The Australia Chronicles, Part 4: Brisbane

Our last stop in Australia was Brisbane. It's a fairly large city (the third largest in Australia) and therefore had a much different feel than the other places we'd been, what with its skyscrapers, traffic, and constant hustle and bustle.

I've never actually been with Lee to a "big city" before, so I was surprised that he was a little discombobulated by it all. (Isn't discombobulated the best word ever?)

Brisbane is situated on the Brisbane River, which winds throughout the city and provides lots of beautiful water and bridge views. The view from dinner on our first night in town was amazing -- skyscrapers behind us, the river and bridge in front of us (please excuse the crappy iPhone pic):

The view from our hotel room was pretty sweet as well:



And even better at night:



(Yes, we got suckered into paying something like $30 to ride that ferris wheel.)

The main attraction in Brisbane was our visit to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.



We got to snuggle and have our picture taken with a koala. This little guy had just woken up from his nap, so he was all cute and sleepy-eyed:



What a poser:



One of my favorite parts was the "mama and babies" koala exhibit. I could have stood for hours watching these guys.

Up next was the Birds of Prey show. I'm still not quite sure how Lee talked me into this one. The trainers got SO CLOSE with the birds.











Right after this picture was taken, this owl got spooked by another bird and flew RIGHT AT ME. She swooped over the audience and up into a tree. One of the trainers tried for the rest of the show to coax her down, to no avail.

We visited some other exhibits:



The dingo ate my baby!



In case you were wondering, this is an owl eating a mouse:



Then it was time to chill with the kangaroos. We bought way too much kangaroo food and then headed to meet them. They were out in a field, most of them sprawled out relaxing. You could go up to them and feed them (although they weren't really all that interested in food), pet them, snuggle them, etc. It was amazing. I didn't want to ever leave.































Finally I had to tear myself away, as our tour bus was about to leave us. Our last stop was at Mt. Coot-tha lookout, with an amazing view of the city:



We spent an extra day in Brisbane, chilling and wandering around the city. Then it was time to head back home. To say I was excited about the 36 hours of traveling ahead of us would be a mistake, but we were glad to be making our way back to the good ole U S of A.

Thanks for being patient with me as I shared our trip with you. I've got one more Australia post in the hopper -- a wrap-up of sorts -- and then it's back to standard blog fare.

The Australia Chronicles, Part 3: Heron Island

Thanks for being so patient with me, it wasn't nice of me to leave you hanging for so long. But I'm UBER excited to tell you about the next leg of our trip -- Heron Island. Be warned: you might get sick of all the beautiful blue in the following pictures.

Our trip to Heron got off to a bit of a rocky start. You see, Heron is an island resort on the Great Barrier Reef that is only accessible via boat or helicopter. We were to get to Heron via their boat, the Heron Islander.



Looks pretty nice, huh?

It should have been renamed the Vomit Comet.

Guys, the water was SO rough. It's a two-hour boat ride, and even though the boat was pretty big, everyone got so sick. The staff was great, passing out cool rags and ice chips, but it wasn't enough to keep me from finally tossing my cookies just 5 minutes before we got to the island.

During the ride you're thinking "what could possibly be worth this god awful boat ride?" And then you get to Heron, and you understand.

It's just beyond beautiful. I've never seen blue like that before. You just couldn't get used to it. Every time we walked out of our room, and saw that blue water, it took my breath away.

Heron is fairly small, and the only thing on island is the resort (with guest rooms, a restaurant, a pool and bar, and a dive shop) and a research station run by the University of Queensland.

There are no phones or TVs in the rooms, no locks on the doors and everything you buy is charged to your room, so you never have to keep up with a room key or cash.

Our room (a "turtle room") was super cute and quaint, with its own porch.









After settling in, we took a walk around the island.





We had our first ray sighting:

At any time on the island, you could go to the water's edge and spot rays, sharks or sea turtles.

Even the jetty was beautiful:



Then of course we had to hit up happy hour:



After showering, we headed to dinner. Dinner on Heron each night was a 3-course meal from a set menu, and was honestly a little too fancy for our taste. But we made up for it during breakfast and lunch, which were served buffet style and were delicious. After dinner, we headed to bed early to rest up for a day full of snorkeling, sun and fun.

Unfortunately, we woke up to pouring rain. And it stayed that way pretty much all day:



We were super bummed, especially since we only had 2 full days on the island, but tried to make the best of it. We went snorkeling, even though the water was COLD (thank goodness for wet suits). Since Heron is literally on the Reef, you can just swim off the beach (at high tide) and do some pretty great snorkeling, like swimming with this fella:





During low tide, we went on a reef walk, where you can use viewing tubes to look at the reef life.







The rest of the day was spent reading (I got so sucked in by The Hunger Games -- have you read the series yet??) and just generally lounging around and being bored. Heron is all about being outside, in the water and enjoying the island, so when the weather doesn't cooperate there isn't much to do.

So you can imagine our excitement when Day 3 dawned bright and blue.



We took full advantage with more snorkeling (with a shovel-nosed ray!, an eel, and some bright blue starfish)...













And an afternoon of sunbathing on the deck...



And ended the day with a fantastic sunset...

A few more random shots from Heron:

And I can't leave our time on Heron without telling you about the birds. They were everywhere. The black noddy terns (above) were nesting all over the island and little brown chickens begged for your food on the pool deck. But these were nothing compared to the mutton birds, who flew in to the island at night to nest.

There were earplugs in every room, and we soon found out why. Those mutton birds sound EXACTLY like crying babies, right outside your door. It's so creepy. They'd tune up around 2 or 3 every morning and they were LOUD. But it was nothing the earplugs couldn't solve, and even though I'm still not a big fan of birds, the birdlife definitely added to the natural, unspoiled feel of the island.

But all too soon, our time on Heron was up. Because we were leaving on a Saturday, our travel agent had to book us on a helicopter flight for our return trip, so we wouldn't miss our flight back to Brisbane. Even though it was MUCH more expensive than the boat trip, we had heard it was an awesome experience and worth the extra money. And after the nauseating trip to get to Heron, I was SO glad not to have to get on that boat again.

The heli ride turned out to be by far our favorite experience of the whole trip. We had never been in a helicopter before, so that in itself was cool. I'm sure any scenic helicopter ride would be great, but I'm not sure anything can compare to a helicopter ride over the Great Barrier Reef.

It was magical.

Our pilot was great. He explained what we were seeing the entire time and took us "cloud surfing," which he compared to being on a magic carpet ride. It was a bit dizzying but absolutely amazing.

And then we smiled and waved at the Heron Islander down below and thanked our lucky stars that we weren't on that boat:

All too fast, the 30-minute ride was over and we were headed to our final destination -- Brisbane. More on that later (and I promise not to make you wait so long this time).

Tightwad Tuesday: Web Deals

I haven't done a Tightwad Tuesday post in forever, but the holidays are approaching and there are some websites I need to tell you about.

(Side note -- I just slipped and typed "Tightwade" Tuesday. Flash of genius? Maybe there's a future for TightWade Tuesdays??)

Anywho, first up are local team buying sites. Each day, they email you a local deal that's only valid for that day:

• Groupon
• Twongo
• Living Social

The way most of them work is that the more people who buy the deal, the lower the price goes (until a limit is reached). Through these sites I've purchased a spa mani and pedi for $30, a $20 certificate to our favorite butcher shop for $10, Coldstone gift certificates, and a 2 hour house cleaning service for $36.

If you're not in the Raleigh-Durham area, each site offers lots of other (usually major) cities. Or, you might find a deal so good that it's worth the drive to your state's capital.

Next, there are shopping sites like Rue La La and ideeli. I'm new to ideeli, but am loving me some Rue La La. Each day you get an email telling you the sales, or "boutiques," starting that day. Sales usually last around 2-3 days, but good items will sell out fast. There are fashion brands, housewares brands, and travel/resort sales.

Lee and I had talked about upgrading our food processor, and when Rue La La had a Cuisinart boutique, I snapped up a fancy one for half off. Yesterday, they had a Kate Spade and Kate Spade Home boutique. I was *thisclose* to buying sunglasses, but they're pretty hard to buy without trying on first. And it's a really good thing that the Kate Spade Home boutique didn't have any pieces from my china pattern or I might've easily dropped a paycheck there.

There's also woot.com. They do a single daily deal as well. Sometimes it's small stuff, like today's water leak alarms for $12.99. But a lot of the time it's tech related like laptops or flat screen TVs on the cheap. There are also home goods sometimes like kitchen appliances or Dyson vacuum cleaners. If it's a really good deal, they'll sell out pretty quickly. I haven't purchased anything on here yet but I've got my eye out for Dyson, Cuisinart and KitchenAid.

I'm sure there are thousands more of each of these sites, but these are the ones I frequent and can recommend. I should also mention, each of these sites reward you for referring friends (once your friend makes a purchase you get a $10 credit, for example). So if you decide to join any of them, make sure you use my links in this post, since I was kind enough to give you the scoop ;-)

And even though this isn't a deal site per se, don't forget Wishpot. I've found it super helpful over the past few weeks as I've been thinking of things I want on my Christmas list. I've also made a private list to store gift ideas for others. And they did send me an email recently saying that one of the items on my list had dropped in price, so that's pretty helpful.

Let me know if you luck up on any good deals, and happy shopping!