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.:. 10 australian trip.:. |
1. rugby tickets are being bought
2. spending a week in auckland, nz
3. cooper's here i come
4. checking out the wedding pics
5. bridge climb baby
6. c mitch will not buy you a kangaroo
7. ready for the 60s, that isn't winter its our spring
8. lord of the rings was filmed near mount cook
9. star wars 3 better be filming so i can meet natalie portman
10. dee way and circular key, no, dee why and circular quay
2003 july 30i am finally back in sweet home chicago. after spending over 48 hours in airports, taxis, and in airplanes i am finally back in chicago. i was greated by a nice suprise in la. as mitch and i were sitting around getting ready to check into our flight home who comes up to us? my dad! to my suprise he was working in the la area and decided to come up to try and find us. it was great to go out to lunch with him and a fellow worker named bryan. after that thought we had to wait around another couple hours to fly home.it is nice to be back but i have a lot to do. lets see there is the finding a job thing, cleaning my room, and getting a long needed haircut. a happy birthday to lynn and andrew powers! also if you want to check out what happened last month check the june archive. coming soon i am going to create a site for all the pictures and logs of the trip. 2003 july 28 DAY-50it is the end my friends, yes the end. today is our last full day in the lovely oz region. this morning we went to the top of the sky tower to check out the amazing view. it is taller than both the eiffel tower and center point. i thought it was an interesting fact so i figured i would share it with you. it has been 2 months of pure fun with no dull moments. i am happy that i missed all the rain the has poured over chicago the last few weeks. not to rub it in but it has been nothing but blue skies and sunshine out here.tomorrow we will say our good bye to this lovely strech of land. it is sad to think i might not be back here for a little while. oh well knowing me i will be back in australia asap. for all of my readers that have tuned in to check out our great journey thank you, and tune it i have to get a real job when i get home. i must also thank a lot of people for making this trip happen (yes this will be like winning an oscar). tj and renae you deserve the most praise for letting us basically live with you for a month and few weeks. i love ya both and will see ya soon, go wallabies! thank you stacy and tony for hanging out with us for a brief evening and thanks for the good beer. i hope to see you soon and hang out longer. thank you for taking a picture with me holly jean. thank you goes out to the jo anns who without their travel guidance we would have gone no where. thank you to my father who basically arranged our great flight and a cheap lay over in nz. also thanks for the free tickets to la and back, again without that we are still sitting in rainy chicago. thank you mom for always answering my calls even when they woke you up. thank you to craig's parents for letting him come all this way. it would have been boring to do this thing by my self. thank you to all the great people who fed us along the way. the powers family, you are the best thank you. our friend erin from penrith thank you so much for feeding two traveling kids. thank you to carmel for feeding us one great meal and thanks to simon and simone for letting us into their home even though they were not there. thank you to the nrl without you life would have been straight up boring! thank you to all the transit people throughout australia for putting up with 2 americans stupid questions. thank you to paul and christina for giving us a lift to the wallabies game, you are great australians. thank you to justin and angie for the potato wedges! thank you to nemo, i found you swimming in the aquarium and will report it to the officials that you are not lost. thank you damien for leading us up the bridge and back down in one piece. thank you to the kind staffs of air new zealand and also quantas (no thanks to southwest serve me a meal!). thank you to ron jeremy or ron hyatt the rap producer, you kicked our trip off with a laugh. thank you to all the doormen that allowed me in to places and kept craig out! thank you to larry, you look great! to the folks at the footy show without you life would have sucked. matty johns you are the greatest come do a show in america, and please folks bring back the biff! if you are still reading this thanks. thank you to all our tour guides! thanks to mary kate and ashely olsen for making a great film our lips our sealed. with out you i would have never been humiliated in public, oh ya dee why is not a crap beach!!! thank you to all the australians and kiwis you are lovely people and all americans should come spend their money here. thank you also to the 52 year old that hit on me at the fortune of war. thank you to all bartenders who carded craig to make sure he was 18 (yes folks he is 21, 22 in a month!) thank you the fallowing beer makers: coopers sparkling ale, victoria bitter, tooheys new and old, hahns premium light, lions red, melbourne bitter, cascade, carltons cold, xxxx (yes its a beer, say 4 x with me kids). thank you to the fallowing wine maker, jacobs creek (better than the tv show staring dawson). thank you to the fallowing hard alcohol people, bundaberg rum (get a bundy at the bar only 6 dollars!). legal notice: danny does not condone the consumpution of alcohol under the legal age of what ever country you are in!!! (katie and sean no booze for yous!). thank you to the fallowing musically acts: delta goodrem (get well soon), sophie monk, candice alley. thank you all i love ya kids! 2003 july 27 DAY-49tj you were right the wallabies were bad last night. at least they solved some of their problems such as the throw in. all i can say is no one will stop rocoko of the all blacks. any kid who can put up 10 tries in his first 5 tests is going to be great. i was happy to see that wendell sailor scored another amazing try! other than that they looked so slow. mitch and i went to some pub to watch the game. i suggest lion's red beer if anyone would like to try something new. oh ya tj, we were able to catch the footy show yesterday. those kiwi's were so pist off by the sheep jokes reg was giving them.tomorrow we are heading up to the top of sky tower. we only have a few days left and we want to head out on a good note. 2003 july 26 DAY-48way to kick some kiwi butt last night kangaroos!! last night we saw why australia dominates in league rugby. the final score was around 48-6. now we have to see if the wallabies can bring the same performance against the all blacks tonight. go wallabies!yesterday mitch and i took our trip to waitimo and to rotorua. the glow worm caves were simply amazing. i have never seen anything like it in the world. there must have been 10,000 of them in the caves. our tour guide was a riot telling us league was all about the biff. we were happy to see he was the only person to know how cold chicago can really get in winter. rotorua was pretty amazing we saw natural hot springs and boiling mud. we also witnessed some sport where 2 dogs chase around sheep through gates. it was pretty crazy. tomorrow we are going to head to the top of skycity tower, similar to australia's center point. congrats to the 12 year old evergreen park little league as the repeat as state champs! 2003 july 23 DAY-45it was sad to see sydney slowly disappear out of my airplane window. we are now here in the city of sails, auckland new zealand. today we set up a day tour of the waitimo glow worm caves and then to rotorua. it should be a blast. so far we have walked around auckland checking out all the all blacks merchandise. the all blacks are the national rugby team here.good luck to the 12 year old evergreen park little league team as they try to repeat as sectional champs. also good luck seany on your championship game in oak lawn, kick some ass kid! 2003 july 21 DAY-43
craig, tj, and i on top of the sydney harbor bridge today tj, mitch, and i did the world famous sydney harbor bridge climb. it took about 3 hours and was a lot easier climb than i thought. you get some amazing views of the entire city. i can say it was one of the best parts of the trip. yesterday we went to brookie to watch our last nrl game this season. manly got beat bad by the sydney roosters. it was nice to finally see a team we support win. tomorrow we head to new zealand so hopefully i can update from there. thank you tj and renae for all your patience and letting us live with you for a month or so. thank you to all the great australians we have meet on this trip. your country is as beutiful as you all are. advance australia fair! 2003 july 19 DAY-41first off, i would like to wish katie tulley a good trip to chile. i know you will have a blast. as for the wonderful world of australia our time is running out.yesterday we watched australia take on bangladesh in cricket. we watched 7 straight hours. after that mitch and i went out with renae to the deck for a few drinks with some people from her work. renae had reason to celebrate, she is the new assistant manager at freedom furniture. good on ya renae! 2003 july 18 DAY-40last night i brought up my big drink idea for the bars, the communist. the communist drink is made up of vodka and some form of red juice. mitch said cherry and renae said i should put cranberry in it. we have a great slogan for my drink, "come join the party" or renae had a great one, "it will get you hammered but not sickel". we are thinking of pitching the idea to a bar. it should make us all millions. of course i cannot forget tim and pete who also have contributed for the idea of the communist.tonight we are heading to the strand to have some drinks and head out to dinner. 2003 july 17 DAY-39so mitch and i our now back in our home away from home, sydney. while still in cairns we checked out a nice irish bar called pj 'o briens. the female bartenders were some of the cutest in the world. while we were there we watched the south african springboks beat up the wallabies. it is now australia's second consecutive loss. i hope they can pull together before the world cup.after cairns we headed to brisbane it was a long long train ride, 30 hours. it took forever and kids get annoying after awhile. a pretty crazy sight was a 50 year old man punching an 8 year old brat. i guess they are serious about parents watching their kids on trains. our night in brisbane was pretty cool. we walked around the town for a night and took pictures of the many bridges there. in all there are about 5 or 6 and are all unique. brisbane though was only about the size of maybe milwaukee or indianapolis, we expected bigger. last night we saw the nsw blues getting blown out by queensland in state of origin footy. it was horrible! even though i have never lived in nsw i felt a strong sense of loss. who cares though, we won the series! good on ya boys. today we made our reservations for the sydney harbor bridge climb. craig, tj and i will brave the weather and height to check it out. the climb takes about 3 hours. andy powers said that it was weak so we will see. renae will not be able to join us though. she injured her ankle and is recovering, get will soon renae! 2003 july 12 DAY-34so i can now say that i have seen the great barrier reef. our trip was amazing. it started off at 6:30am catching the coach bus to the wharf. it was rainning all morning, and we thought it was going to be horrible. it turns out though that most of the storm stayed on the coast while we were heading out to the upolu cay (part of the great barrier reef). we lucked out on our trip out to the reef because we saw 2 whales. it was an amazing sight seing one of them jump out of the water. it was nice to see whales outside of sea world.the sun came out after a bumpy ride out to the cay. we were warned that 1 in 3 queenslanders have skin cancer and it takes 15 minutes to get sunburned. so me and mitch kept putting on sunscreen. i still got burned on my right shoulder. the coral reef was amazing. it was a great day to snorkel. there were a couple of times thought i thought i was going to scrap the reef while swimming over it. the fish there are amazing. there is nothing like it in the world. i saw a green fish with neon pink stripes. i also saw zebra looking fish. the coral reef was amazing. we also saw a bunch of bright blue star fish. one of the men on the tour found a crab and showed it to us. coming back to cairns we saw a full rainbow over the rainforest, it was unreal how clear it was. we meet some great people on the trip. one girl was from holland and was heading through the northern territory to cairns and then heading for sydney. two other nice girls our age that just graduated university from overseas. we were making jokes how we were out there to avoid starting work. another girl erin from penrith we hung out with most of the day. she also finished college and was on holidays with a group of 64 people. after the tour mitch, erin, and i headed around the city of cairns for a little shopping. we then meet up with her group for dinner and drinks at the court house hotel. thank you very very much to erin who treated mitch and i to dinner! we each bought a shout of drinks to try and pary her back. all the people in the group traveling with her were really nice. we ended up staying at the court house hotel for the footy game. at halftime everyone was so tired from being up early that we called it a night. so all in all it was a great day in cairns. 2003 july 10 DAY-32mitch and i made it to cairns with a little delay in sydney. today we went into the city to check out downtown cairns. it is really small compared to sydney but it has its own charm. the city is surrounded by hills and rainforest. the beaches here are not what we were expecting. then again maybe we went to the wrong place. there was 5 people swimming at trinity beach, we thought there would be 500. after swimming at the beach we had our first xxxx beer. it is made here in queensland and it is the sponsor for the maroons rugby squad.in the morning we will be taking our tour out to the great barrier reef. i can't wait to see in person what i have only seen in pictures. 2003 july 9 DAY-31tonight we are getting on our quantas flight to cairns. we have our cruise all booked to the great barrier reef. it should be an amazing sight. the boat has a glass bottom and we will be able to snorkel. then after cairns it is off to our 30 hour train ride to brisbane for a night.throughout the trip i have been adding some new qoutes. i have posted a few new gems so check out the new quotes 2003 july 8 DAY-30
craig and i at an nrl game at telstra stadium so it has been awhile since my last long and a lot has happened. craig and i spent the weekend going to nrl rugby games. we saw the sydney roosters beat the south sydney rabbitohs at aussie stadium. russel crowe is a huge supporter of the rabbitohs, but we did not see him at the game. the next day tj and renae went with us to telstra stadium to see the bulldogs take on the new castle knights. we are huge joey johns fans (he plays for new castle). they lost though 48 to 14. joey had a bad game. before the roosters game craig and i headed over to see my cousin stacy, tony and holly. it was great to catch up with them. craig and i are now huge fans of hahns premium beer. tommorow we are heading to cairns and the great barrier reef. after 5 days we then take a day train ride to brisbane to spend a night there. it should be a great time. 2003 july 4 DAY-26happy fourth of july to all americans. australia could care less so there will be no fireworks and no 1812 overture.i am back! last night tj, mitch and i went to dinner at the rsl and then hit the pokie machines. i won 2 dollars and stopped. tj then played my same machine and won 25 dollars. not a bad night at the rsl. mitch and i also won 2 dollars each off of a dessert from the cafe. 2003 july 1 DAY-23so lets see what has happened since my last log. yesterday mitch and i headed out to the tarangoo zoo. it was nice to see the dingos, kangaroos and other australian wildlife. then after that we took the train out to aussie stadium and the sydney cricket grounds. they are surrounded by a huge wall that took us a half hour to walk around. after that we headed to fox studios where they just started filming the third star wars. we have not seen natalie portman yet. as we got on the ferry to head back to manly we saw a great fireworks show in sydney harbor. i guess the new renovated hotel put the show on. it will be our 4th of july celebration since they won't acknowledge it.the day before that we meet up with powers who was in from alice springs. we took him out to the dee why hotel for some drinks and a little nrl rugby action. speaking of nrl rugby tj took mitch and me to the brookvale oval to watch the manly sea eagles take on st. george. manly got beat down badly. it was a good game though. the night before that tj, mitch, and i went to dee why beach to check out the huge waves. they were higher than three of craig put together. it was amazing to see waves that big. i also added some new quotes just scroll to the bottom of the quotes page to see the new ones. .:. july � 2003 .:. |