Airlie Beach

So starts the “miles and miles of gorgeous beach” portion of our roadtrip. After leaving Lucinda, we stopped in Townsville, about an hour south.

Then we continued our drive south – lots of pretty coastline, tiny towns, and cool bridges.

Airlie Beach

First things first, Vince loves to feed animals. When we arrived at our holiday park, the first thing we did was check out their “Daily bird feeding” at 4:00. In this case, the well-fed birds are rainbow lorikeets.

Airlie Beach (in the Whitsunday area) is stunning coastline with lots of green:

We went on a hike one day - it was green and lush, with a completely empty beach at the end of it.

Here’s the thing about empty white beaches in the northern part of Australia: You shouldn’t go on them because there are giant 30-foot crocodiles around. Our friend told us NOT to be the news-making stupid American tourists who ignore the signs and die a gruesome death… So we didn’t ignore the signs and went on our way.

(Loosely translated, this Australian sign means "Stay behind the railing at that look-out. Look, it's just over there on your right. These crocs are big, hungry, and not messing around. Have a nice day." Ok, I made the nice day part up.)

Kuranda to Lucinda, Fe-Fi-Fofinda

After 5 days in the tropical, backpacker haven of Cairns, we picked up our silver Toyota Yaris from Hertz. We got a great rate (even the Hertz agent was surprised) through some random website online and found the car to be great, even though one backpack and messenger bag took up the whole trunk. And so began our journey south along the East Coast of Australia on the wrong side of the road. It took a little getting used to, mainly where to look and making sure to take wide right turns, and those traffic circles are tricky enough on their own.

Toyota Yaris, the little hatchback that could!

We decided to take a loop that took us first north, than inland, before heading back south and out to the coast again. One of Vince’s goals of the visit to Australia was to hold a Koala.

Mission accomplished! In a town called Kuranda, there is a great local market and a Koala Park. This furry creature of the eucalyptus is Princess, a 5 years old sweetheart. Found out that koalas are heavier than they look, their fur is thick but fairly soft, they have sharp claws, and they are as docile as advertised. It was fun to interact with Princess, especially because they usually look like this:

The Koala Park also had other animals including alligators, wombats, long-necked turtles, lizards (including the furl-neck lizard), and a snake house where you walk on an open platform with snakes right below it and above you in trees; not so safe according to us.

There was also a pen where you could get up close and personal with grey kangaroos, wallabies, and pademelons. They had a bucket you could reach into and hand feed the animals. We discovered that their favorite is carrots and wallabies have sharp little claws that they grab your hand with to get a better angle at the food.

From there we journeyed into the Atherton Tablelands, which is a large area of rolling green hills, pastures, and forests.

Within the Atherton Tablelands is the Waterfall Circuit that is a series of falls a short distance away from each other. We saw the three main ones along a connecting road off the main highway.

Millaa Millaa Falls. This is the most famous of the falls that is the namesake of the Millaa Millaa area. In front of the falls is a swimming hole that was too cold for our taste.

Zillie Falls. The viewing platform for the falls is from above, so it’s hard to tell from the picture that this waterfall is actually quite tall.

Ellinjaa Falls. The water cascades down over a series of lava columns, creating this awesome visual.

This area is also the largest sugar cane growing region of Australia. This is a sugar cane train and throughout the drive you have to be on the lookout for them as you’re constantly crossing their narrow train tracks.

The view from our room in Lucinda made the trek out there well worth it. Our directions were a little off and there were some narrow and curvy roads out there. Lucinda is the essence of a tiny town: a few scattered houses, 1 hotel, 2 restaurants, 1 bar, and 1 convenience store. In the distance to the right is Hinchinbrook Island, a huge Island that hugs the coastline.

The nearby ‘big’ town is Ingham where there is this small wetlands preserve with a nice boardwalk and viewing tower. There were lots of birds, none of which we could identify.

5 minutes from where we stayed is the Lucinda Jetty, which is a 3.5 mile long, covered conveyor that transports raw sugar out to a loading platform for large shipping vessels. We didn't stay long because there were signs warning us of crocs on the beach.

Who Cairns?

That’s the lively bar & restaurant that had a $10 meal deal, beer included. Which is a great deal in Australia, where a single beer (in any pub) can easily set you back $9.

We spent 5 days in Cairns, before we picked up the car to begin the epic roadtrip. The main draw of Cairns is the Great Barrier reef… so let’s start there.

Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is breath-taking… It’s the largest living thing on earth, and the only living thing that can be seen from space. We spent an unbelievable day going out to “the Pinnacles.” Once there, we had 4 hours to snorkel and to visit Green Island. Here’s the boat we were on (the smaller one in the foreground) -

I'M ON A BOAT! in a huge sun hat.

Here’s Green Island, where the boat was moored for the day, about 2 hours out to sea. It's an uninhabited sand island that has grown rainforest on it. It also has a pool in the middle of it, which is a little silly since the island is surrounded by clear, 80-degree water. We saw sea turtles there.

We don’t have an underwater camera, so I have to improvise with stock pictures of the Great Barrier reef. We saw thousands of colorful coral formations and thousands of colorful fish, including parrot fish & clown fish.

This was the view of the coastline on our way back to shore – gorgeous end to the day.

Cairns Royal Botanic Gardens
One glorious morning, we took a long walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens. Every city in Australia has amazing Royal Botanic Gardens that are free, unbelievably maintained, and simply spectacular.

There were lots of butterflies out that day - again, there's really colorful life in northeastern Australia.

Otherwise, we spent a lot of time in Cairns at the internet café, working on Tweets By Us and booking the next few weeks.

They had a Christmas tree in the center of town, which made me happy.

Sydney, just like America, but cleaner

The upside of travelling across the globe using frequent flyer miles is it’s free. The downside is that there can be 3 layovers and 40 hours of travel time. We flew on Lufthansa from Istanbul to Munich (opposite direction of Sydney) and then to Dehli. In Dehli, we had a 6 hour layover, which we were glad to have had since their transfer system was crazy. Instead of getting off the plane and going to your next gate, you go to a transfer desk where there is an agent that has to get you a boarding pass. We were a bit worried we’d miss our flight because there was a group of mostly French travelers who had barricaded themselves in front of the transfer desk. Apparently they had missed their flight and had been waiting for a solution for over 24 hours. Don’t piss French people off, they are good at complaining. We felt sorry for them because the transfer desk people were pretty inept and wouldn’t tell them what was going on. In our case, some guy took off with our passports, and after several times asking when he would return (the answer was always 30 minutes), he thankfully came back after 3 hours. The flights on Thai Airlines to Bangkok and then to Sydney were great, good meals and in-flight entertainment.

We landed in Sydney and hopped on a train that took us a medium sized walk away from our accommodations in a neighborhood called Kirribilli, which was right across the harbor from the Sydney Opera House. Our first impressions of Sydney was how clean and how lush it was. The weather was amazing and you don’t know how much you appreciate English speaking countries until you haven’t had it in 3 months, especially with their silly Aussie accents. Some of our favorite phrases are ‘brekky’ for breakfast, ‘G’day mate’ (they actually say that, minus the ‘mate’), ‘Mackers’ for McDonald’s, ‘Sunnies’ for sunglasses, and ‘How ya goin’. Sydney is so nice, we would highly consider living here if it weren’t so far from friends and family. And the fact that Australia is crazy expensive given that the Aussie Dollar is so strong now.

There was a ferry stop conveniently located down the hill from where we were staying. Here is a shot of the Sydney Bridge from the ferry on our way to Circular Quay, the main terminal. Their ferry system is pretty extensive, kind of reminded us of Venice.

We walked around the city and ended up in Darling Harbor, which is a really nice area around the water with shops and restaurants. This picture is taken from a bridge that spans the harbor and that the monorail runs overhead on.

This is a war memorial in Hyde Park, pretty interesting with its art deco style. There are war memorials everywhere in Australia and we were told that they have the highest per capita war memorials of any country. They mostly center around WWI, where the Australians were heavily involved, especially in Gallipoli where they fought the Turks.

In the foreground is a really nice fountain, and in the back is St. Mary’s Cathedral, it is a pretty massive church, but so modern compared with what we saw in Europe.

Going south from Hyde Park towards Sydney Harbor is a row of some of the older, original buildings of Sydney. They include the customs house, the Rum Hospital (named because the group that built had done so in exchange for a monopoly on the Australian rum trade), and the pictured building ‘The Barracks’, which was effectively a prison for incoming convicts from Britain. Nearby is also the New South Wales parliament, where we sat in on a live session. Very much like British parliament where people are yelling, booing, hissing, and making disparaging remarks during speeches and presentations. It’s even more comical in person.

The Royal Botanical Gardens is one of the nicest parks we have ever visited, and it’s free! It is right in the city and includes many different areas and immaculately maintained gardens that display a range of vegetation, including this plant filled glass pyramid. It also had…

Many flowers, which we stopped to smell…

Desert plants and succulents…

Birds of all sorts, and bats aka flying foxes, which we saw flying after the sun went down…

And amazing views of the harbor and city.

We got close up to the Opera House, which is actually three buildings, one small reception hall, the Opera, and the Ballet. The architecture is so unique and the setting out on the Harbor is amazing. Throughout our travels, after finding out we were Americans, people asked if we were here for Oprah, who filmed a couple episodes at the Opera House. She is huge down under and was the biggest story on the news.

We made it out to Bondi Beach, which is a large, crowded crescent shaped beach about 30 minutes outside of downtown Sydney. It is a backpacker haven with a bunch of shops along the water. The weather was hot, but the water a little too cold.

Summary #3: 2 weeks in Turkey

Turkey gets its own summary?! It’s an outrage! We were only there for 2 weeks, and both other summaries (Summary #1 & #2) were each for a 6-week period. Throwing in a 2-week summary is inconsistent – it’s chaos! It’s throwing a wrench in this whole Summary System. I’m going to lose sleep over this.

Well nevermind, that’s just the anal retentive (I like to think “methodical”) side taking over for a bit, nobody’s losing sleep over this (painfully short) summary. Turkey gets its own short summary because it’s a whole different animal. (No pun intended - Or was it?) It doesn’t fit with Europe, and it definitely doesn’t fit with Australia. So it gets its own.

So here is Turkey, by the numbers:
- 1 country, 1 currency, 1 extremely difficult language
- 4 cities (Istanbul, Ephesus, Bergama, Izmir)
- 0 Thefts, pickpockets, stolen organs, moped-vs-pedestrian accidents, or carpets purchased.
- 25 doner kebabs
- 8 cups of fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice
- 2 bee stings
- 183 stray cats (+/- 50)

Observations, Opinions, & Gross generalizations:
It was really cool to walk through the streets of Istanbul, with a completely different skyline, surrounded by unfamiliar language, sights & sounds than I’ve ever heard or seen. The buildings are ancient… Sultans, palaces, harems, and yes, Turkish prisons – are all a part of the history and the landscape. There was quite a bit of “mystique” - I often felt like I was in someone else’s shoes, or on the set of some foreign movie.

Turkey is by far the most “foreign” place we have been to on these travels. Here are some examples of what I mean:
- The language is by far the most difficult that we’ve encountered. We could pretty easily learn a few key words and phrases (or more) in German, Italian, Polish, Czech, and even Hungarian. However, it took us the entire 2 weeks to learn “thank you” in Turkish (and efforts to learn other words were futile). We were still being corrected about “thank you” on our last day (incidently, it’s “teshekur ederim” – but apparently not said quite how it looks).

- The architecture & decoration is like nothing we’ve ever seen. The intricately painted colorful tiles, the intricate carpets, the intricate carvings over windows and doors… it was all new to us. And intricate. Minerets and mosques are around every corner, and dot the skyline.

- There is the Muslim call to prayer 5 times a day. We could hear it anywhere we were, indoors or outdoors, and it was coming from multiple minarets, echoing through the city. Another very different sound from what we are used to – but we got pretty used to it in a couple of days.

- Vince mentioned it in his Istanbul post – the culture around buying/selling is very different. Prices aren’t always posted, and when they are not, people are quoted very different prices, generally not favorable ones for the blonde, foreign, or female among us. And then the Haggling ensues. A rather annoying and disadvantageous process to me (I like to shop around and find the best scarf at the best price, unbothered – impossible with this system). Vince liked it, I didn’t.

- Sales people, restaurant staff, people we encountered every day – have a very aggressive way about them (see “gross generalization” in the title if you feel offended by any of these gross generalizations). My habit of window-shopping and even “general looking around” had to come to a complete end in Turkey. Sadly, I had a more comfortable experience when I just kept my eyes down and forward.

- On the other hand, people also tend to be extremely hospitable, far beyond the call of duty. Hotel staff was extremely helpful, the free breakfast (included at every hotel) was incredible – olives, feta, tomatoes, bread, cheese - Yum. One particularly generous bus driver shared his oranges with us.

All in all, I loved seeing some of Turkey, and getting a peek at the whole “East meets West” mystique. I can’t say enough about the food and architecture. I must also admit that I was way out of my comfort zone for almost the entire time we were there (outside of our hotel). I think it was the aggressive nature of the culture, and the entirely male-dominated service industry (we never saw a female working in any shop, restaurant, or bus station. Not one). To clarify, I didn’t feel that I was in danger, I just felt extremely and obviously foreign… and female. I didn’t let poor Vince leave my side for a second. I believe that Turkey was the first time in my adult life that I’ve been silent and clingy. And most of you may never see that again - unless we all go to Turkey.

That being said, I think it's good to get out of the comfort zone, and I intend travel outside my comfort zone again.

Ephesus & Bergama: The Ancient Cities

After Istanbul, we went to Izmir, a good location close to both Ephesus and Bergama. More about Izmir later, Ephesus & Bergama are the good stuff.

Ephesus

Ephesus is a city that goes way back in history – It’s been inhabited since 6,000 BC, and was more recently a Greek city and Roman city. It was the secondary capital of the Roman Empire and the 2nd-most populated city in the Empire (and in the world) in the 1st Century BC. Most of the buildings and ruins that we visited and read about were built between 100 BC and 400 AD. It is a city with great historical and religious significance. Anyone heard of the Letters of Paul to the Ephesians? That’s the Ephesus… He lived there from 52 to 54 AD, and was imprisoned there for a little bit. Also, it is believed that Mary went to live in Ephesus after the death of Jesus, and “Mary’s house” is just outside the city – a small stone house, a very popular and expensive tourist draw. However, the house dates back to the 6th-7th Century AD. We did not visit the house; however, it is plausible that Mary lived in Ephesus in the later part of her life.

Now for the things we did see… The city is huge, it took us all day to walk through it. What’s amazing is that only 15% of the city has been excavated.

The Church of Mary:

The church was built around 400 AD. The First and Second Councils of Ephesus were held in this church (in 431 and 449 AD).
It is a huge structure with columns, archways, and some intact features like Latin-carved stones and a baptismal fount.

The Roman Road:
This is the main road that led into Ephesus. It’s extremely impressive, paved in marble, with ornate columns lining the road. Of religious significance, statues of the 4 gospel writers used to stand on tall columns on either side of the road.

The Amphitheater: So, this is where it all went down – St. Paul made a famous speech here, telling the Ephesian citizens to abandon their Greek gods and convert to Christianity. This incited a riot, and he left the city soon after. Later (during Constantine’s rule), the city converted to Christianity with the Roman Empire. The amphitheater was built around 200 BC and was enlarged and renovated until about 400 AD. It held 25,000 people.

Library of Celsus:
This is the piece de resistance. It was built in 125 AD and held 12,000 scrolls. It faces east so that morning light would filter into the reading rooms. Here are a couple of pictures of the detail:

The “main street”
This is the main street where the homes and businesses were located – another original Roman marble-paved street.

Gates at the road:

A few temples, shops, and houses along the street:

A mosaic floor!

There is a much smaller (but still impressive) amphitheater at the other end of the city:

Bergama (Pergamon)

We never would have heard of, or thought to go to Bergama, had we not been the The Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The entire museum in Berlin was built with the sole purpose of displaying the stolen (er, relocated) remains of the “Alter of Zeus”. (And it now houses many rooms of other “relocated” treasures from all over the world.) We were so impressed at the museum in Berlin that we put a new travel destination on the list: Bergama.

Unlike Ephesus, Bergama is still a bustling, working/living town. There is one area that hasn’t been rebuilt, and that is the “public” legislative area of the city called The Pergamon. This is where the ruins are all located.

The Red Basilica
At the base of the big hill is The Red Basilica. It was built in the 2nd Century AD for the worship of Egyption gods (popular in the Roman Empire at the time). The Church of St. John the Apostle was built within the walls during the Byzantine Empire, and now a mosque is within the large tower.

The Amphitheater
No Roman town would be complete without an amphitheater… This is Bergama’s. It was constructed in the 3rd Century BC and could hold 10,000 people. It is much steeper than any other we have seen, as it was built into the side of a hill.

The Temple of Trajan:

Archways under the temple:
These archways form the foundation of the temple.

And when you looked out to the side, there was a steep hillside and view of the town in the distance:

And… finally – this is the former site of the Alter of Zeus:

Here’s the Alter of Zeus, which, unfortunately, now sits in Berlin. The sheer size, and the amount of detail in the carving are incredible.

Izmir:

A few words about Izmir, the city where we stayed for a few nights in order to do these long day trips. It is a very large city, and definitely Way off the tourist track. It’s a loud city, with loud traffic, loud people, and pungent pollution. In the city, Vince and I were the only (obviously) non-Turks we ever saw (We did see other non-Turks on the buses to the other cities, but never in Izmir), so it offered an experience which was probably very… authentic. One day, we stumbled upon the Sunday markets – it was really crowded for blocks & blocks.

The waterfront was pretty and there was a small clock tower:

There wasn’t much else to do there (and I was in dire need of hearing someone else speak English), so we went to see “Eat Pray Love”. Not nearly as good as the book (as always), but entertaining.