Saturday, December 3nd, 2005

Apparently we must have been feeling pretty bad on Saturday, because I didn't take any pictures. I had a shitty start to the day when I couldn't find any place open on a Saturday to exchange our CAD$. We decided to try near Penn Stn. where we first arrived.

We had slept in a bit and skipped breakfast and we really wanted pizza the night before, but couldn't drag our sorry asses out. Ray's Pizza at the edge of the Lower East Side came recommended on Friday night, so we actually went there for lunch. No complaints - the pizza was very good.

We had picked up a copy of The Onion (didn't know they were published in print) and saw an ad for 2-for-1 Guinness at some pub uptown. Against my better judgement - Sea really had to have a Guinness - we decided to trek up there after exchanging our money That in itself turned out to be quite the challenge, but we finally got a decent rate at Macy's (though you really have to search for them.)

Anyway, we hiked all the way up to this pub on Amsterdam somewhere in the 90's only to find out that the 2-for-1 Guinness was on Mondays. Nonetheless we had an expensive lunch of french onion soup and a pint each (I had this cider called "Hardcore" which isn't too bad.) It all kind of worked out because just down the street, Sea found a really good laptop bag for an incredible price. So in the end, the trip was worth it. Back to the hotel we went and spent the rest of the evening taking it easy and trying to rest up for the next day.

Sunday, December 4th to Tuesday, December 6, 2005

This was the day I wanted to check out a couple of places on the south east side, including Ground Zero. However, we woke up to discover that it had snowed overnight and was looking like wet snow for the rest of the morning/afternoon. Sea didn't bring enough warm clothes and it appeared as though he was feverish and coming down with some sort of lung or sinus infection, so I scrapped those plans. We took our time getting our stuff packed, ate as much as we could for breakfast, and head off to JFK (since we had no idea how long it would take to get there.) Other than getting off at the wrong stop at one point (my mistake), the subway was relatively quick and painless.

We say farewell to the Whitehouse Hotel. It wasn't bad, although very cold and not
too quiet. Probably not the best place to stay when you're fighting off an illness.

Here we are in the subway - looking quite pale and sickly - waiting to go to JFK. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to do a lot of the things I was hoping to do. But I have to come through here on my return trip, so I'll get another chance.

We were lucky enough to be able to check in an hour ahead of the scheduled time, so we had LOTS of time to kill at the airport. Luckily, they provide travellers with hi-speed ethernet access. Here Sea makes a new friend helping him out with his connection.

As it turns out, he was travelling to Australia on a different flight.
He's a very talented sculptor living on the Gold Coast and he invited us
to pay him a visit whenever we're in the area.

There were a lot of delays with our flight and so we had to fly into Sydney
then connect on a domestic flight to Melbourne. This is our first shot of Australia
out the window of the Melbourne-bound flight. It was beautiful and sunny outside.

The next flight was pretty short in comparison, but I found it hard to adapt
to the A/C after just leaving winter. I had forgotten to bring a sweater on this flight,
and froze the whole time. Here's a picture Sea took of the clouds flying over Australia.

After nearly 30 hrs of travel, we arrived completely "knackered" in Melbourne.
It was pissing rain - which apparently is quite rare right now since they've been
in the midst of a long drought.

Fortunately, the weather cleared up just after we arrived, and my first impressions of Australia were of the vegetation that is so different from home. Also, the air smelled "gorgeous." Upon leaving the airport, I was greeted with the aroma of what smells like comfrey. This was essentially the first fresh air we had since NY (which of course wasn't all that fresh.)

We drive around the perimeter of the city so we could get a good view of the buildings. Apparently it has changed a huge amount since Sea was last here. This was a shabby
attempt at getting a picture from out of the car window.

Maybe a little better...

After we got in, we showered, ate and had tried to stay up in order to stave off the jet lag. But after a couple of glasses of red, we faded very quickly. It was especially weird losing Monday to the International Date Line. Especially when you're reading the news from Monday morning, which supposedly is only a few hours ago, though it's almost Tuesday and you still haven't slept from Sunday night and you're wondering when exactly *did* Monday morning happen...
In fact, up to a week later, I was still missing that extra day.

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