A great place to start the day: drinking coffee outside the ambassador’s house.

Regular readers of this blog know of the National Lampoon Vacation-esque lodging we sometimes find ourselves in — establishments such as the Blackball Hilton (dorm-style rooms with recycled hospital beds) and the Abel Tasman Barn (two toilets to share with fifty other backpackers). More recently, we became aficionados of flimsy cabins at campervan parks. We now feel as though we’ve scored some fancy digs if we stay in a place that has carpeting made for indoor use only.

Imagine how we felt, therefore, upon arriving at the place we were invited to stay in Canberra: the United States Embassy! (Cue the banjo music as the Smiths, with beach sand still in their hair, drive through the security gates in their bird-poop-covered, packed-to-the-roof dented rental…)

The new U.S. Ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, and his wife, Becky, are our friends and neighbors from Piedmont, and their daughter has been close with Colly since preschool. We couldn’t wait to reconnect with familiar faces, and Colly was virtually bursting with pent-up preteen desire to socialize with an old friend.

Nonetheless, we admittedly felt a wee bit intimidated when a uniformed butler opened the door and led us into the grand entranceway of the three-story Colonial-style brick mansion, where marble busts of Ben Franklin and George Washington keep watch. But then Becky came down the red-carpeted stairway and immediately put us at ease, and we soon felt at home — or at least, as though we could relax and thoroughly appreciate the family’s company and their surroundings. While I’ve never met other ambassadors, I’d wager a bet that the warmest and most down-to-earth one lives at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra.

The Telstar Tower on Black Mountain, seen from a lakeside trail.

And what about Canberra? Rather than disclose details of our time at the Embassy, I’m here to set the record straighter (in my own small way at least) about Australia’s often-mocked capital, which many wrongly believe has the pulse of a koala. The city struck me as analogous to Sacramento, our state capital that outsiders dis for being home to legislators and bureaucrats and say that its best quality is its relationship to other places (“halfway between San Francisco and Tahoe!”).  Similarly, many assume that the only people who’d want to live in Canberra are public servants, and they mention that at least you can easily get to Sydney or Melbourne from there. In his 2000 book Down Under, Bill Bryson joked that its civic slogan could be, “Canberra: Gateway to Everywhere Else!” or, “Canberra: There’s Nothing to It!” or even, “Canberra: Why Wait for Death?”

But just as I very much like Sacramento as a leafy, livable place that hums with political movers and shakers, so too did I find Canberra delightfully green, livable and politically intriguing.

We got our first view of the city and its surrounding foothills from atop the Telstar Tower on Black Mountain, which looks like a Christmas tree topper stuck on a hill. It’s worth a visit to get a better sense of how the master-planned city was laid out nearly a century ago, after Sydney and Melbourne reached a compromise to put the capital between them (170 miles south of Sydney and 410 miles from Melbourne) and then held an international competition to choose a designer.

Viewing Canberra from the top of the tower with the Bleich family.

The meandering, irregular border of sprawling Lake Burley Griffin, named after the Chicago architect who won the design contest, contrasts nicely with the perfect geometry of streets around Parliament and the city center, which are laid out in symmetrical circles connected by streets like spokes on wheels. Not surprisingly, Morgan and I loved the lake and the marathon-length trails surrounding it!

Morgan along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. We both liked how it’s just a short run to get back to nature in this city.

We also toured the Australian War Memorial and its museum with the Bleiches, and I was glad to see the kids genuinely impressed by the beauty of the stained-glass dome and by the sobering number of fallen soldiers’ names.

The girls view part of the War Memorial.

Kyle on the steps of the War Memorial, with the Parliament Building way in the background.

Canberra certainly has plenty of museums, monuments and government buildings worth visiting — Bryson’s line, “there’s nothing to it!” is funny yet off-base — but I want to recommend two less-obvious places to visit. First, for grown-ups, is the Mount Majura Vineyard, where we sampled some of the most complex and tasty wines I’ve had this side of the equator. What impressed me is that this relatively small winery could get so many varietals and blends so right; of the four whites and four reds I tried, none was a dud.  I also liked how it’s less than 15 minutes from the city center yet feels utterly pastoral.

At the Mount Majura winery with Jeff and Becky Bleich.

Second, for kids and grownups alike, is Questacon – The National Science and Technology Center.

Kyle gets ready to experience the free-fall exhibit at Questacon, which drops kids down a vertical slide to help them understand the feeling and science of zero gravity.

Few science and tech museums rival San Francisco’s Exploratorium, but I’d say this one does. Simply put, it was great — we had a blast and learned a lot.

I’m truly grateful to (and inspired by) our hosts in Canberra who helped us wrap up our Australian leg on a sky-high note. As recent blog posts detailed, we had a not-entirely-satisfying time on Phillip Island and along the coast. (During one low point, I gloomily contemplated my own alternative slogans for Australia, such as, “Down Under: Overpriced and Overrated!”)

Between the time we were cracking up along the coast and arriving in Canberra, we had much more fun than expected in an unassuming coastal village called Batemans Bay. We stayed at arguably the best camper park in New South Wales (Batemans Bay Big 4); discovered a, like, totally awesome surf school and spent two days surfing (Broulee Surf School); and were thrilled by the lions, tigers and red pandas at a fantastic out-of-the-way zoo (Mogo Zoo). Canberra capped off what turned out to be my favorite week in this country, and now I’d encourage anyone who heads to Sydney to visit the capital too.

I meant this post to be about Canberra but can’t help tacking on these surf pics from Broulee Beach. S’later!

Morgan catches a wave.

I feel like an old dog trying to learn a new trick.

Colly makes it look easy ...

... and so does Kyle!

Related posts:

1. Sydney Wet and Wild
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Halfway There Together: Surprises and Changes So Far

We’ve seen way too many pirate-themed mini golf courses around the southeast coast of Australia.

“Oh no,” Morgan said in a voice suppressing deep, demented giggles. We had just checked into a “deluxe cabin” at the Anchor Belle Caravan Park on Phillip Island and were thumbing through visitors’ brochures. “It says here that Phillip Island has so much to offer, it’s worth a whole day!” He unleashed his manic laughter. “Good thing we’re spending FIVE days here!”

We’re getting punchy on this swing through Australia. Perhaps we’ve spent too much time at mini golf courses and RV parks. Perhaps we’ve had too many budget meals at surf shacks with names like Doctor Food (where Morgan ate a half-cooked burger, dramatically clutched his stomach and said, “Call the doctor — I just ate at Doctor Food!”). Perhaps it’s because all the gum trees and little coastal towns inhabited by white retirees look so similar that we feel we’re driving in circles rather than northward.

The other day we were driving from a town called Lakes Entrance to our current spot, Batemans Bay, in torrential rain. A gummy gray gum tree forest dominated the so-called scenic coastal route. We pulled over to a picnic spot in the squall, where one sad, wet table stood surrounded by endless eucalyptus, and I announced, “Lunchtime!” Then I pulled out our picnic of P&Js and hard-boiled eggs. We all knew without saying that it was too wet to get outside, so we unwrapped our sandwiches and carefully peeled our eggs in baggies while sitting strapped in the car seats.

The four of us sat quietly chewing until Morgan, in the driver’s seat, choked down a bite and broke the silence to declare, “Well, this is fun.” My shoulders started to shake as I looked over and saw that he was overcome by another fit of laughter as well. The kids, observing from the backseat, concluded that their parents were lost in more ways than one.

But back to Phillip Island — in my last post I went into great detail (more than anyone probably cared to know) about why we thought the Phillip Island Penguin Parade bordered on the absurd. I feel compelled to balance that cranky essay with descriptions of a couple of places that were worth the high price of admission.

Kyle (seen here with a ranger) got to milk a cow and learned about 19th-century farm life at Churchill Island.

We thought a visit to Churchill Island would be a bit of a snooze, but it turned out to be more fun and interesting than most of the museums and interactive centers we’ve visited in Australia. This tiny island, sitting across a bridge from Phillip Island, is preserved as a “heritage farm,” which means it’s a working farm and history center operating much as it did in its late 19th/early 20th century heyday. The displays in the restored cottages and barns are really well done — everything from baking to blacksmithing — and who knew we’d get to milk a cow?

We also wrongly assumed that the Phillip Island Wildlife Park would be a rinky-dink petting zoo, based on the appearance of its entranceway. But it, too, was fun and educational — and a bit hairy at times. Try standing in an open pasture filled with kangaroos and emus. You want to give a handful of food to the wizened old roos because they’re so humble and patient, but every time you reach for your pocket, an evil-eyed emu who meets you at eye level zooms up and invades your personal space. You take the handful of food and fling it away so the emu will back off, and the diversion works for ten seconds so you can slip the roo some food, but then the emu is back in your face demanding more and making you back away.

Every time we tried to feed the kangaroos, the emus moved in to get a bite.

Emus like to get waaaaaaayyyyy too close!

We saw a fantastic array of animals, birds and reptiles there, including Australia’s other large, flightless bird, the cassowary, which Colly accurately said looks like “a dinosaur turkey.”

One of the "dinosaur turkeys" (a cassowary).

And of course there were hordes of the roos’ relatives — the sweet wallabys and the smaller pademelons.

These wallabys were so sweet, they reminded us a little of our dog back home.

If you crossed a kangaroo with a rat, you'd probably get one of these: a pademelon.

We liked the Wildlife Park more than the soporific Koala Conservation Centre located nearby. After strolling around the koala center, straining to spot the bears that blend into the trees, we all felt a bit stupefied and left yawning.

A "two-fur"! This is the most alert koala we saw at the Koala Conservation Centre; most were dozing like the one underneath the one that's climbing.

After wandering through the Koala Conservation Centre, the kids were ready to take a nap.

And finally, I’d recommend the place we stayed, the Anchor Belle Holiday Park — it’s nicer than some of the RV campgrounds (what Kiwis call “holiday parks” and Aussies call “caravan parks”) that we’ve stayed in. All of these parks rent cabins as well as RV hookups, and they’re a good deal for the money — we get a stand-alone unit with two bedrooms and a kitchen on or near the beach for about US$135/night, less than most motel rooms around here, and generally they cater to families with kids so it’s safe for Colly and Kyle to run around. The Anchor Belle, near Cowes, had an indoor pool, gas stove, real synthetic wood floors and carpeting, and relatively new linens. (One learns not to take these things for granted.)

Our cabin at the campervan park near Cowes on Phillip Island.

These Down Under digs have turned Morgan and me into quasi experts on the plastic-walled construction and fixtures featured in mobile estates. Did you know that only the best come with a built-in clock radio in the master suite? These radios are all identical and all have knobs and buttons that were state-of-the-art when I was in preschool. It’s as though they were mass-produced for storm shelters, held in a warehouse for twenty-five years, and then sold at a discount to Jayco, the leading manufacturer of recreational vehicles and deluxe cabins across this continent. Morgan and I spent the better part of one evening imaging the sales pitches used to offload these units and their radios: “Buy this home now for no money down, and we’ll even include a custom clock radio!”

Morgan expresses amazement at the custom clock radios in the finer master bedrooms of campervan cabins throughout Australia.

Clearly we’ve been deprived of regular conversation with other adults for too long. We’re in our last week here and then it’s off to Hong Kong, where I’m sure we’ll feel completely at home and normal again.

Related posts:

1. The Phillip Island Penguin Charade
2. Canberra: There’s Something To It!
3. Finding the Best and Worst in Daylesford

The cliff faces and canyons give the Blue Mountains their beauty.

We met a family from Sydney who lowered our expectations of the Blue Mountains National Park when they heard we were spending several days there. I can’t recall their exact words, but they sounded apologetic — something along the lines of, “Don’t be surprised to find they’re not really mountains” and, “at least the cliff faces are rather nice.” They also expressed surprise that we wanted to spend more than a day or two there.

Then Morgan and I began to notice that whenever we saw brochures promoting the Blue Mountains, they featured the same photo of the famous Three Sisters rock formation, as if that’s the only thing in the whole national park worth seeing.

Uh-oh, we thought — why did we plan to spend a whole five nights at an eco lodge there? Then we experienced the upside of lowered expectations: We were pleasantly surprised.

True, Australia’s signature “mountains” look pretty humble in comparison to any foothill in the Rockies, the Andes or New Zealand’s Southern Alps. But that’s because they’re not really mountains; they’re uplifted plateaus with rivers crisscrossing vast forested canyons below. They’re located about an hour away from Sydney and take their name from the bluish-gray haze that hangs in the valley from light reflecting off particles in the air. Seemingly endless escarpments and crevices reveal waterfalls and sandstone sculptures. The tabletop mountains reminded me of Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, while some of the rock formations evoke Sedona.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend five days in the region unless you want to do what we did: unplug in a remote spot to spend quiet days running, hiking and homeschooling in between exploring the region’s highlights. But the Blue Mountains are definitely worth more than a day.

Here are some of Morgan’s photos showing reasons to venture beyond the Three Sisters Rock overlook at Echo Point (where all the tour buses stop).

Scenic World:

This is one tourist trap worth the price of admission. Scenic World in Katoomba takes visitors across the Jamison Valley and down below. Even though I’m normally nervous about heights, I loved the views that this glass box revealed as it floated across from one cliff to another:

The Scenic Skyway in Katoomba is a tourist trap but worth the ride.

Kyle and Colly loved the Skyway's illusion of floating through the air and seeing the views below ...

... such as this view from the Skyway of Katoomba Falls.

It’s worth going down as well as across the canyon to explore the walkway through the forest below. Take the cable car down:

Scenic World's super-steep cable car ride down to the valley feels like a slo-mo coaster going down. Colly and Kyle loved grabbing the front seat!

Then explore the walkway through the forest to learn about the valley’s physical features and history of coal mining:

We all loved the dense, tangled forest around the walkway.

Wentworth Falls:

Even prettier than Katoomba Falls, Wentworth Falls (located next to the town of the same name) reveals itself best from a short hike from the town’s main trail head.

Wentworth Falls is a splayed-out, multi-level cascade that's among the prettiest falls we've ever seen.

We discovered this curtain of water near Wentworth Falls.

Evan’s Lookout to Govett’s Leap Lookout:

Our lodge in the town of Blackheath was right next to Evan’s Lookout, a point I found more visually alluring than the heavily visited Echo Point in Katoomba. The cliff track from there to Govett’s Leap is only a few kilometers long but challenging due to its series of stairs. Morgan and I had a great run/hike along here and discovered more waterfalls along the way:

A scene from the clifftop trail connecting Evan's Lookout to Govett's Leap.

Katoomba, Blackheath and Leura:

Unfortunately we didn’t take photos to show them off, but take my word for it: the towns of Blackheath, Katoomba and Leura are hip hideaways with great cafes and cool shops tucked into 90-year-old buildings decked out in art deco details. Katoomba is the main destination for day-trippers, but if I had to choose one for dining and shopping, I’d pick Leura.

Wild parrots in a rainbow of colors call the Blue Mountains home. This is one of many that visited our front porch in Blackheath.

Related posts:

1. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
2. Sydney Wet and Wild
3. Cracking Up On the Coast from Victoria to NSW

The lookout next to our lodge in the Blue Mountains (click to enlarge).

The alternative title for this post could be, “How We Ended Up Off A Beaten Path Near The Blue Mountains.”

Our home for the week is at the end of a road in a thick, misty gum tree forest where wild parrots fly overhead and the cliffs of the Blue Mountains plunge into a forested canyon. In the mornings, the parrots flock for a feast of birdseed offered up by Colly and Kyle’s outstretched hands.

"A bird in the hand is worth a loo in the bush" -- the parrots make up for some of the inconvenient aspects of this eco lodge.

We’re exploring nearby trails, enjoying the offbeat towns of Blackheath and Katoomba, and unplugging at a cabin at the Jemby-Rinjah Eco Lodge, which is deep in the woods with no traffic noise, no Internet access and very few other guests. I love the simple, natural way of life — but I admit I was shocked to discover that the cabin’s toilet lacks what we all take for granted: running water and a flusher. It’s just a seat above a pit, a.k.a. “a roto loo composting system.”  At least I have good reason now to argue that the others should put the lid down when they’re done!

Whenever we find ourselves in a weird and wild place like this, I think to myself, We’re a long way from Piedmont — how did we get here? The simple answer is that we reserved this cabin about two months ago. We figured we wanted a rustic setting after two weeks in Sydney, but didn’t want to drive too far or spend money on a flight to elsewhere in Australia. The Blue Mountains National Park seemed like a no-brainer. Our research turned up a New York Times article recommending this affordable eco-lodge, and that was enough to convince us to book it.

As the above example suggests, planning an itinerary is a very unscientific and subjective process that involves looking inward at values and priorities as well as looking outward at the world of possibilities. It’s always a balancing act between dreams and reality — that is, limitless interests versus limited time and resources. Sometimes it’s fascinating, but just as often it’s frustrating.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process not only because we’re in the throes of researching the final leg of our trip, but also because we spent a lovely half-day with a family in Sydney who invited us over to get advice on how they should plan their year-long trip around the world. Our conversation brought back so many memories of how bewildered we felt one year ago when we stared at the map on the One World airline website and tried to figure out which continents — let alone which countries and cities — we should visit, and how to make the route work out.

We’re less methodical and less organized than some traveling families we know who plan and budget every detail far in advance of departure. If Morgan and I were traveling without kids, we’d probably plan even less and be more like the backpackers we were on our college trip overseas. But the reality is that traveling with two kids means we can’t just “wing it”; we have to book places in advance so we’re assured we have a relatively affordable and pleasant place to sleep and to minimize the stress of getting from one point to another. Long-term family travel differs significantly from single or couple’s travel in part because we need apartment-style lodging that can sleep all four of us and has a kitchen for cooking meals, which usually takes more work to find than a standard hotel room.

Our cabin here has the kind of cozy kitchen we seek when researching rentals.

The problem with travel planning is it can turn into a giant time suck. We could easily spend eight hours a day on the Internet reading about destinations, debating one over the other, comparing lodging options, and then trading emails with apartment managers and arranging overseas wire transfers to those who won’t take credit cards. We have spent days like that, and it’s no fun. Rather than searching for “the best” deal in “the best” place, we found it’s better to research just enough to feel that a choice seems pretty darn good, and then go for it.

Over the past year, we’ve developed these guiding principles to plan our itinerary, and I hope they might help other families contemplating a far-flung, months-long journey:

Less is more. The biggest mistake any family can make in planning an itinerary is trying to go to too many places and do too much. Packing, checking out of a place, driving or flying, and then checking in and settling into somewhere new is stressful on the kids and kills the better part of a day. We’ve discovered we’re happiest when we go for depth over breadth; this is, we move around less and settle into a community for a couple of weeks. During two months in New Zealand, we experienced both road-tripping — sleeping in a new town almost every night — and two-week stays at a couple of main destinations (Nelson and Queenstown). It was exciting to see so much, but overall we had a more satisfying time at the two-week spots, where we could really get to know the community and establish normal family routines such as planning meals and doing schoolwork.

A year ago, we considered choosing one major destination per month and renting an apartment there for four weeks. That would have been a cheaper way to go — the more you move around, the more money you’re likely to spend on lodging and everything else — but in hindsight I’m glad we didn’t do that; we probably would start to feel restless after a couple of weeks, and we don’t want to sacrifice too many opportunities to explore different places. For whatever reason, one to two weeks feels like the optimal amount of time to spend in any one location.

Accept the fact you can’t see every “must-see.” While we were in Argentina, we agonized over whether we should buy plane tickets and take a few days to see Iguazu Falls. Now we’re in Australia, and people are telling us we’re crazy to miss the Great Barrier Reef. I feel certain, however, that we’ve done the right thing by skipping both those destinations because of the time, money and effort it would take to get there. We’ve got enough “must-sees” on our calendar. Plus, some of the most interesting travel times happen outside of typical tourist destinations, in ordinary towns where real people really live.

Book far in advance for holiday seasons, but otherwise it’s okay to fill in the details as you go. There is no way we could have planned everything before we left home — it would have taken too much time, and we were preoccupied with packing and moving out. All we did was determine the outline of the itinerary so we could purchase the One World tickets (and even then we changed dates and destinations along the way), and we found apartments in our first two major destinations. We also found a special place to stay during the week of Christmas. Otherwise, we’ve been ironing out the details and booking lodging approximately two months in advance of where we’ll be. It has worked out well, although we learned the hard way that we should have booked earlier for the holiday season Down Under (mid-December through January) because some places we wanted to stay were already full. Similarly, if we were going to be in Europe over summer, we would have to book much farther in advance.

One advantage to staggering the process and letting the itinerary evolve more organically (for lack of a better word) is we’re more open to change. For example, we initially planned to go to Athens and a still-to-be-determined Greek Island, with a side trip to Ephesus, Turkey, to see the Roman ruins there. Then, about three months ago, we started hearing a steady drumbeat of Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul. An article here, a friend’s recommendation there — it was strange how we seemed to be receiving signals to go there. We resisted because getting there seems expensive, complicated and culturally too confusing. But then a couple of others whose opinions I respect mentioned something out of the blue about how they loved Istanbul. Meanwhile, the more we heard about Athens, the less alluring it seemed. The upshot is we’re going to change things around to go to Istanbul and spend more time in Turkey, less in mainland Greece.

Our front porch this week leads to a dense gum tree forest. Our kids are always happier in settings like this (and by extension, so are we), where they can wander outside and play, than in big cities.

Limit time in big cities, or at least balance it with time in the countryside. If we go to Istanbul, it’ll be for a week at most. We’ve found that big cities have two main drawbacks: they’re expensive, and they’re stressful on the kids. Colly and Kyle enjoy the city sites for a few days, but then the noise, the crowds, and the inability to go outside the front door and play freely starts to wear on them.

Plan around a hobby. For some, this might be art history or regional cuisine or mountain climbing. For Morgan and me, it’s trail running. We picked destinations with scenic trails and are taking detours to trail running events, which is why a campground in Daylesford, outside of Melbourne, is on our itinerary next weekend — it’s the site of a “dirt fest” with trail running, mountain biking and events for kids. I’m sure there are at least a hundred other destinations in Southern Australia that are more attractive and culturally significant than Daylesford, but we figure we’ll have fun connecting with other families and doing something we enjoy there. We never would have discovered the West Coast of New Zealand if not for the trail running event that prompted us to go there.

Morgan during a run/hike on a cliffside trail in the Blue Mountain range.

Don’t be shy — hook up with locals even if you barely know them. Tap into networks such as alumni groups, Facebook and friends-of-friends in order to meet people in your destinations, especially if those locals have kids that your kids can play with. In New Zealand, we met up with a friend-of-a-friend via Facebook and ended up having a magical day touring an area that only a local would know, and through this person we met a wonderful family who gave us the use of their house. Then we connected with really old friends who have kids our kids’ ages and spent a blissful two weeks in their home. I look forward to returning the favor to the family from Sydney when they swing through Northern California. Meeting new people and forming relationships is part of the joy of traveling — of life, really.

Use tried-and-true websites. We cast a wide net on the web when we research but return repeatedly to these sites: Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet and The NY Times Travel section. Morgan also is a master at using Google Earth and Google Maps to “see” a place in advance. We’ve actually decided against certain apartments because the street view on Google reveals they’re in a place that looks particularly shabby or inconvenient. We also rely on other traveling families’ blogs for recommendations (such as those listed on the right hand column of our blog). We don’t carry many guidebooks because we don’t want the weight; we read a few select books mainly to get an overview on a country or region, rather than specific recommendations.

Remember, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I start feeling flutters of anxiety about the big gaps in our itinerary that we still need to fill for April and May, but then the Jon Kabat-Zinn title Wherever You Go, There You Are pops in my head and helps me relax, having faith that we can make the best of wherever we end up if we have the right attitude. Whether we have a positive experience traveling depends less on the destinations themselves and more on what we do as a family — how we interact with each other, and with other people and the surroundings — wherever we go.

You can stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and have a pretty lousy time if you’re annoyed by other tourists, pissed off at your spouse and frustrated that your kids don’t feel like hiking. Or, you can find yourself in a remote corner of Patagonia, smelling of carsickness after a difficult drive, and laugh uncontrollably upon discovering that your lodge lacks a view but has a bizarre collection of gnome figurines. As Morgan put it, “You can end up in some pretty weird places, but they can be a lot of fun.”

This is the iconic Blue Mountains shot: the legendary Three Sisters rock, which all the tour buses stop by to see. It's pretty, but ...

... we had a better time discovering this out-of-the-way waterfall on the other side of the canyon than staring at the Three Sisters.

Related posts:

1. Byways by the Blue Mountains
2. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
3. Happy New Year and New Blog

Kyle and Colly steppin' out to see Sydney's production of the musical Wicked.

When we got to Sydney, our friend Cheryl said she had heard that “Australia is the LA and New Zealand is the SF,” and she wanted to know if it’s true. My answer, based on seeing only Sydney so far, is yes — to a point. Sydney, with its string of famous beaches, has a surf culture that mirrors Santa Monica and a sense of style that channels Hollywood. Whereas Kiwi fashion looks earthy and understated, lots of people here dress as though they’re going clubbing — circa 1985. Morgan, who arrived here before me, emailed me on his first day in Sydney: “Make sure to bring high heels, tube tops and tight clothes since it seems to be what lots of other women are wearing. Sort of reminds me of the Aussie girlfriend in Spinal Tap.”

But the LA-SF analogy falls apart when I realize that many of Sydney’s loveliest parts evoke San Francisco. In Sydney’s central business and shopping district, grandly refurbished and ornately detailed Victorian and Edwardian buildings stand next to sleek modern high-rises. Along the bustling waterfront, shops, exhibits, restaurants and, of course, boats are everywhere, as though San Francisco’s stretched-out Embarcadero had been compressed into a few distinct harbor areas.

Sydney also feels like San Francisco because of its large Asian population. But the demographic diversity doesn’t stretch much beyond Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian and Indian. We can buy egg rolls, sushi and curry on every block, but burrito places are few and far between. I can count on one hand the number of black people I’ve seen so far, and the only Latin American I’ve noticed is the wizened old street musician with the rainbow serape who seems to play the pan flute in every major city we visit. And the only Aboriginal I’ve seen yet is on a postcard.

As for the weather, it doesn’t match either city. You could call it “hog” — humid fog. It’s been overcast and rainy most of the time, but sticky hot, and then the sun broke out and it was scorching!

In spite of less-than-perfect weather and a high price tag on everything, we have grown very fond of this city. It’s urban yet easy to get around, flashy yet laid back. Of all the big cities we’ve visited, this is one of the most kid friendly. We’re staying in a high-rise apartment building in the central business district, next to Darling Harbour, where there’s a sprawling playground and easy ferry access. Catching ferries the way you catch cabs or subways in other cities is one of Sydney’s charms.

Here are highlights and recommendations for anyone visiting Sydney:

Two of the many creatures at the Taronga Zoo with a great view of the Sydney skyline.

Wildlife (and I don’t mean the kind of wildlife with open containers in our elevator every night):

• Go to the Royal Botanic Gardens next to the Opera House, look up at the trees and be prepared to gasp at the site of thousands of fruit bats the size of small dogs hanging upside down and flying around. They’re also known as “flying foxes,” and they took up residence in the gardens when much of their forest habitat was lost to farming. At dusk the city sky is full of them flying by, along with native white cockatoos. I have never seen anything like it — so many really big bats spreading their wings and flexing the bones in them like fingers — and they’re strangely beautiful and downright cute. (Having read the children’s picture book Stellaluna innumerable times undoubtedly colors my view.)
  

  They're not coconuts, they're "flying foxes"!

  

  Some of the fruit bats spreading their wings above the Royal Botanic Gardens.

• The sprawling Taronga Zoo is on par with the San Diego Zoo — one of the best we’ve ever seen — and its 2,660 animals look extremely well cared for. Kyle can’t stop talking about the Komodo dragon.
  

  Kyle's favorite creature at the zoo, the Komodo, was about the same size as he is.

Beaches:

• Bondi: We walked to Sydney’s most famous beach from the neighborhood of Coogee, about three miles south of Bondi. The coast walk was hard on the kids because of the heat and hills, but Morgan and I loved seeing the waves crashing against the cliffs.
  

  The surf on along the walk from Coogee to Bondi.

  Bondi beach lived up to its reputation as a grown-up playground crowded with beautiful bodies sunbathing, surfing and partying. The kids reveled in the rough surf, and we watched them like their lives depended on it (which they actually did, given the notoriously dangerous currents here, not to mention the underwater things that can sting and bite — though this generally is a “safe” swimming beach).

  

  Colly with Bondi's waves behind her.

• Manly: One of the area’s prettiest suburbs, Manly, is 30 minutes north by ferry from central Sydney, and the beach is spectacular, with water as clear and blue as Hawaii. The currents here are crazy, creating multiple sets of waves in multiple directions. We saw something we’d never seen before: waves that run sideways like a zipper opening, parallel to the shore, and often there’s another sideways wave going the opposite direction on the same line, and they meet and crash midway. It’s the wave pattern you’d see if two people held two ends of a rope and jerked the ends at the same time. The kids thought this surf was even better than Bondi. We felt some relief that lifeguards were patrolling the waters, and they were strict about keeping swimmers between two flags marking a relatively small area. They had a warning sign for “blue bottle” jellyfish, aka a Portuguese Man of War, and both kids got stung at the end of the day. “It felt like a thousand bee stings at first,” said Colly. “It felt like a stinging whip had curled around my leg,” said Kyle. The medicine — ointment and ice cream — worked wonders.
  

  Surf's up on Manly Beach. From this East Coast, it was hard to imagine the blizzard hitting America's East Coast.

Shopping:

• The QVB: We hate to shop but it proved to be a worthwhile activity on a rainy day when we discovered the Queen Victoria Building. The building itself — not the shops — is what got me excited. It’s a gorgeous pavilion covering a city block at the corner of George and Market streets.
  

  The Queen Victoria Building. (Photo from wikimedia; we would have taken our own, but it was pouring rain!)

  It was built in 1898 in a grand Romanesque Revival style with lots of arches, columns and a giant dome. Inside, two massive mechanical clocks hang from ceiling, in the middle of the open area between the shops, displaying ornate dioramas and figurines that depict moments in Australian history. The kids thought it was “really cool.” The shops are all high-end designer boutiques, so we didn’t buy anything, until we got to the third floor and discovered Hobby Co., one of the best toy shops ever, and Kyle picked out some Legos.

• Kent Street: Sydney’s shopping district is so packed with malls that I assumed it would be easy to find travel- and outdoors-oriented stores with the type of clothing and gear we needed. Not so. After walking in circles (or squares, I guess, is more accurate), block after block, we finally found all the stores that sell outdoor gear and travel clothing clustered together around the 400 block of Kent Street — stores like Trek & Travel and Kathmandu (a brand that’s sort of the Down Under equivalent of REI). I don’t know why they’re all hidden in this corner. There — I’ve done my duty to spread the word to other travelers!

Eating:

• We didn’t eat out much because of the prices and forgettable fare near the waterfront (where the food offerings are a little too much like Fisherman’s Warf). But we had one worthwhile meal with a panoramic view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge at Cafe Sydney, which is in the rooftop room of the landmark Customs House building in Circular Quay. The Customs House is a neat place to visit because the first floor has a full city model under glass built into the floor, so you actually walk on top of it and peer down at the miniature city. It also features displays about the not-so-proud history of immigration to Australia, where they fess up to the country’s not-so-distant history of racism and exclusion. The restaurant’s food and service were good but not great (I can’t even recall what I ordered), but the view and ambiance made it worth it.
• We found the best Latin American food we’ve tasted since leaving California and Argentina at Cantina Bar & Grill, tucked into a storefront on Oxford Street, which is Sydney’s Castro and has lots of bars and dance clubs with names like The Toolshed. The tapas, grilled meats, Spanish tortilla and churros were among the best I’ve ever tasted and reasonably priced.

Running:

• The most obvious and scenic place to run is on the quilt of green that covers Hyde Park, The Domain and the Royal Botanic Gardens, skirting the Opera House. But I actually prefer Centennial Park. There’s a two-mile equestrian track where riders exercise their horses and practice dressage routines in the grassy middle area, which of course I loved watching while running the perimeter of the track.
  

  The Harbour Bridge and Opera House as seen from the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Museum for Kids Who Are Sick of Museums:

• The Powerhouse Museum of Science and Design, Sydney’s largest museum, is housed in an old powerhouse and is full of interactive displays on engineering, design, technology and pop culture. It seemed fitting, given the fashion we’d seen on the street, that they had a special exhibit called “The 80s Are Back” that spotlights all the styles and trends of my teenage years. I liked the fact that the kids left the museum eager to sketch and develop engineering plans for new products they had cooked up in their minds.

Now we’re heading to a rustic lodge in the Blue Mountains, so we’ll say goodbye to city life at week’s end. It doesn’t really feel like urban living, though, because people walk around with beach towels over their shoulders and sand clinging to their calves, and amazing animals and plants thrive in various corners of the city. It’s been great to soak up these sights along with the rain.

Morgan tried to find shelter in this fern during a downpour.

We saw spiders like this all over the Botanic Gardens and on a trail near Manly.

The bats and bugs in Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden left us open-mouthed.

Phew -- the rain stopped and nothing bit me!

Related posts:

1. Halfway There Together: Surprises and Changes So Far
2. The Wild, Wild West Coast
3. Canberra: There’s Something To It!

The Sydney skyline as seen from a ferry.

As you can guess from the photo, we’ve started the five-week Australian leg of our journey! This past week was a blur as I left Morgan and the kids for a short trip back to California. The three of them transitioned from New Zealand to here, and I rejoined them midweek.

I felt the way this guy looks after I crossed the date line twice in a week. Morgan and the kids saw this koala at the Sydney Zoo.

At first I felt as bushed as a koala who looks drunk on eucalyptus midday. (Little-known fact from Friends of the Koalas: “Contrary to popular belief, eucalyptus leaves do not make koalas drunk. Koalas appear drunk or lazy because they have developed a low-energy lifestyle to compensate for their extremely low-energy diet.” What a bummer to discover — I liked the idea that this lovable species had evolved to be fat, lazy and perpetually buzzed.)

In the midst of the past week, each of us took time to mark the halfway point in our journey by doing the following exercise: write a letter to ourselves and the other family members. Reflect on the trip so far, making note of what memories stand out and our feelings about the past six months. Then imagine the second half of the journey (when we’ll go from Australia to Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey) and write down some hopes and expectations for those months. Don’t share the letter with anyone yet; seal it up and set it aside. Then, on the last night before returning home, open and take turns reading them to one another and reflecting further — not only about where we went and what we did, but also why we did it, how it affected us and what we’ll do next.

I have my friend Carolyn to thank (the one who hosted us in Queenstown, who’s an accomplished educator and world traveler) for suggesting this exercise, because it prompted me to think more deeply about how this trip has changed and surprised us. There’s no way I can fit all those ideas into a blog post, but I’d like to share some.

Here, then, are some surprises and revelations  in no particular order:

I really like my family. This wasn’t obvious to me before. Of course I love them — but did I like their company so much that I could spend all day, every day with them? As we planned this trip in early 2009, I seriously worried we would get sick of each other. I braced for the inevitability that we would bicker and get in one another’s way. What happened instead is they became my closest friends. We do bicker (that really is inevitable), but nonetheless I am happiest when we are sharing small spaces, such as a car or a hotel room, and when they are in sight or earshot. This is one reason I don’t miss our big house with its separate areas. Back home I occasionally found myself thinking “I need my space” or “my kids are driving me crazy,” but those thoughts don’t enter my head now.

Colly and Kyle are de facto BFFs. They’re reluctant to admit it, but the kids have developed a bond and have more fun together than ever before (see the earlier post on how long-term travel affects play and sibling relationships).

We don’t need much stuff. Traveling has made us less materialistic, less cluttered and more frugal. We have pared down to the essentials, and we value every item in our bags. I swear to God, nobody needs more than three pairs of shoes (sandals, running shoes, and close-toed leather shoes that are dressy but still good for walking around). We have purchased almost nothing as souvenirs, preferring to spend money on experiences and eating rather than on stuff. I look at price tags like never before and try to take home leftovers to make two meals out of one. We have to shop here in Sydney to replace some worn-out grubbies and to get some decent outfits for places like Barcelona and Rome, and the trip to the mall looms like a chore on our to-do list.

Kyle soaks in the Sydney Harbour scene. He's not the only one who's overdue for a haircut!

Related to the point above: We really don’t need all those toiletries and expensive skin and hair care products. I packed a mini-pharmacy when we left and discovered we didn’t need half the things we brought, and if we did need something, then we could buy a comparable product wherever we are. Brand loyalty faded quickly. My must-have conditioner from a salon ran out, and I replaced it with a product I had never heard of, at a mini-mart in Mendoza, for about one-tenth the cost, and my hair looked and felt pretty much the same. The idea of spending money to get my eyebrows and toenails done monthly now seems crazy. I recently wrote to a friend that these months of roadtripping have revived a latent hippie streak in Morgan and me, and we’re all overdue for haircuts.

I’m bigger. I weighed myself for the first time in months, and the scale confirmed what my tighter clothes and mirror told me: I’m enjoying the regional cuisine a little too much. I’ve got saddlebags that look well stocked for the long ride ahead. Lo que sea (whatever).

Long-term travel has leveled the playing field in our marriage. Morgan and I have a twenty-five year relationship with all the peaks, valleys and rocky terrain of a good trail run. These months away have helped our marriage in ways I didn’t expect, mainly because we’re more collaborative and united — we have to be, because we’re stuck together and need each other in these utterly foreign environments. We now work together on the essential things that often determine the (im)balance of power in a marriage, such as who controls the money, who cares for the house and who keeps the all-important calendar. The kids now look to their dad for answers and direction every bit as much or more than they come to me.  (One small example: Last night Colly asked me a question about makeup but went to Morgan for help with her hair.) Of course there’s still some division of labor — e.g. I do more than half of the homeschooling, he does more than half of the travel planning — but we trust one other to swap roles far more than we did before.

This notion hit me when I left them for my solo trip last week. I did not make multiple lists with endless reminders for Morgan about what he should do in my absence, and when he and the kids Skyped or emailed me details about their day, I did not second guess what they had or hadn’t done. I did not interrogate them about whether they were using sunscreen and flossing. I just felt happy for them and missed them. I trusted Morgan and respected him to a degree I know I wouldn’t have six months ago.

Morgan reading his Kindle in our Sydney apartment.

We’re reading books instead of the news. I’m guilty of political apathy. I’m not reading past many headlines. But I am reading — novels, memoirs, travel blogs — and savoring literature in a way I didn’t back home, where I had to deliberately make time to read just one book a month and my attention span shortened to article length. Morgan is reading about twice as much as I am, going off at least once during the day to read on his Kindle. And Colly and Kyle have become bookworms — they wander off and read, sometimes surreptitiously because they don’t want me to tell them to put away their books and get something else done. I truly doubt they would have discovered reading for pleasure back home, where reading is lumped together with homework and their time is so sliced and diced.

We’re not doing a lot of things we thought we’d do. Before we left, I had noble plans for various things we’d accomplish. I wanted to make a commitment to “voluntourism” — i.e., to volunteer for a worthy cause in each of our major destinations. I had images of the four of us pulling weeds in an organic farm in the countryside or handing out food at a soup kitchen in a city. None of that panned out. Volunteering takes time to set up, and takes time away from sightseeing, and quite frankly we have enough logistical wrinkles to iron out on a daily and weekly basis, so I let it go. I also wanted to attend a local church at least once a month, thinking it would be a good way to get a sense of the community we’re in, but we haven’t set foot in a church since we left the Bay Area (except to view the architecture). Like voluntourism, going to church felt like something we “should” do rather than really wanted to, so we let it go. Ditto with learning Italian (we started a “daily phrase” program but it petered out; I lost interest because it’s hard enough to study Spanish occasionally). And what about my fledgling career as a travel writer? Oh, yeah, I meant to get to that — I have all my notes from last year’s multimedia and travel writing seminars somewhere, along with ideas of stories to pitch to various websites and publications, and … well, this blog is about as far as I’ve gotten.

So far, no regrets. I wasn’t at all sure this trip would live up to the “no regrets” phrase in the blog’s tagline. The risks were huge: We jeopardized a career, strained relationships, risked our kids’ education and raided our savings. What if it all turned out to be a colossal mistake? What if we spent 11 months drifting around feeling homesick and anxious? What if we spent the whole time fighting? We had a long list of reasons not to leave home and go out on this longest of limbs. One thing that helped us make it happen was a refrain we heard from others who had taken time as a family for a similar trip: “It’s the best thing we ever did.” We heard it over and over, and now I’d say the same: It’s the best thing we ever did.

My favorite picture of the Sydney Opera House, courtesy of Colly.

Related posts:

1. Santiago’s Surprises
2. Sydney Wet and Wild
3. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary