the case. She presented me with a different gymnastics ticket. I looked first at the price. £450, which is about $700. Before I got excited, I looked at the date. July 30^th. I knew right away what event it was. I handed the ticket back to her and said I didn’t want it. It was for the men’s team final. While I appreciated that it was an amazing seat for the event, I didn’t have much interest in men’s gymnastics. I told her I’d rather have the seat go to someone whose men’s gymnastics order they messed up. She was a bit dejected. She thought she had done well, and in her defense all the gymnastics tickets, for both men and women, just say “artistic gymnastics” on them. It doesn’t specify what event it is. So this time I gave her the dates of the 2 competitions after the prelims that I could attend, the July 31^st team finals and the August 2^nd all-around finals. I’d be in Paris for event finals, with a train ticket and apartment already paid for, so I couldn’t attend any of those.

She came back out looking not so happy again. She handed me the ticket she found. £450. July 31^st.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From that moment you would have needed to pry that ticket out of my cold dead fingers, and even post-mortem I think I would have retained a firm grip on them. I took my craptastic nosebleed prelim ticket, my ticket to the WOMEN’S TEAM FINALS, signed the paper saying that I had received my tickets and was content, and then bounced out of the CoSport office. I had just gone from 2 blah prelim seats to a $700 ticket for the team finals on the lowest level of the arena. The face value of that seat costs more than going to the Super Bowl.  I couldn’t believe what had just happened, and still can’t. Through a stroke of what can only be described as pure, dumb luck, I was going to the team finals! It was like winning the lottery! I’ll never be an athlete, but with their unimaginable ineptitude, CoSport made my own Olympic dreams come true that afternoon. I’d have the opportunity to watch the United States go for gold. I couldn’t even begin to express here just how much this meant to me.

Suzy and I went to the Tower of London the next day, and then that evening I headed to the O2 arena for the evening prelim session. Here’s the outside of the arena:

And the entrance to the arena – I couldn’t believe I was really there!

It really worked out well that I didn’t end up going to the morning prelim session. I didn’t have to wake up early, plus the lineup wasn’t that great. All of the good teams were slotted for the afternoon session, which I never got tickets to anyway, except for Romania, who competed at night. So I watched Romania and had a grand old time. I was at the Olympics! In the very last row of the arena, but for finals I was downstairs, so I couldn’t care less about how high I was on that first night.

You can tell how high I am. Even the center scoreboard is in the rafters below my seat J

The next day I met up with my friend Dany, who I’d met travelling up Australia’s west coast. Unfortunately for her, she had to accompany on my painful shopping spree. There was no way I was attending team finals without American gear. Ever tried to buy USA themed stuff in a foreign country? It’s not easy! I eventually got a USA Adidas t-shirt with gold, silver and bronze stripes on the sleeves, red leggings, blue hair ribbons and face paint. I was going all out!

We spent the rest of the day doing fun stuff. Here I am doing the classical London tourist pose:

And walking with the M&M’s at the giant candy store:

It was a good day. We walked around the city a lot, also checked out a museum and had a nice dinner at a hamburger joint, where I had my first real PICKLE in over a year. Australia and New Zealand don’t do pickles. It’s epically tragic.

The next day was July 31^st: Team Finals Day. On my way to the tube station, I randomly spotted American flag pants out of the corner of my eye at a local market. Sweet As! They were cheap too, so I grabbed them and then headed off. I started by taking the train to Olympic Park, as I was hoping to walk around. I knew that you couldn’t get into the Olympic Village unless you were an athlete or coach or part of your country’s delegation, but I thought the park might be open to stroll around as long as you passed through security. I was wrong. You couldn’t get into the complex if you didn’t have a ticket, so I never got to see Olympic Stadium or anything. Ah well. They had built a giant mall next to Olympic Park though, and that was filled with tourists and Olympic spectators and quite a few athletes and coaches as well. So I spent a couple hours wandering through there. I may not have been able to get into the park or the village, but even the mall had an Olympic buzz in the air, so I was happy soaking up the atmosphere.

I got to the arena nice and early so that I could bask in the Olympic atmosphere. Here I am posing in my £450 section:

It was a great view. I was right by vault and beam, with a good view of floor as well. Bars were on the other side of the arena, so since I was low-down it was a bit hard to see, but I couldn’t complain. Saw the 2008 Olympic all-around champion walking around on the floor about an hour or so before the competition started, and I got a little wave from her. I also saw the 2008 Olympic beam gold medalist in the bathroom before the meet started. I wonder if we used the same stall???

The competition was awesome. The blog is getting a bit long already, so I won’t bore you with much more than photos.  I could go on and on about the meet and what happened and what I thought, but I know no one really cares all that much J. You know how it ended anyway. The USA won by a bit over 5 points, which is huge. That’s five falls. The last girl who went up could have safely fallen 3-4 times and the United States would have still won by a country mile.

At the start of the competition, the US and Russia presenting to the judges before vault:

McKayla Maroney landing the most perfect vault I’ve ever seen:

Viktoria Komova of Russia on bars:

Future all-around champion Gabby Douglas on beam:

Aly Raisman in her starting pose, waiting for her floor music to start. This is the USA’s last routine, although the gold is a virtual lock already. She just needed to find her feet a few times, and everything would be done:

Waiting for Aly’s score to come up to make it official:

BAM!

Celebrating immediately after:

On the podium (came out a bit fuzzy L… stupid crappy arena lighting!)

The three medalists: USA, Russia & Romania:

Waving to the crowd:

Me and the back of Shawn Johnson (the blonde chick with the black backpack). She was the 2008 Olympic gold medalist on beam and silver medalist in the all-around. Back in 08 she was the “it” girl, whose face was plastered all over McDonalds bags and Coca Cola boxes.

Me, a girl I made friends with before the meet, and Elfi Schlegel. You might not know the name or face, but if you’ve watched gymnastics on NBC any time in the last decade and a half, then you know her voice.

All in all, an absolutely unforgettable day. I’d like to think it was my gaudy American flag pants that brought all the good luck.

The day after the team finals, I took a trip to Oxford with Dany.

It was gorgeous, but I was disappointed that you had to pay to go inside all of the buildings! One day I will give Dany a guided tour of Cornell, where despite their penchant for nickel and diming people to death, they have not yet started charging visitors to walk in the door. Later that day I met up with Suzy for a play. We saw Richard III at the Globe Theater. It was a recreation of what the Globe looked like back in Shakespeare’s day, as was the style of performance. The costumes were authentic, and all of the female roles were played by men. We stood in the pit, right in front of the stage. It was nice to lean on during the 3 hours of standing.  It was a great experience though, seeing Shakespeare the way people did back in his era. And it was fun being so close to the actors. Sometimes you had to move your hands out of the way so that they wouldn’t get stepped on!

The next day I went on a day trip to Brighton, near where Dany grew up. It’s a beachside town, although it was a bit nippy to go into the water. We hung out at the arcade on the pier, and a seagull literally landed on my head to try and steal the remains of my ice cream cone. Had a picnic out in the countryside, and then we drove to her dad’s house for tv: The all-around final. You also know how that one turned out as well, as Gabby Douglas became the 4^th American, and first black woman, to with the Olympic all-around crown. That’s 3 Olympic all-around champions in a row now for the USA!!!

My next stop was Paris. I had rented a little apartment in the 6^th arrondissement, which was super cute once I figured out how the keys worked and was able to get inside:

Didn’t have a whole lot on the agenda, as this was my 5^th time visiting the city. Suzy came down for the weekend though from London, so we had a bit of a wine and cheese party.

The highlight of her weekend visit was of course, Disneyland. Suzy and I are both hardcore Disney park addicts, so we were able to accomplish what some might say is impossible. We did both Disney Parks at Disneyland Paris in one day. On the weekend. During the summer. Now, THAT, my friends, is Olympic gold-worthy. I also have to say that Disney’s nighttime show, Disney Dreams, is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe what I was watching, it was incredible. All of you, go to Paris. Go to Disney. Wait for park closing time and watch what they do to Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It’s mind-blowing. Here we are during the day. Hours before the nighttime magic began:

After a few more days in Paris on my own, I flew to Rome. Never been there before, so I was excited! Got into town quite late, and after a few unsuccessful attempts to find my hotel in the dodgy little neighborhood surrounding the train station, I was finally successful and crawled into bed.

I laid out the basics of my plan of attack the next day. I didn’t know a whole lot about what I wanted to see in Rome, so I was a bit overwhelmed at first. It’s a big, noisy, stressful and overwhelming place, It’s also hot as hell in August. It hit 90 degrees by about 9 am every single day. By mid-day it was downright oppressive being outside. But it’s also a magical city, where you turn a corner and find the most amazing church or Roman ruin you could possibly imagine. It’s a modern city with echoes of the past around every corner. Pretty cool stuff! After a few days I got a feel for the place and was much more productive in my sightseeing. Again, I won’t bore you with the history and details of every church and museum that I visited, but here are some photographic highlights:

Here I am with the Colosseum!

Here are some of the ancient ruins. My one complaint, addressed to the city of Rome or the country of Italy or whoever is in charge: LABEL YOUR RUINS. Most of the time I had NO idea what the heck I was looking at, even with the help of my guidebook. Still though, you get the idea, even if you’re a bit lost as to what pile of rubble used to be what. Everything is old. Really old.  Really old and jam packed full of incredible history. But still, a little plaque or sign now and again would have been SUPER helpful J.

Here I am with one of Rome’s more recent monuments. A lot of people in the city apparently don’t like it and think it’s a bit gaudy. I thought it was awesome!

Me and the Pantheon, which is about 2,000 years old. That building has been there for 2,000 years. Think about that. It’s incredible!

Of course, no visit to Rome would be complete without visiting the Vatican. I started off my day at the Vatican Museum, where I waited an hour and a half just to get to the metal detectors. The crowds of tourists in Rome are unbelievable. People are just everywhere, and there seems to be no escaping waiting in long lines. The Vatican Museum was worth it though. Despite the fact that even inside people were jammed in like cattle, the Vatican Museum is home to the famous Sistine Chapel, which contains some of the world’s most famous artworks. I don’t have any photos of Michelangelo’s ceiling frescos or his Last Judgement though. They don’t allow any photos inside the Sistine Chapel L. As a useless piece of information, the Sistine Chapel is the only room inside the Vatican Museum that is air-conditioned. It’s where the cardinals meet for conclave to elect a new pope, so they don’t want them to melt while they’re locked inside voting J.

I visited St. Peter’s Basilica and Square that afternoon.

Again, throngs of tourists, but what an amazing sight! The square is gigantic, and the inside of the church is ornate and decorated beyond words. I took a few photos, one of which is below, but the pictures don’t really do it justice. You have to go for yourself to really appreciate just how splendid the inside is.

So that was Rome in a nutshell! There are loads more to say, but this blog has already passed being classified as “long,” and we’re now entering “epically long” territory. I’ll stop here then with my European adventures. I chose to focus mostly on the Olympics for the entry, as that was the whole reason for this leg of the journey. Paris and Rome were just icing on the cake.

I do need to take a moment to thank Suzy. Without her generous offer of a couch back in December, at a wine bar in Queenstown, New Zealand, I never would have gone to London. CoSport might have done me a gigantic favor by being utterly inept and losing my tickets, but without Suzy I never would have been in London to tell them to go and fix their mistake. So thank you Suzy, for enabling me to make my dream to be an Olympic spectator come true J.

What’s next? I make my way back to London tomorrow, and then on Friday I close out the day in my bed in Whitestone. Yup. Can you believe it? 13 ½ months has come and gone, and 2 days from now I’ll be back in Queens. Stay tuned though, there will be one more entry posted in the next couple of weeks: The recap, epilogue, thoughts and reflections, or whatever you want to call it. That one will be well-thought out and constructed, unlike all of my other entries that were written whenever I could squeeze in the time.

So for now, I bid thee adieu. It’s all coming to an end, which is incredibly emotional, but I’m also going to try and look at whatever comes next as an opportunity for a wonderful new beginning J

See ya in North America kiddies!

The End of the Road: The East Coast

We’ve come to the end of the line folks! I always imagined that my last entry actually written and posted in Australia would be a well-written, thoughtful and reflective piece; that’s not happening. Simply do not have the time! I’ll still write something that I’ll put a good deal of effort into, but it most likely won’t come until a few days after the 17^th of August. So for now, instead of a giant farewell piece, it’ll be like all the rest – lots of pictures and details on what I’ve been up to travel-wise. Let’s get on with it then!

The last phase of my trip was the east coast. By far the most touristed trek in Australia, it’s the one that every backpacker and tourist does. If you’re in Australia for a short time, you do the east coast.  Or if you’re dense and just here to party, then you do the east coast. This part of the country certainly does have a lot to offer, but my journey didn’t take me there until the very end, so it unfortunately got shafted a bit. It would have been great to have another week or so to have a bit more time to explore, but I made the most of what I had and rocked it. The one GIANT roadblock that I ran into? The weather. It was pretty terrible from the moment I touched down in Cairns, and stayed awful for about 10 days. It really put a damper on the experience (ha! Get it????), especially because rough weather means bad visibility in the water, and rough seas for boat rides. Unfortunately, other than partying for the young backpacker crowd, the east coast is all about the water activities.

I flew from Adelaide up to Cairns, which is a big tourist town up on the coast of northern Queensland. It’s basically as far up as the bulk of the tourists go, with people generally starting in either Sydney or Melbourne and then inching their way up the coast to Cairns. I did it backwards, working from Cairns down to Brisbane. I’ve already seen the coast of New South Wales, so I just chose to focus on Queensland instead of travelling by bus all the way back down to Sydney. No tours for me though this time – just me and the open road!

 I stayed at a cute little hostel in Cairns, it was a bit away from the city center and in need of some repair, but it had lots of character and a friendly kitty. My first order of business on the east coast was a day trip to Cape Tribulation, which is north of Cairns. It’s a popular day excursion to go up and see the Daintree rainforest, which is the most ancient in the world - makes the Amazon look like an infant still in diapers. The forest was beautiful and I was glad I saw it, but it rained buckets all day long. We went to a small wildlife park, went for a walk through the forest, and went on a boat ride to go croc spotting, We found a wide variety of crocodiles, everything from 4 month old babies to Scarface:

Scarface is a 5-meter male. You don’t get in the water with Scarface, but you can kind of get that vibe from him from the photo. Scarface does NOT want you to be his friend, he wants you to be in his belly.

My next activity was a scuba dive boat that left from Cairns as well. I was going to do a few introductory dives on the famous Great Barrier Reef! I was really excited about this part. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s great natural wonders, and it’s so large that you can actually see it from space. Once again, however, I was hampered by less than stellar weather. That meant rough seas and poor visibility in the ocean. Not very good conditions for diving. I was supposed to get 5 dives but only ended up with 4, since they had to cancel one session due to the terrible weather. That was disappointing, but there was one giant positive: The boat was really sexy! I somehow booked myself on quite a luxurious vessel. I had my own room, and the bed was one of the comfiest I’ve ever slept in. The food was quite good and they fed us constantly. That didn’t quite make up for the bad conditions, but at least when we weren’t out in the rough ocean squinting to see coral that was a foot in front of us, we were hanging out on the boat in the lap of luxury. The visibility was enough that you could get the idea of how majestic it all was, but it certainly wasn’t the clarity that I’d always dreamed of. Here I am under the water:

And here is one of my favorite photos. Nemo!

I had a great time diving, and I think after this experience I would like to get certified one day. I plan to re-do the Great Barrier Reef at some point though. I really want to see it when the water is nice and clear. Just my luck, I travel the tropical Queensland coast during the dry season, and I stumble upon the wettest dry season that they’ve had in like 50 years. Great.

After I finished up my sightseeing in the Cairns area, I took the greyhound down to Townsville and headed over to Magnetic Island. I stayed at a little budget resort/campground that had an on-site wildlife sanctuary. My room was a little bungalow out in the bush, it was very cute. Once again, the weather was terrible, but I tried to make the most of it. They had lorikeet feedings every day in the late afternoon, so I checked that out after I had settled in to my bungalow. The birds were beautiful, and there were just SO many of them!

I went on a tour of the wildlife sanctuary of course, and it was well worth it. It was all very interactive, so I got photos taken with most of the animals that we looked at. Here I am with a baby saltwater crocodile.

Yeah, when that little girl I’m holding grows up, she’ll be able to take down a full-grown man without much fuss. Even at that size, they keep the jaws taped shut. But how cool is that?? I got to play with a saltie! I also played with a snake. I really like snakes, they’re fun to handle and to make people uncomfortable with. I think I’d like to have a nice python as a pet one day.

I did go on a little solo adventure on Magnetic Island as well. I went on a 5-hour hike, going from isolated bay to bay. Towards the end of the day when it was starting to rain a bit and was starting to creep towards the end of sunlight, I got a bit lost in the bush. The trails are very poorly marked, and I had a bit of a wander before I properly re-situated myself. It was all in good fun though! I rewarded myself for not getting lost in the jungle in the dark and rain by buying myself an ice cream bar at the local general store at the end of the excursion. Here’s a photo of what the beaches looked like that I was hiking around visiting:

Most of them are only accessible by walking through the bush, so they were quite pristine and not crowded. It was a great hike, and was much more adventurous than following a tour guide and group around like I’ve been doing previously!

I spent the next day back on the mainland in Townsville. I took it easy and just wandered around town. The main beach was pretty, and I was entertained by all the information about the local jellyfish:

The beachfront towns up in northern Australia are all so gorgeous (when the sun is shining!), but you can’t even swim in all that beautiful water for more than half the year. There are sections of the beach that they rope off with stinger nets to keep the little buggers out, but all you need is one idiot to sit on the floating fence and all of a sudden you’re frolicking in the water with Australia’s deadliest creature…

After exploring Townsville, I hopped on another greyhound bus to Airlie Beach. Airlie is a popular jumping off point to explore the Whitsunday islands, which is exactly what I was going to do. I had booked myself a 2-day 1 night sailboat tour around the Whitsundays. Once again the weather was not on my side. The sun was finally shining over Airlie Beach the morning that I walked down to the dock, but then naturally we sailed right back in to the bad weather. The water was rough, so while I did not get seasick, we all got soaked on the sail over to the islands. After we hoisted the sails and all got into position on the boat deck, it occurred to me that I’d never actually been sailing before. I wasn’t really sure what to expect! Despite the large swells the sailboat actually cuts through them quite well, and we didn’t bounce up and down too much. We did, however, rock from side to side, and sometimes we were on such a high angle that I couldn’t fathom how the damn boat just didn’t tip right over. Naturally I was unable to photograph our boat half-tipped over as we were sailing along, but here is a photo of it with sails down, parked while we went snorkeling in a calmer area.

As I mentioned, as a consequence of the rough water there was a LOT of splashing. We got absolutely drenched. I wish the skipper had been a bit clearer that we were going to get soaked while sailing. I would have sat in the yellow slicker they give out with just a bathing suit on instead of being fully clothed. My clothing got wet and then didn’t dry for days because the sun never came out. Packing wet clothes into your backpack is not fun I tell ya!

The snorkeling was nice, once again the visibility wasn’t great, but the coral was quite pretty and in some spots made the water so shallow that we had to swim around it like a maze. I saw a few different types of fishes that I hadn’t seen up in Cairns, and on the second day of the trip we even found a giant sea turtle! He was enormous, but quite chilled out. We stalked him in the water pretty closely, even accidentally snorkeling on top of him at some points, and he didn’t seem to be all that fussed.  The boat captain said that based on his size he was probably about 50-60 years old. He was amazing to see.

We did 2 bits of sailing on the first day, one to our snorkel spots and then one in the afternoon to the spot where we were going to drop anchor for the night. It was some sort of a sheltered cove, which would provide us some protection from the rough water. The sail over there was rough for me though, and I got seasick. Didn’t throw up, but I lost all muscle tension and was weak all over. Sat slumped over a bucket like a rag doll in the little nook in front of the ships wheel. I didn’t have the strength to sit on the side of the boat like everyone else and hold on. I couldn’t hold on to anything at that point. The girl who helped with sailing and cooked our meals asked if I wanted water, and I couldn’t even communicate what my answer was. It was not a fun ride. And to make it worse, no one else got sick. I think I’m just getting super sensitive in my old age.

The second day of the trip, in addition to seeing the giant sea turtle, we also visited the famous Whitehaven beach, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It was so gross and rainy when we went that we all just wore wetsuits and rain slickers. So here I am, at one of the world’s best beaches, in the terrible weather:

Here’s a view of the beach from the lookout point. You can tell that if the sun was shining, it really would be an absolutely stunning beach. It was still pretty even in the gray, but it was quite disappointing that every stop along the east coast that I’d made was reduced to a gray blotchy experience.

Once back on land at Airlie Beach I hurried back over to the hostel to grab my things before catching an overnight bus to a town called Hervey Bay. On the sail back to Airlie (which I did not get seasick during!) there must have been some sun poking through the gray clouds, because my face got slightly burnt. Never a good thing, especially in the intense Australian sun, but sunburns make you tired, and being tired is a good thing when you have an overnight bus ride ahead of you. I didn’t sleep soundly through the whole ride, but every time I looked up another hour had gone by, and to me it felt like 5 minutes. So the sunburn wasn’t entirely a bad thing…

Hervey Bay is the gateway to Fraser Island, which was my primary reason for heading there. I had a nice relaxing day in town and hanging out at the hostel, and then the next day I took my last tour in Australia (!!!!!) to the island. It’s quite an interesting place. It’s the largest sand island in the world, and is home to Australia’s most genetically pure dingo population. The water on the island is also the clearest I’ve ever seen anywhere. Here’s a photo of Lake McKenzie:

How gorgeous is that??? You can also tell that for the first time, the sun is actually shining! Even the tour guide said that this was the nicest day they’d had in months. So at least I had a bit of luck on my side for Fraser J

Another really cool spot was the shipwreck:

It was an old passenger liner that was being towed to a Japanese scrap yard when a cyclone plopped it down on Fraser’s beach, and there it stayed. It was pretty amazing though. I’ve never seen a real shipwreck, as they are most frequently found deep under the sea J The wreck was also from the 1930s, so the ship was built in the same style as the Titanic. I saw a mini Titanic wreck washed up on the beach!

Fraser Island also has a ton of amazing fresh waterways. One of the more popular ones is Eli Creek, where you can wade through a section of the water right before it spills out into the ocean.

It was beautiful. Crystal clear water, great scenery, and a little current. It was most certainly the prettiest natural lazy river I’d ever seen!

And of course, I must show you all this:

That, dear friends and family, is the LAST hostel bed that I will sleep in on this giant year-long trip of mine. That is a photo of my bed in a 4-share room at Woolshed Backpackers in Hervey Bay. The end of the line for hostel room sharing. Wooo Hooo!

Upon leaving Hervey Bay I took my last greyhound bus down to Brisbane, where I was met by my friend Shayleen from Glen Helen. Shayleen grew up in Brisbane, which meant that for the next few days I didn’t have to do any thinking. I just followed her around and never had a clue where we were going or what trains were needed. It was a nice change of pace! We stayed in a hostel above a pub called Elephant & Wheelbarrow, where we had our own room with a mini-fridge. We ended up chatting for hours at the downstairs pub where we caught the attention of a local who had come out for a quiet beer on his own. We ended up going out to dinner with him before we said farewell. I think his name was Matt. Hope we kept him sufficiently entertained!

My first day in Brisbane was pretty relaxed. We wandered around town, and went to the mall. Nothing much exciting happened, but it was nice to have a little break.

The next day Shayleen and I took the train down to the beginning of the Gold Coast to go to Dreamworld. The Gold Coast is sort of like Australia’s version of Miami… with a bit of Vegas mixed in. It’s the holiday playground area of the country. I didn’t allot any time for it on my travels since I wanted to see the sorts of things that I could only do in Australia, and the Gold Coast isn’t all that unique. But back to Dreamworld! Dreamworld is Australia’s big theme park. Yes, you can go to a theme park anywhere, but I’d never been to an Australian one before. There weren’t a whole heap of rides, but it also had a little zoo and was just overall cute to walk around. I haven’t been to a theme park in a long time, and Dreamworld filled the void. I took tons of photos such as this one:

I also bought bubble gum fudge and went on a spinny ride and got ill.  I know I’m always yapping about how old I am, but I really feel it on big amusement park rides. I don’t handle them as well as I used to. I think my days of riding the Six Flags roller coasters are about over.

The last day in the Brisbane area we went to the Australia Zoo, home of Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter. It was a beautiful zoo, probably the nicest one I’ve ever been to. Lots of animals in big enclosures, and the grounds were all immaculately groomed. The zoo is also very much about the family though, you see pictures of the Irwins everywhere you go. Here I am posing with the bronzed fam:

We went to as many shows and interactive things as we could. We fed elephants, watched tigers jump up trees and crocodiles leap out of the water. Here’s one of the tigers:

He was gorgeous. Reminded me quite a bit of J.P., only tigers are a bit bigger. We also saw lots of koalas, including one with a little joey! So cute!

And of course, the crocodile jumping out of the water going after some yummy meat…

But the highlight of the day? I finally HELD a koala! Yes! Here I am holding April.

April and I are good friends now. She didn’t want me to put her down, but other silly people needed photos as well, so we had to bid each other a fond adieu. I really genuinely think that we bonded in the 7 seconds that we were together though.

So that was the east coast! It was rainy and gray for most of the trip, but I tried to make the best of it. Shayleen was even a really good sport about me wearing mildewey clothing. She only scrunched her nose a little bit, and then did everyone a favor by spraying me from head to toe with deodorant. I tried to only pack dry things. I really did. But the weather would not allow my stuff to dry!

This is being posted from Sydney. She and I flew down to Sydney together, and now I am in the midst of making my final preparations to leave Australia behind. As I said up top, this will be the last entry actually posted from down under. How wacky is that? I really do want to write something deep and reflective, but I simply haven’t the time. I have a laundry list of things to do before I leave, so you will all just have to wait a bit longer for the deeply thoughtful post-Australia entry. For now I must focus on what is ahead! The Games of the XXXth Olympiad, France, and Rome. Too much fun stuff still to come to get sad about the end of the kangaroo and koala era.

So that’s all for now kiddies! Stay tuned. I have about 20 hours of flying to survive tomorrow, and then it’s time for The Games. I’ll be staying with my friend Suzy, who has kindly reserved her London couch and television for my sleeping and gymnastics watching needs.

But for now, Farewell Australia!!!!!!!!!!!