Midwood Travel Blog

Stay tuned. I still have more. Just posting a few more each day.

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Robe 2010 –

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Robe 2010 –

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Robe 2010 –

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Robe 2010 –

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Robe 2010 –

Tags: Australia,beach,boats,Great Ocean Road,ocean,Robe,small towns,South Australia

February 28th…

All good things come to an end. As I type this, I'm on the flight back to Boston. It left at 8:37am, so we were up early but my internal clock is pretty screwed up so I'm not sure what time I even think it should be. It will be a tough few days getting back on Eastern time and back to the daily grind. I am looking forward to seeing our dog Nik this afternoon, and am very thankful to Dad Midwood for driving her up from Philly for us.

As I said before, this was a fabulous trip that exceeded my very high expectations. When in Australia, I really am able to 'check out' for a few weeks — no 3G service on the iPhone, the time zone makes it hard to reach people anyway, and all our cares and responsibilities are literally on the other side of the world. We're very lucky to have the opportunity to travel, and I am already counting the days (and frequent flier miles) until our next trip and the Barossa Vintage Festival 2013. But for now, it's back to reality…

(Hang in there – we still have a lot of great pictures to show you!)

Saturday February 27th…

I got up early in order to view sunrise from the Royal Botanical Gardens. The early morning light reflects on the city and on the water, and it's a spectacular sight. I had fun walking around and taking pictures. All too quickly, it was time to pack our bags and get ready to head to the airport. We took a very quick stroll by the Opera House, and a bit of a mad dash around all the souvenir shops in order to spend the rest of our Australian cash. I get a bit nostalgic when it gets time to leave – all of a sudden, I wish I had in fact bought that tacky boomerang painted with 'aboriginal art' or the bottle opener that they make from special parts of a kangaroo. (BTW, we almost came home with the bottle opener, but they want $35 for that thing!)

We enjoyed relaxing in the Air New Zealand lounge prior to the flight to San Francisco. Business class really is a great way to travel. Nice dinner, wine, fold flat bed. It's still a long trip, but certainly tolerable. For some reason, they had lots of movies that I wanted to see on the return trip, so I watched three of them and managed to get in a few hours of sleep.

Technically, we landed 5 hours before we left…we got to experience Saturday the 27th twice. The second time around, we spend the day in San Francisco. We were tired and pretty cranky. We walked quite a ways around Union Square, caught part of the Chinese New Year Parade, and had a good italian meal (complete with pasta and red sauce for Brent) at a restaurant called Credo in the Financial District.

Saturday February 27th…

We took a quick walk around Circular Quay this morning before heading to the airport. Here's a few photos of Brent in front of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House…