Posts from — October 2009

Happy Halloween! Unfortunately this post is about a week late, so I won’t actually be writing about what we did on the Halloween night. This night we spent in the plane from Vancouver to New York.

Day 47.

By the crack of ten a clock, we met David and his car by the Asian Arts museum. He had very kindly promised to drive us around the bay area, which turned out to be an excellent idea. The day was particularly gorgeous – almost no clouds on the sky. We popped by to see a wall painting by Frida Kahlo’s husband, on our way to Lombart Street, the 45 degrees street which you can only drive down in zigzag.

David took us to see the telegraph hill with Coit tower, which now a days, it’s known for the wild Parrots that have taken residence in the trees of the hill… There is a statue of Columbus by the tower, looking at the sea. Of course Columbus never reached the West Coast, but who cares…

After a short trip to the harbor and a second-hand bookstore there, we popped into a Chinese Post Office. We somehow managed to spend an hour sending two boxes home, thanks to the fact that there had been a change of regulations, which meant that we needed a residential address in San Francisco to send out the package… And the woman needed to type everything up to her machine as well. The American post will change this regulation by Christmas or they’ll definitely just die in the holidays post.

David showed us the area of the Palace of Fine Arts which I had seen on Monday, but of course it was much more impressive now, when it wasn’t pouring down rain. We fed the ducks in the pond with some white bread, but didn’t see the swans again. David then drove us by the shore enough to sneak gorgeous pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, ending the tour to one of the three Chinatowns, behind the Golden Gate Park.

We had a whole Crab for lunch, from a local, Vietnamese restaurant. David said that when he was a boy (and crew up in the area), crabs could be fished by the bay area by children… he price of one was a dollar(!). Now a days the waters are too polluted, but you can get crabs outside the bay area apparently. This was a seriously good meal, all garlicy and wonderful. Certainly the best crab, I’ve ever eaten. Huge amounts of meat inside as well…

In the evening we had a date with our lovely hosts Fred and Fia, to see the Astroboy remake, which has just been out in the cinema. My husband is a Japanese Animation expert and so is Fred, so this was a must-see-film for the foursome of us. I haven’t actually seen the original one, I am shamed to admit – but that perhaps gave me the opportunity to look at this one objectively as a child of 2009. Of course I am 28 years old woman, which doesn’t exactly make me the target audience.

I thought that Astroboy was quite moving – specially the relationship with his father, who first makes him like Frankenstein, but then abandons him. However, I did think that for this piece being released this year – there has been a lot of competition in the animation lately… And Wall-E is not that different, but it is globally recognized as the cutest Anime that has been out lately… So the bar is high. Never the less, I was entertained – would I watch it again? Well, probably if I had kids who demanded it to be in the dvd player all the time. Certainly not voluntarily on my own.

After cinema, Fred and Fia took us to an amazing Chinese restaurant, which served the most incredible garlic beans as well as fried chicken that I have tasted. We were really lucky to get a table or to get served at all since they were just going to close the kitchen in the next two minutes. However, we were once again not home to mr. Cock-up and left happily with our stomachs filled with Chinese goodness. This was our last night in San Francisco as well, so we reluctantly said goodbyes to our wonderful friends. I will certainly be missing these two a lot.

Day 46

After hopping onto the tram from Carl Street to downtown, I decided it was a good idea to get coffee. We stopped at a takeaway shop in the tram tunnel of Embarcadero. This was probably the worst coffee experience I ever had. I ordered two regulars with milk, but never received them… After fifteen minutes of standing by, I went to ask for them and got a surprised woman, who had seen me stand there for fifteen minutes without the coffee which she happily had taken money from. The coffee tasted really awful and I spilled it when walking around the harbor. Not the best morning ever.

At Pier 33, I realized that our tickets were for Friday and not Thursday, which didn’t really improve my day. I was convinced that we couldn’t get on, since they seemed to be very strict that the next ferry free was the next day. However the woman at the counter was nice enough to change the tickets for a half-an-hour later than the one we should have taken, so we only missed a little time.

It was a great mist in the crispy California air that morning, even with a sun shining through it. Once we were on board the ferry, we couldn’t see infront of us… While we were on the ferry back, two hours later though, we had brilliant visibility. That’s San Francisco weather for you.

Alcatraz is an island that has a long history, but of course it’s most famous for the thirty or so years when it served as the maximum security prison. It was also the only one of its kind back then in the time of Gangsters – 30’s to 60’s. The prison was determined at 1963 for being too expensive.

Visiting the prison is a spooky, but great experience. They have come up with an award-winning audio tour, which includes inmates talking of the time they served in Alcatraz, and they demonstrate and visualize the places where the most famous events happened. They show you where the Battle of Alcatraz started – where the inmates killed the guards, where the marines came in with hand grandees (see the holes in the floors) and where the three inmates climbed through the ventilation pipes to freedom.

Of course you’ve seen bunch of the films about this place, and at least the Sean Connery one… It’s great to stand there and feel how it must have been for these men… Alcatraz clearly was no way the place where you wanted to be. It must have been constantly cold and damp, with wind blowing through the bars, without the possibility to ever be warm. The prison was also built in a way that the inmates could see the city from their outdoors area – perhaps even hear the voices of the city. It must have been so close, yet so far.

They believe that no one ever successfully escaped the Rock. 36 prisoners were involved in 14 attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, and three were lost at sea and never found. So technically, three of them might have survived, but the chances are minimal. It’s not only that the water around is so cold that it kills your body temperature in only five minutes, but there is also loads of sharks, so the chances were very small indeed. But who knows, if you are an optimist, you can always think they did escape.

After reaching San Francisco again, we took the historic tram to Embarcadero and then went back to the corner of Carl & Cole, to look for a post office. We’ve now posted out so many packages from this trip, that we’ve lost the count of them. Some are on airmail, some on sea mail, some on surface. It’ll be a treat to get them while the long winter evenings start flying by in Finland. Our quest of the mail lead us to the hippie movement area, in Height Ashbury, which even by San Francisco standards, is a free and flower power area even now. There is plenty of small shops to buy clothes (the most weirdest clothes you might ever want), books, dvds and whatnot.

Halloween is coming and in America they take that very seriously. There is at least one costume shop in every block. There are areas to carv pumpkins in. All the weird inflatable witches that you’ve seen in the tv-series… well, they are all true. Halloween is at least a two week event for Americans… We think we’ve inherited it in Finland, but it’s no way near as mad as in here. I mean, our houses are not covered in spider webs three weeks before the actual date on the 31^st of October. Luckily my husband and I will spend that night in a plane from Vancouver to New York, so there is no trick-or-treating threat… Or is there?

We were early in Civic Centre, wouldn’t want to miss our appointment with our Asia specialist at ten. So I suggested we’ll have some coffee, which lead us into stumbling to him by the corner of the museum. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is opening a new exhibit today: The art of Siam and Burma. It all came from a private collection of Doris Day who had spent her honeymoon in that area, collecting artifacts that would have now been eaten by the climate had they been there… Instead she brought them to US and had an indoors tennis court filled with these wonderful and mystic things.

We went through the whole museum though, with our better than excellent guide. It starts off with India, Cambodia, and such and moves through China, eventually reaching Japan. Beautiful things, some of which I hadn’t seen anywhere else. For example the jug made of human skull was particularly appealing to me.

We then managed to somehow keep the interest of David, who took us for dim sum in Chinatown. This is where he crew up in, on the times when the Chinese wouldn’t be allowed to leave the area. San Francisco Chinatown is on a great place in the middle of downtown, placed on the up and down hills as can be expected. They had wanted their doors not to open to the big streets so there is a lot of alleyways, which no one cleans apparently. It was much more clean than I had ever seen in China though…

We visited a couple of temples and popped into a fortune cookie factory, in which I optimistically bought a bag of fortune cookies. The idea for those was invented in San Francisco, I bet you didn’t know that… Finally, the last item that David showed us was the god of Democracy.

China town is also filled with great shopping opportunities. My husband bought himself some t-shirts while I put my eye on a Chinese jacket, which they had in my size – this is America! I then had to drag my husband along lovely tat flee markets where I would have happily spent hours browsing all the weird and cheap stuff. The historic California line took us to Embarcadero, from where we then walked throughout the harbor area and its 50 piers.

Alcatraz cruises start from Pier 32, which is where we booked tickets for tomorrow. You can’t get them for the same day, not that I would have had any energy to go today anyways. Asian Art, Chinatown and shopping completely weared us both out and we decided to take sushi back to the flat for dinner. Sometimes it’s good to have a night in…

Day 44

We decided to check out the park next to our residence. Our friend told us that it’s a good ride if we want to experience some fun and exercise as well. It turned into a three hour walk in zig-zag. The Golden Gate park is not exactly small… It’s 20% larger than Central Park, but as you can imagine, it’s often used in similar purposes. My husband refused to go into the public toilet there… Perhaps that was for the best. We also stumbled on many needle sights as well as forests with good bushes for shagging, which clearly had taken place only hours before. Btw, those who think Golden Gate is the name of the bridge – think again, it was first the name of the whole bay…

We walked through a huge Children’s playground, a granny art house name ‘Sharon’, and came into a Shakespeare Garden. This particular part of the park was filled with benches dedicated to dead actresses. We fastly skipped the museum of Absolutely Everything, which had a Tuthankamun exhibition going on. We can see the mummies back home in London.

The park gave all kinds of experiences. There is a set of lakes with wild birds, including geese around. There is a water wall and a Japanese Tea Garden, which we also skipped because we’ve really been in Japan for almost a month and not into tea anyways. There is a huge area for Bisons, which we first thought had been taken away, but then spotted over the hill. Huge animals… There was a guy in Finland, who tried to have a Bison farm around where I used to live. I don’t think it did very well, even though the Bison can tolerate cold pretty well.

After we finally reached the Ocean Beach, we sat down to have a Thai Curry for lunch and got the tram back uphill to Carl Street. We had a dinner engagement with Fia, on the other side of the bay, which we got by taking a very exciting route with a tram and a bus over the Bay Bridge (not the Golden Gate) and its new and controversial S-curve. This bridge took something like three years to build, but they have realized that if there is an earthquake, like the 1906 anytime soon, only half of the bridge is going to survive. This means that they have a 30-year process of enforce it…

Fia and Fred have an incredible house on the other side of the bay. It’s very elegantly decorated with lovely Chinese things meeting the modern world. She had also cooked us a wonderful meal, completed with a home-made lemon jella. We also got to meet Linda and David, who are Chinese immigrants, but lived most of their lives in San Francisco. We had such fun together that David, who is now retired and one of the investors of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, promised to take us around it tomorrow. What luck we have with such amazing people!

Day 44/63

My first San Francisco day begun by a lovely walk, up one of those hills that you’ve all seen on television… Fred took us for a tour with a view point over the whole town as well as the Golden Gate Bridge. His flat where we are staying is near the University of San Francisco, Medical campus, so we visited the hospital’s cafeteria, library and whatnot. I’ll say it again, Fred is an incredibly wonderful person and listened in very closely on me and Jonathan talk about Finland and history books that you can write in our smallish country, which doesn’t have one percent of San Francisco’s culture…

I then took the cable car or ‘Muni’ to the city, to Powell Street, where the old street cars go to turn. I was meeting my friend from Finland there. He is travelling around the world vice versa way in comparison to us and by a non-planned chance at all, we shared one day in the same city. So today I spent with him.

Now the weather broadcast said: Heavy rain. But the weather looked alright, so we decided to go ahead with our original plan and rent bikes to ride for the Golden Gate. We got down to the harbor, the ferry docs and had a small look around there. It’s an incredible place as it is… And had a small lunch catching up with our travel lives. We then made it slightly further on, only to discover a huge down pour which we waited out by someone’s garage door. There was actually so much rain that the sewers completely blocked out and then had to push through rain like Geysers coming up in the middle of the road. That’s not something you expect to see every day… We have waited out the rain many times before, since we used to play outdoors tennis since we were kids back in high school. Waiting this one out was mainly just fun.

On a quest to dry out our socks, we stumbled on what happened to be the Palace of Fine Arts, originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. It’s like a huge Roman sight with pillars and lakes – a breath taking place to visit. Without the rain, we would have definitely missed it.

We decided not to give up, even though it rained for an hour. We reached the Golden Gate at 4:45pm or so and right then it pissed down rain again. There was a gift shop but the problem was that we didn’t think anything would have made it through the rain even if we’d make any purchases. After the bridge, it’s pretty much down hill to Sausalito, which was a relief… The signs and maps are not the best in the world. But we made it and were happy to catch our 5:45pm ferry back to the city. The timing could not have been better, it was magic hour and we saw not only pelicans but a seal swimming by as well. Not to mention great city views, Alcatraz views and even Golden gate views. I pretty much have pictures looking like I’ve seen most of San Francisco in one day only.

Slightly freezing, but happy, we returned the bikes to our rental shop in 4^th street, only 20 minutes to spear before closing. Despite of the rain, I recommend this to everyone. Biking is a great way to see any city, to get to places where most tourists won’t go, get some new angles for the pictures. Besides, they say it never rains in San Francisco. I am sure you have better luck than us.

Just in one day, I can say that San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world – it’s so gay that the rainbow IS the color of it (plus you can see actual rainbows along with the rainbow flags). The culture seems rich, the way the hills crumble seems unique to me and the people are very, very multieveything. Not only multisexual, but multicultural, multinational, happy to help. This is as well, a city I would happily live in.

Day 42/63

Aloha once more. This was our last day in the warmth. Now it’s North America and then home. We slept in late because we were in no hurry to see anything particular. Trip to the post office and some laundry was the range of the main missions for today. I posted off two packets of jerkey, one Kangaroo, one Crocodile. Also in the same pack is a tea plant seeds, which makes it highly unlikely to ever get through Finnish customs. But who knows, I live wildly and took the chance. The other packages contained a various of souvenirs and gifts for family as well as some of my summer clothes which sadly I feel I won’t really be needing in the October San Francisco.

We had Subway for lunch. I know what you are thinking: I am abroad, why should I have something like McDonald’s for lunch? However, having Subway in America constitutes as a local, cultural experience. It’s pretty much like back home, except you have more bread choices, you can choose a different cheese option and you have something called the ‘FEAST’ which has about EVEYTHING in it…

We then took a taxi to the Chinatown of Honolulu, which turned out to be a wide spread arrangement of shops and restaurants – pretty much what we can expect normally. Japanese playing cards and chess in the shades, a temple hanging around. We stumbled on a beauty barlor in which they gave Jonathan a hair cut. I had a pedicure while waiting. You know: Because I could! How many times are you in Hawaii anyways. I thought 14 euros for it was hardly a tough deal. And my toe nails have possibly never looked better.

We then tried our best to see the Maritime museum, but unfortunately it was closed for repair. At least we got to see the harbor with its luxury cruisers and the elderly passengers wondering around in dehydration, perhaps not seeing very much of Honolulu… Made me feel very good about taking this trip at the age of 28 and not 68. I must be one of the lucky ones.

For the last part of our day, we spent on the beach, me chasing the waves in the Waikiki shores and my husband reading a book, trying to escape from mad tourists stumbling on top of him while trying to take pictures of each other in the sunset. At least I can say that I’ve swam in the Pacific Ocean. I can see that the waves can be quite treacherous if you get in far… Fortunately, I am not a stupid Finn, I was out of the water before the sunset and ready to take some quality Granny Weapers (“Make your granny cry” is how my photography teacher describes a picture of the sunset).

Aloha Hawaii, welcome San Francisco. Now, if you’re going to San Francisco, I shall be sure to wear some flowers in my head.

This entry was written under the influence of one Maitai and one Long Island Ice Tea. No complaints considered.

(Hello and goodbye in Fiji)

Day 42/63

We decided to let the Mormons entertain us in the Polynesian cultural centre today. This involved an overly enthusiastic tour guide ‘Cousin Ken’ cheering us away for 1hour 15 minutes to the other side of Oahu, talking greatly amusing and informative stories and making us participate like we were 10 years old. As witty and happy Samoan guy as he was, we didn’t choose the extra 50dollars (on top of our 170dollars paid already) to hang out with him.

We had a peaceful tour on our own, visiting all the shows of the exhibition islands of Fiji, New Zealand, Tonga, Hawaii, Tahiti and Samoa. For someone with a good camera, this was a great opportunity to get some live-action shots of native dressed people hanging around and dancing… But yes, unless you are me or a 10 year old, there is probably more interesting places to see in the world. But not necessarily in Oahu and not necessarily in one place, neatly gathered. So well done Mormons, I was very well entertained without a drop of alcohol.

So the Fiji teaches you how to make music with bamboo sticks, the New Zealand is a whole etiquette entrance of a hut plus some of their dances, including the Haka, which is a war dance. It has now apparently become a popular entry for Rugby teams when introducing themselves on court. I say apparently, because the closest thing I get to Rugby is my mother-in-law’s spouse on Christmas shouting at the television. Anyways, you do Haka half naked and you hit your body to make noise and look dangerous. My kind of dance really, I enjoyed that.

On Tonga, you get the drums session. Sumo wrestler like man in a grass skirt and a lot of banging. However, the best part of this show was a bunch of volunteers, one of which was a Korean bloke that spoke no English what so ever. He was greatly enjoying himself while the audience took a piss of him just repeating after what the sumo man was doing. Bless.

Hawaii tells you about the instruments used for making music before the westerners came on shore around 300 years ago. These were normally gords of some sort, or shells or the nose flute. Which you cannot blow unless you have a BIG nose. There was hula dancing attached by a slitty-eyed girl of course.

Now on Tahiti, I got a tattoo, which apparently wears off (paint) and on the show they thought us how to do shake your booty dance for women and shake your knees for men. We saw the Samoan show the last, which included the highly necessary skills of making fire with sticks, opening a coconut + making coconut milk and finally, a guy climbing the coconut tree. This was all done by a very self aware Samoan Adonis, which then allowed all the women to take photographs with him.

You think the day was over? No, there was also a canoe show, dinner and the REAL show. They do try their best to please at this place and I would claim that you miss out if you don’t go and at least have a half a day. There is so much to see that they even let you come back in the next three days for free. Could be worse of a deal, I think. The dinner was a whole pig cooked in the Polynesian style at the ground and the evening show involved all the cultures showing their dancing once again and spiced up with a fire show of possibly 50-100 people on stage with torches. You are not going to see that in many places in the world.

I went back to my hotel as a happy pixie. Three memory cards full (6GB) of pictures (all in JPEGS) and happive.

Day 41/63

We got up early and checked the complimentary breakfast at our hotel the Aqua Aloha Surf and Spa. This consisted mainly of pan cakes, fruit and muffins. If I have not told you yet, the Hawaiian fruits are gorgeous and brilliantly fresh. I can’t eat raw anything in Finland, but in here it’s no problem, since they don’t have to use toxins for keeping them up until the get to Finland…

After breakfast we consulted our lobby consierge who booked us into a shuttle to Pearl Harbor. We were there about 9:30am, which meant we didn’t really have to queue very much for the USS Arizona tickets. The USS Arizona is the main sight in Pearl Harbor, consisting a 15 minute film about the events of 7^th of December 1941, trying to get the audience into the mood of about 1100 men who were killed on board. They carefully tell the story in a way, that the ‘Japanese had to attack’, because they had no choice. Where as of course there has been theories that perhaps the US knew they were coming, but did nothing so that they could later on justify their own cruelties against Japan. None of this has been proven of course.

In 1941, Japan bombed all eight battleships in Pearl Harbor bay, sinking many of them. USS Arizona was hit to its ammunition storage which blew up and made it sink so very fast that most men didn’t stand a chance. The memorial is a white capsule built on top of the underwater grave of these men, the ship itself, which they left in place. All the other battleships have been recovered/taken out of the harbor. You can see some of the bits of it from the impressive memorial, in which, you should only speak in whisper. I think this was much harder for the Americans than for us.

After the theatre and the boat trip to USS Arizona, we scampered into the USS Bowfin, a submarine that served in the WWII and managed to get through two missions to Japan sea without harm. I am scared of submarines, as I find under water excursions to be scary in general – I wouldn’t want to drown as my death. USS Bowfin is an impressive sight on its own, and we had good audio guides telling us what was going on. We saw the torpedo rooms, the four big engines and of course the quarters of the submarine men. They were luckier than most sea service men, because their life expectancy was so low that they got better food in general. Fresh fruit and vegetables were available as long as they lasted and they even had an ice cream machine. The ship had less beds than men, so when one would get off duty, he would go and wake someone up, take their bed and keep it warm.

When the submarines would sail to shore, they would hang up a flag of their conquests, which are all presented in the museum of the submarine. They had small Japanese flags calculating the ships they had sunk. Some flags have even German flags on them. The whole experience of Pearl Harbor is somewhat contradictive to me, not because my grand uncles fought on the other side, but just the feeling of late events in the world: What is a good reason to go to war? You want something so badly that it justifies killing of others…

We couldn’t visit the USS Missouri, the great big Battleship that is normally one of the main big attractions. It had been taken on dry land, I am assuming for service. Instead there was a real air-craft carrier on the Pearl Harbor bay. It had arrived three days ago. Pearl Harbor is still a major military base, which you can see of all the army men in the hotels partying on their leaves.

Later on, we went shopping in the neighborhood. I bought some tiki-tat and immediately sent it home. Not only was this a relatively cheap sending service, but they say it’ll get there in 5 days. This kind of post looks really effective in comparison to the Australian “maybe it’ll be there in three months -policy”. There is a ton of Twilight crap around and I am hoping to run into some quality TV series tat shop in San Francisco/New York.

Finally note to self: When you are deciding which size your drink/soda/shake should be, bear in mind that this is America. So ‘medium’ size means the size of my freaking head…

14^th of October.

Woke up in 16 Murray Drive, Melbourne. We said our teary goodbyes to the Tomlin family who had looked after us for ten days like their own family. Australia is FAR away… But so is Finland if you look at it from here. Then we were picked up by older Tomlins who kindly gave us a ride to the airport. As it was once again pouring down rain, it was most appreciated. It’s somehow miraculous that someone on the other side of the world would do such a great favor to us, but sometimes the world amazes – there has clearly been that up in the air in the last two weeks.

I then decided to try and figure out how long our day was going to be, and more importantly, how long was our *flight* to Honolulu. After careful calculations, I came to the conclusion that the time difference is 21 hours, (or three, depends how you want to look at it) so our day was to last 45 hours. I doubt the day will ever be longer than this. We started from the future and went back to the past. You might think that no one noticed… What does it matter which day it is? But there you would be wrong. In the evening we realized that my husband’s credit card had been canceled, because he had made the suspicious purchase of buying supermarket dinner for us in Honolulu *before* he bought a jacket in Sydney… This is what happens when you do the day twice. Better to use cash, I am telling you.

After the long airport complications and flights from Melbourne to Sydney and Sydney to Honolulu, we arrived in the past at 9:30am, on the same day as we had left. This was my first entry to America, so I was expecting a whole good two hours of customs at least. Instead, we were through in ten minutes after the plane landed – which was amazing considering that we also had bought Kangaroo and Alligator Jerkey, which qualified as a meat product and needed to be declared. They laughed and thanked us for showing the items and we were through. Seriously the quickest immigration so far…

Our hotel is the Aqua Aloha Surf and Spa near Waikiki Beach, which I chose because it had complimentary internet in the room. We were blessed to get a room at 10:30am, after which we showered and head for lunch. It’s a good feeling to be back in the warm again, even if this is our last time on the trip… We managed to burn our noses through the sun cream, thanks to the ravaging sun that points almost directly at you.

We had Japanese for lunch and headed to see Waikiki Beach, after which we decided to walk to see the ‘Iolani Palace. This was the residence of Hawaii’s king and queen in the 19^th century and the only royal (monarch) residence in American soil apparently. Two monarchs governed from ‘Iolani Palace: King David Kalākaua and Queen Lili’uokalani. We took the self-audio tour around and it turned out to be really good and informative.

The King Kalākaua was a modern man and had travelled around the world (first monarch to do so) and collected modern items such as a flushing toilet and the telephone. There was even the electrical light installed into the Palace much before European equivalents. He ruled with his queen Kapiolani, but they had no children, so when the king fell ill and couldn’t get the remedy even from San Francisco, he died and left his sister, Princess Lili’uokalani in charge. The events on her time of power were quite contradictive, because a small group of influential men in court took her out of power and enprisoned her in one of the rooms of the Palace for eight months. This was done against the current President of United States as well, but unfortunately monarchy was never re-established in Hawaii. President Clinton did a public pardon for these events of the power taken from Queen Lili’uokalani without any legal right. This was a second museum that had a very guilt-driven story to tell. Perhaps the like that around the Pasific Ocean.

As far as what I think about Hawaii after the first day: It’s clear that Waikiki is a holiday resort for tourists, which we are not accustomed to see, but in anycase welcome the constant 7-11s and cheap food. When ordering food, or paying for services, one must remember around here that 15% is the current tip. It may look like things are cheap, but add tax and tip and they are suddenly expensive. It’s also a country built for private cars. I was actually surprised to find pavements to walk on in the centre of town. We are determined to survive without the hassle of renting a car, paying for the petrol and parking as well. Not to mention the stress of reading a map. So I think we’ll try some of the tours that the hotel offers for at least Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Centre.

Day 38/63

We spent Monday by driving to Hillsville, where Tomlins family members have a big following. We also got to see the retired grandparents’ huge new place there – they moved from England this spring and were looking at downsizing… This however, is not the ozzie way, they got a huge four bedroom villa for their investment. The elder Tomlins seem very happy about their turn of life and move to Australia – they certainly don’t seem to miss Europe at all. That’s what’s going on with everyone we’ve met that have immigrated to Australia. They never want to leave and claim that they miss nothing of the poor weather Europe. There is a thought. So if you ever heard someone describe Australia as the promise land – they were not pulling your leg, mate.

We drove mainly to Hillsville to visit an animal sanctuary called ‘Healesville’, where they have got roos and other wobblies in very natural conditions. We saw a Koala dining with her youngling on her back, which apparently is very rare. The Kangaroos were a bit lazy and just slackering around, until it was food time and suddenly they were very active. We could touch them as well… Feels like a dog’s fur, for your information.

We also scouted the Tasmanian devils, which really look like small angry, black things, something like a cat, but fat. Like a mopsi, but evil. We saw iguanas, but the wombats were asleep. Echidna how ever were quite active and so was the cutest thing there: the Platypus. So many animals that I had never seen for real…

My time in Australia has been very well spent, I feel. It was weird to be in a country again, where you understand the language, where people understand what you are saying… And the culture feels somewhat familiar. Of course there would have been so much more to see, I’d love to see Uluru and Tasmania, so definitely, I’ll be back some day. When it was time to say goodbye to the Yimmlies, we were all quite sad. Ten days goes much faster than you think. Time to move on, see other continents and other adventures.

When you are travelling around the world, it’s not only your body that needs to adjust into the constant change – the mind is even slower adjuster. But I suppose that’s a good thing. These days will not escape my thoughts for many years to come, I’m sure.