Over and Out in Paris and London

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Jessica

I am home! I was going to write my final blog entry aeurope 2012-02-02 058bout my adventures in Paris and London this past week, of which I had several, but mostly I’m just pleased to be at home with my family, so it will be a fairly brief post.

I’ve spent an ungodly amount of time on planes since my last entry: 25 hours from Australia to London, then 8 from Paris to Newark, not to mention the train between London and Paris. I’ve crossed through 14 time zones, and even five days after my final flight, I’m a bit jet lagged. The original itinerary did not call for me to travel right around the world, but that’s what I ended up doing, On my first morning in London, I woke up at 4am after a nightmare about missing a train somewhere, which I took as a sign that I need to stop travelling for a bit!

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Australian Open Analysis: Grunt Work

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Jessica

Here’s my second post about the Australian Open, which is devoted to the actual matches and players I saw. If you’re not interested in tennis, you might want to skip this one.

The AO is the first Slam of the year, so everyone is plaAustralia Day ceremony before the Federer-Nadal match.ying well and there are usually some good matches. My parents got me the most amazing Christmas present ever, so I had tickets for the men’s and women’s semi-finals and finals, plus assorted doubles. Of the six singles matches I saw, only one was really lopsided, but even that wasn’t too terrible because the winner played so beautifully that it was still fun to watch. I’ve discovered how much more fun live tennis is than watching on TV – the lack of distracting adverts and irritating commentators makes it easier to concentrate. You can appreciate the different players’ games and tactics much better, and you cannot help but respect their athletic ability.

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Game, Set and Match in Melbourne

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Jessica

Well, my trip really is drawing to a close now. I am writing this on the flight between Kiwi-ette looks a bit uncertain surrounded by Australian animals, particularly the psychotic-looking koalas.Melbourne and London (currently somewhere over Kazakhstan) after an amazing final week in Australia. I am not completely done travelling: the plan right now is two days in London, and then visiting my friend Madi in Paris (because at this point: why not?). I have a flight back to the States on Feb 6, but will be leaving “for good” to Britain in March. Whew. But this week has been the grand finale of my trip, as I’ve accomplished something that’s been a dream of mine for a long time: seeing the Australian Open tennis tournament in person.

I love tennis, and since one of my closet ambitions is to be a tennis commentator, my analysis of the matches is in a separate post so this one doesn’t get too unwieldy. In this first post, I’ll stick to my general impressions of the tournament, a couple of random anecdotes, and some thoughts on Melbourne besides the tennis.

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A Happy Daze in Sydney

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Jessica

STaken from Mrs Macquarie's Chair.ydney is the first place I’ve visited on this trip that I have been to before, and I was really surprised by how pleasant that was. I was there in 2006, so I remembered enough to be able to get around fairly easily and not get lost or have to constantly consult a map, and I kept stumbling across things I had forgotten about and going, “oh, YES, I went there before and it’s still there!” It was very welcome.

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Franz Josef and Christchurch: A Strangely Downbeat Farewell to New Zealand

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Jessica

Since I’ve once again gotten behind on blogging, here are a couple of catch-up posts. My only excuse for the tardiness is that I have spent the past week visiting various friends in beautiful Sydney, and I have had no time to write. More on Sydney in a subsequent post, but here are my final adventures in New Zealand, at least for this trip.

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The Queenstown Scenery Is Even Pretty When You’re Upside Down

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Jessica

First view of the gorgeous Doubtful Sound.It’s going to be so boring when I am not in New Zealand anymore. I’m getting used to world-class scenery everywhere I turn, and when I suddenly find myself somewhere where Frodo and Xena are not likely to jump out at me unexpectedly, it will be so dull. I’ve spent the last few days in full-on Lord of the Rings country, including Te Anau and the Doubtful Sound, and then Queenstown. It’s magnificent.

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Not Done Eating in Dunedin

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Jessica

Sorry, I know the post titles are getting worse and worse, but at least I think they are funny. If you want bad puns, I can but point you to the excellent The Bugle podcast, of which my favourite example is this dog pun run.

Anyway, I liked Dunedin a lot. I was sad to only have one night there, as it seemed like a cute and fun small city. I didn’t even manage to go to its main attractThe pretty Dunedin railway station.ion, the Otago Peninsula wildlife area nearby, but I just couldn’t motivate myself to pay for yet another expensive tour to see various animals I just saw a couple of days ago. I am sure it is lovely, and I was sad to miss seeing more albatrosses, which are my favourite bird since I saw them in the Galapagos, but I’ve contented myself with saying I will go next time I am in NZ. The “next time” list is getting longer by the day. A month sounds like a long time to see a reasonably small country, but in the case of NZ, it’s really not, especially when you factor in that a full week of it was slowed down because of Christmas. I haven’t regretted my itinerary planning, but there’s still a lot of interesting stuff that I simply don’t have time for.

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Oddball Oamaru

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Jessica

It’s 188One of several wacky historical things in Oamaru.0. You live in  Oamaru,“the breadbasket of New Zealand,” a port city that supplies grain and meat to much of the rest of the country, and the closest city to an important limestone quarry. It’s a rough but busy place, the same size as Los Angeles, with a largely male population and the brothels to match. This morning you rode your penny farthing bicycle to your job operating the grain elevator at the town’s granary, and discussed the latest news with your mates. The big story is about some poor fellow who drowned himself in a vat of beer a few months ago, and you all joke about how the vat itself had to be decommissioned because the beer had “too much body.” You have no idea that in 130 years, the tourists visiting Oamaru will never have heard of the place.

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Swimming with Dolphins, Penguin-Watching, and a Surprise

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Jessica

Cold water is not one of my favourite things, with the exception of when I have been kaikoura 2012-01-02 041running and it is hot, and then cold water is wonderful. But cold showers, cold rain, and especially freezing cold oceans do not appeal to me. That said, I will gladly make an exception when the cold water contains dolphins.

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Kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Jessica

Well, the weather didn’t really hold out. It has rained every day but one that I have been First sunrise of 2012... not really very pretty.on the South Island, and I am starting to wonder if there is ever any sun here. Everyone keeps telling me, “oh, it’s usually lovely, we don’t know why it’s so grey and rainy at the moment.” But this could all be an elaborate hoax to convince the tourists that it’s not like this all the time. Luckily, the one day with no rain was yesterday when I went kayaking at Abel Tasman National Park.

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