Travelblog

Nelson Bay [Port Stephens NSW 2005]

Firstly, accommodation, Nelson Bay - that should make sure that google finds this - never stay at Wisteria Cottage in Nelson Bay! We arrived at about 9pm and picked up the key to our rooms (called Cinderella's Slipper) in Wisteria Cottage. We tried to open the door with the key, but it wouldn't open. We tried for ages, but were a bit afraid of breaking the key, so we called the emergency number that was on the map left for us by the owners. For some reason, they thought we were stupid city folk who couldn't unlock a door and asked if we had the key in the right way round. Well - it was an old fashioned key, with a round bit at the bottom so it really only goes in the lock one way... eventually the problem was solved after they came and tried it themselves, then disappeared to get us another key... I still had trouble opening the door, but Martin seemed to be able to do it. Apart from those issues, the room/s were quite dirty, I saw 2 cockroaches (one in the sink in the kitchenette) and numerous spiders... as well as cobwebs and just general dirt! The kitchenette was tiny and without any useful cooking utensils to use with the electric frying pan and electric pot - I had planned to make omelettes one morning, but ended up making scrambled eggs with a dessert spoon instead. I also scooped ravioli out of boiling water with a tea strainer... cooking was an interesting experience.

Apart from that, the weather was very windy, and unless you like sitting on the beach in the wind, there was not a lot to do. We had booked a whale watching trip for the Sunday morning, but with winds up to 80km per hour on the water, that was cancelled - and despite having to leave a mobile number when booking, they didn't bother to call and let us know! We ended up going on a shorter dolphin watching trip which was kinda cool. We got pretty wet because we were sitting at the front of the boat, and moved pretty quickly after the first major wave hit us. We sat inside for a while after that, but we went back outside once the dolphins were spotted. They were pretty cool, although I am not sure they were enjoying the windy weather either! I ended up reading a great book - no - I am not going to start reviewing the books I read! And we ate some pretty good food...

The trip back took longer than it should have due to us searching for a factory outlet mall that we saw a sign for on the way up... we found it eventually, but I am not sure it was worth the effort...

Oh well, Nelson Bay - been there, done that!!

p.s. I've recently (February 2006) received an email from someone who had booked the Fairy Cottage - one of the other two 'units' at Wisteria Cottage. She said that she saw this travelblog entry, and despite the bad vibes she felt after reading it, her and her partner went anyway. They were a bit braver than Martin and I - after looking around they decided to call the owners and get a refund and then leave - preferring to go home rather than stay there! They found accommodation that they were very happy with (O'Carrolyns at One Mile Beach) through the information centre. I wish we had done that...

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Anaheim [North America 2005]

Apart from Disneyland, it is a little difficult to figure out what there is to do in Anaheim. Everything is so focussed on Disneyland... We hadn't really planned to do anything here other than Disneyland and see John Hiatt at the House of Blues - which turned out to be in Downtown Disney... so, I guess it is not really a problem!

I think that this is one of the best hotels rooms we have stayed in. The room is huge (but the bathroom is small!) and it is pretty cheap... and it is within walking distance of Disneyland, if you can figure out which direction to go in! Besides there is a shuttle! :-) The only sad thing about the room is that it is near an elevator and the vending machine and ice machine area. Which means it is a little noisy, however, we did ask for a room away from the freeway when we checked in... having just put up with freeway noise for 3 nights in San Diego.

Anyway, we head home tonight. I am looking forward to my own shower and my own bed and the smell of clean clothes washed with my own washing powder - funny the things that you miss!!

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Disneyland [North America 2005]

Happy 50th Anniversary Disneyland! I have to say, I had a lot more fun than I expected to here... When you weigh it up, it is pretty good value for money! We went on pretty much all the rides we really wanted to go on, except the Matterhorn, which has 2 tracks and one of them was broken, so the queue for the other side was really long and we estimated about a 2.5 hour wait... something we weren't prepared to do! I think the longest we waited was about 45 minutes for Space Mountain. We never waited for as long as the estimated wait time which is shown at the entrance to the ride. And we even did the Buzz Lightyear ride twice because it was so much fun! It was quite different to what I remember from my childhood visit - but I think I had just as much, if not more, fun!

Luckily there didn't seem to be too much of a crowd, although, there did seem to be more people arriving later in the day. Everything was very clean, there are lots of stalls to buy ice creams and drinks, and some of them even sell pieces of fruit or boxes of raw veggies to munch on... pretty advanced, hey? It is also incredibly well organised. The majority of the ride queues are hidden and this helps in 3 ways. One, you don't actually realise how long the queue actually is, two, it keeps the place looking nice and tidy, and, three, anything indoors near a ride is themed, so you start to get 'in the mood' for the ride you are about to go on... A pretty cool idea! Since the lines were fairly short, we didn't utilise the fastpass system - where you basically book in a ride for a certain time - good for those rides with really long queues. However in the name of fairness, you can only get one at a time, and if you try and get another one, it cancels out the first one... Some of the more popular rides had fastpass times of 4-6 hours away... kind of easier to just stand in line for an hour... since you do still have to line up for a certain amount of time, even with a fastpass...

We missed the fireworks, but did get to see the Disney character parade... which was something that was nothing like I remembered it since most of the movies that the characters were from didn't exist when I visited as a kid! Anyway, it was still impressive and fun to watch... although, I think the 2 guys I was with who didn't grow up on a staple diet of Disney cartoons and fairy tales didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did...

All in all a great day... we ended it by getting our gold 50th anniversary Micky (or in my case Minnie) Mouse ears with our names embroidered on them. The girl in the shop was extremely excited to meet us because we were from Canberra. She said she had been asking all her Australian customers where they were from and we were the first ones that day from Canberra. She had a friend who was from Canberra. And she even knew that Canberra is the capital! In fact, I thought she might burst! She also really impressed me - all the names on the ears are embroidered by hand. Well, on a machine but the needle is guided by the hand - or the needle stays still and the hat is moved... I thought that they were typing the names into a computer and that did the embroidery, but no, it is all freehand... so, all the little swirls and starry bits and you name is all completely original... Amazing!

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Hotels [North America 2005]

In general we have had a pretty low hit rate with hotels on this trip. Rundlestone Lodge in Banff was by far the best. Sadly there have been far too many low lights. We were pretty disappointed with Maligne Lodge in Jasper - so disappointed in fact that we only stayed one night instead of three. However, I think the absolute worst experience has been the Radisson Harbour View in San Diego. (Note to anyone reading this - if you ever go to San Diego - never stay at the Radisson Harbour View!) Firstly, Harbour View is a bit of an interesting phrase - I think a more appropriate would have been 'Highway View' or even 'See all the faces on the people in the airplane that is just about to land next to our hotel room view'. This place is terrible - not one thing went right here. Firstly we were given a room that was not ready and had to go back down to the check in counter to be given a different room. On the second morning we decided to get room service for breakfast and ordered a couple of meals without the bacon, so they were vegetarian (I even used the word vegetarian on the phone when ordering). When they were brought up, the guy obviously knew they were wrong as he pointed out that there was actually bacon on the eggs benedict. He was probably hoping that we would say that was ok. Instead we sent it back and then called them when we realised there was also bacon on the breakfast burrito that Martin ordered. when it came back, there were also 2 orange juices on the tray which we assumed were complimentary to make up for the bacon in our meals... however when we received the pre-check out bill, we realised that we had been charged $40 for the privilege of that breakfast... something we certainly queried. At which point the nice guy behind the desk (who I think could tell that we were really annoyed - we emanated rays of annoyance!) decided to deduct $20 plus the tax of $8.30 from the bill. So, we ended up paying about $12 for that breakfast! Nice of him to do that, but still...

On top of all of those problems, the shower ran cold half way through, then was too hot when you turned the water up slightly, the room attendants vacuumed outside our door when we still had the 'do not disturb' sign out, the bed was short sheeted, the pillows were horrible and we had to fight with the front desk when the vending machine took my $1.50 and didn't give me a drink! Also, the staff, who have a lift of their own - marked service lift - staff only, insisted on using the guests lifts, seemingly every single time we got in it. In particular as we were on our way down to put our bags in the car before checking out, there were us with 2 largish suitcases and 2 other people in the lift. The lift stopped on the 9th floor and the friendly staff member with a largish linen trolley insisted on making us all move out of the way so she could fit in and go down 3 floors. I have only one thing to say - service lift - staff only! If I ever have to stay here again, I will be using the service lift - the staff don't use it, so it will be much quicker! On the positive side, the noise of the traffic drowned out the noise of the planes landing. Oh, how I long for the comforts of home. My own bed, my own pillow, nobody vacuuming at stupid times when I need some sleep, and more than one room, so that there is space and the potential that one person can sleep while another person does something else and doesn't wake them up. I can also eat and drink whatever I like, whenever I like and not pay exorbitant amounts of money for doing so...

Oh well, only one more hotel to go... how bad can it be????

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San Diego [North America 2005]

After spending the night in LA, we picked up our car and headed to San Diego. People mentioned that the coast road is a nicer drive, however, the Neverlost fairy was not having a bar of that idea! She wanted us on the freeway, no matter what. So, we tried ignoring her and navigating by map - a little difficult when the map doesn't go all the way to San Diego! We did drive along the coast road for a little while, but being a Sunday, every man and his dog (literally) were at the beach, which meant the coast road was quite a slow drive. We decided to accept the Neverlost fairy's point of view and headed back to the freeway... At one point we hit 80 miles per hour on an 8 lane (in each direction!!) freeway absolutely filled with traffic... At another point, the five lanes of traffic stopped completely... Doing that drive was one of the most nerve wracking, exciting, terrifying and exhilarating things I think I have ever done... Martin, as co-pilot, was helpful, checking lanes for cars etc, but did say at one point he was glad I was driving and not him! It is good that we have different talents - his is city driving, mine is reckless freeway driving!

One very strange thing I have noticed about San Diego - people do not look very happy... people working in shops where the tourists go are all happy and helpful and say they love it here, however, people that I walk past on the streets don't look happy... I don't know whether they are locals or tourists... and they don't necessarily look sad... but they certainly don't look happy! And this was people downtown, not people in the area near our hotel where there is a (high-rise) prison, Aladdin's bail bonds, and numerous homeless people!

I think I am happy to leave San Diego. It was more than disappointing that the hotel was crappy and a fair distance from downtown, I think if we had stayed somewhere else, it would have been a different experience. However it was fun - we did some interesting stuff, saw a good concert (check out BCG reviews!) and ate some pretty good food! I think I am also at that stage in the trip, where it is almost at the end, and I just don't have the same enthusiasm any more... oh well, one more hotel, a few more days and a long flight then we are home!

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Tijuana [North America 2005]

Yet again, this is a place I visited a number of years ago when I was here as a kid, so I thought it would be kind of cool to go back. Plus I would really love to do some travelling around Mexico at some point, and I thought that this might be an opportunity to show Martin that this is not as scary as it sounds! Sadly, I don't think Tijuana is a good cross section of Mexico as a travel destination!

We parked on the US side of the border and caught the shuttle to down town Tijuana. We wandered up and down a few streets, had a quick bite to eat and then walked back across the border. That's right - we didn't stay very long! The shops are kind of cute, well they have some cute things in them, however, almost every single shop has at least one person standing out the front telling you to go inside - 'looking is free'! Some of these people get quite aggressive. More than once I was pointed at and told to 'go inside' or 'you look here now!'. Frankly I don't respond well to that kind of 'marketing' and consequently we only really looked in shops where we were not hassled. This meant we only looked in a couple of shops - not that it was such a big problem - most of them sell the same stuff!

One thing that made me a little sad was the poor donkeys who were standing in the heat that you could have your photo taken with. They had stripes spray painted on them - not sure why you would want a donkey to look like a zebra in Mexico - but that seems to be the trend! They also had a number of blankets and saddles and other things on them - they must have been so hot. They all seemed to have a buckets of food, but I didn't see any water... Anyway, one of the guys trying to sell us a donkey photo, offered us the following phrase with an incredibly Aussie accent - 'take your photo mate?'. We were more than a little surprised and it gave us a good laugh!

Well, Martin didn't enjoy Tijuana much - me either, but I guess I was a little more prepared than him! However, when I asked him on the way back to the hotel if we could go to Mexico at some point in the future, he said maybe - which is an awful lot better than no!

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Sea World [North America 2005]

Sea World! I was here as a kid more years ago than I care to remember, but I do remember it being a lot of fun! I love watching the animals at these places, and this was no exception... the dolphin and killer whale shows were awesome, they are the most amazing and beautiful creatures - it would be so very cool to work with those animals. We went to the penguin encounter twice. Mainly because there was a penguin shop and we wanted to add to our penguin collection, but didn't want to carry them around all day, but also because watching the penguins was really cool! There was a moving walkway thing that you stood on to watch the penguins, but there was also a place at the back where you could simply stand and watch. The first time we went on the moving walkway, but the second time we stood at the back and just watched - for ages... there was this one penguin who just seemed to be going nuts. He was swimming really fast and jumping out of the water, kind of like a dolphin, we decided that he was the 'look at me, look at me penguin'! One thing I never knew about penguins is that they just jump straight out of the water... they swim up to a bit of land (well, ice, I guess) and then jump straight up out of the water and land on the land... kind of freaky to watch!

Well, overall it was a fun day. There are lots of people who go to these places and it seems that none of them are self aware enough to make sure they stay out of other people's way. Especially people with wheel chairs or prams/strollers... these are not weapons people! And you really should push them with your eyes open!

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Flights [North America 2005]

Well, only the big flight left to go... (well the big one and another little one!) Martin asked me if I still love to fly and the answer is yes. Stick me in a huge bullet-shaped metal thing with a tail, wings and a few engines and I am very excited... I don't really like anything smaller than a Dash-8 though - I absolutely hated the gondola/tramway/chairlift things up the mountains - they scared me silly, especially the first one. Going up the mountain is bad, coming back down was ok - I don't understand why! I have never been in a helicopter, so I don't really know how I feel about those... Anyway - the point of this - every time we go on a trip we have an 'incident' when flying... This time, we actually managed to not get onto one of our flights - which meant we missed our planned connecting flight. However, it ended up working out ok. The reason we missed our flight? Well, USA-Canada is international and you are supposed to be at the airport 90 minutes before flight time. We didn't read that and got there 70 minutes ahead of flight time. Check in time cut off was 45 minutes before the flight, and we missed that by a mere 5 minutes. It was most annoying! But it worked out in the end - we didn't have to overnight in Vancouver (where there were no hotel rooms anyway!) and got into Banff at 3am - which meant we woke up in a mountainous wonderland! I am kind of glad that we didn't see all the mountains as we drove in - it made it more special to see it all first thing in the morning and to realise that we were somewhere so amazing!

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Calgary [North America 2005]

We are in Calgary for a day longer than planned. This is not necessarily a bad thing - at least we know in a bigger city that there is some variety of veggie food. After we arrived and checked in, we wandered up the the 8th Avenue shopping district and did some shopping... I put 13 rolls of film in for developing - yes 13 rolls, all taken in less than 7 days!

I have decided that if I lived in the Rockies I would probably get claustrophobic... all those mountains, everywhere you look all the time - no clear skies anywhere... it was almost a relief when we hit the highway outside of the National Park! Apart from that, if you lived there, you would start to take the beauty for granted... I would hate that. Travelling also makes me realise how beautiful Australia is and I have decided that I would really like to go to the Northern Territory and see Uluru... have to start thinking about that when we get back!

Got all my rolls of film back - in each roll there is at least half a dozen stunning images. I am incredibly pleased at how they turned out - a much better result than last year at Niagara Falls when my films got zapped by the baggage x-ray machines... Calgary is a nice enough town, but there isn't really too much to do. It would be ok to use as a base to do things that are a couple of hours drive out of Calgary itself, but we had done a lot of driving, so weren't really keen to do much of that...

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Lake Louise [North America 2005]

Since we decided that Jasper was not the place for us, our options were to head back to Banff for another night or spend a night in Lake Louise. We decided to stay in Lake Louise at the place where we had dinner the other night - at least we knew we could eat there... it wasn't the most exciting night of the trip, but the hotel room was far nicer than the one at Jasper and we managed to spend two and a half hours doing some washing... those dryers were really not fast at all...

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Icefields Parkway [North America 2005]

The trip to Jasper via the Icefields Parkway was a beautiful clear, sunny day. The trip back to Lake Louise was dreary, wet, cold and rainy. However, that meant we got some truly spectacular scenery with the clouds gathering below the peaks of the mountains and the rain and the snow... yes snow... I am sure it snowed overnight and possibly during the day - it did hit 5 degrees at about 4:00 in the afternoon... we stopped at a couple of places on the way back that we didn't stop at on the way up, including Athabasca Falls and Tangle Falls - the second being more memorable for the Bighorn Sheep that were across the road from them than for the falls themselves! The serious rain made driving a real effort - remembering to stay on the correct (wrong) side, trying to see the line down the middle of the road and keeping an eye on all the idiots who felt that 110km/h was simply not fast enough on those conditions, as well as all the more cautious people who felt that 50 in a 90 zone was more appropriate... thank goodness for co-drivers! We stopped a couple of times by the side of the road to take some photos and I think it may have all been worthwhile... I'll let you know when the films are developed!

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Jasper [North America 2005]

Jasper is meant to be a less touristy town than Banff. Maybe they try to be, but I think that since it is smaller and there are less tourist focussed shops etc, that the tourist concentration is just higher than Banff... at least in Banff it is spread out and there is a focus! We spent less than 24 hours in Jasper - for a few reasons... one was the hotel we booked was really awful... not at all what the pictures on the web site had promised... secondly was that it was next to impossible to find veggie food... and we looked pretty hard - most restaurants had one thing on the menu, but it wasn't very exciting... and thirdly, since we are not hikers, there really isn't a huge amount to do at Jasper. We did check out a couple of lakes and go up the mountain on the tramway - that was 'fun'! It was 2 degrees (Celsius) at the top of the mountain and zero visibility! We were warned when we bought the tickets, but we were also told that it could clear and had cleared a little in the few minutes before we bought the tickets... we decided to do it anyway, and it was kind of cool to be all that way up and just have a cloud of nothingness beneath you, where you literally could not see anything! We sat at the top for a while to see if the cloud would clear, but it didn't so we decided to head back down to the car and drive the Icelands Parkway back to Lake Louise where we had decided to spend a night before heading to Calgary a day early... Oh, by the way - never stay at the Maligne Lodge...

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