Is Not Chicago

The frigid waters depart Antarctica and arrives on the southern coast of Australia. And when it gets here, it’s still cold. During late spring and early summer, even when the weather calls for a swim, the water temperature might not. But since it’s winter in Chicago and summer here, I have an obligation to dive in. All I can say about it is at least it’s warmer than Lake Michigan ever gets.

Ewen, Victoria, and I departed Melbourne yesterday morning heading out along the Great Ocean Road. It follows the coast west from Melbourne through mountains, cliffs, and rainforests. There’s breathtaking scenery around every turn. Unfortunately, my camera’s battery died 3/4 of the way down the road and I left my charger back in town. Luckily, Ewen and Victoria still had their camera, so I’ll have some more photos once I can get them from them.

Tonight I’m off to see Spamalot and tomorrow it’s off to Sydney.

More photos:
(full album on Facebook)

The Twelve Apostles

We found a group of koalas napping in the trees

I’m sorry I have no incredibly funny stories to report so far. It’s been fairly tame so far, but incredibly relaxing. This is mainly due to the fact that there is little to do in Melbourne except sit at cafes and drink coffee or beer.

Yesterday, I did very little besides wander from cafe to cafe. To help illustrate my point here is my approximate schedule for yesterday:

9:30am: Wake up, eat a light breakfast, shower, etc
11am: Arrive St. Kilda beach, sit at cafe, take coffee
12pm: Walk along beach (I didn’t bring my trunks as I was warned the water would be too cold this early in the summer. That was a lie, well, at least relative to Lake Michigan).
1pm: Sit outside and eat lunch (best octopus I’ve had outside of Greece). More coffee
2:30pm: Wander around St. Kilda. One more cafe for a beer
4pm: Take the tram to Carlton, another area of town where there was probably about 50-60 restaurants in about a mile stretch on Lygon Street. Wander around Carlton. Another cafe or two.
7:30p: Meet Ewen and Victoria at the Night Market, sort of like a Chicago Street fair, but it happens every Wednesday. There’s bands and lots of great food.
10:30pm: Bars. Wednesday was a fairly quiet night at the bars, but had a great time chilling over a couple beers with Ewen.

So, as I said, nothing crazy and insane, but damn was it a nice day. Today, we’re heading up the Great Ocean Road for some nice coastline scenery.

And now for some pictures:

Melbourne Skyline

Yarra River

St Kilda Beach

More photos on Facebook 

Just to get this out of the way, Melbourne is 19 hours ahead of Chicago. Take Chicago time, subtract 5 hours and add a day.

Thanks to this nice little feature of the International Date Line, I didn’t have a Monday. Left Atlanta on Sunday evening and got in this beautiful Tuesday morning. Thanks to it being an overnight flight, I really just feel like I’ve been awake since 5am. Only it’s now a day later.

Ewen picked me up from the airport and gave me a nice drive-by tour of the city. After that grabbed some brunch and I hit the city. Checked out a couple museums (all of which were free) and wandered around the central business district, knows as the CBD. I’ll get photos up soon.

Melbourne is a beautiful city with lots of cool neighbourhoods (spell check on this computer suggested the “our”. Silly Australians), each with its own unique feel. And there’s very distinct boundaries. You cross the street and all of a sudden the trees are gone.

So far the thing that has amused me the most (besides the fact that the girls here are beautiful) is that walking down the street you can see Movember going on.

Now it’s off to the bars for the first night out in Melbourne. More to come…

In 1998 a young Jason Hanggi traveled across the sea to España with his high school Spanish class. At the time, he had no idea it would lead to a little Absenthe drinking, a penchant for international adventuring, and from time to time, speaking in the third person.

The point is, in the summer of 2008 it will have been 10 years since my first international travel (minus Canada–doesn’t count), and my passport will expire. Or so I assumed. My trip was over the summer, so my passport will be good until summer, right?

As I was registering for my Australia visa when I noticed that my passport expires in March. Not a problem, I come back in December. Crap. Wait. I remember reading somewhere NZ has some rule that requires extra months of validity on your passport after your departure date. It’s too late now to even expedite a passport renewal. Thank you parents for helping me plan that first trip and doing a good job and getting my passport 4 full months before my trip.

I look it up. 3 months. What is that? I depart NZ on December 10. Passport needs to be good until March 10. Passport good until March 26. Whew.

If I had planned this trip for two weeks later or we had been two weeks more proactive in 1998, there would be no New Zealand in my future.

Luckily that’s not the case. Tomorrow I leave for Atlanta for Thanksgiving and then Sunday, it’s off to Australia.