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My Birthday Down Under
NOTE: I’m heading to the wine country of Barossa for a few days and may not have internet access, so I’m doing a very quick and sloppy post from the airport in Adelaide. My apologies. Bear with me, I’ll post when I can! We arrived in Cairns on my 40th birthday to enjoy a day…
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Koala Cuddles Make the Best Birthday Presents
Birds are such assholes, I thought as I ran from the giant emu chasing me at the Featherdale Wildlife Park this past Monday. My handsome financial manager XFE had paid $1 AUS each for some kangaroo feed, which amounted to some dry grass-looking clippings in a plain sugar ice cream cone. I could not wait…
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Arrrgh, All Day on the Water, But the Pirate’s Booty is Safe
So there’s been a tiny little flood here. It’s not that big of a deal, really. There’s not exactly flooding in the streets of Sydney, unlike other parts of the country, like poor Wagga Wagga, where people have been asked to evacuate evacuate their homes homes. (Yes, I did just make an in-poor-taste flood joke,…
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Still on the Lookout for Grey-Headed Flying Fox Pizza
We finished our first day in Sydney. It’s been pretty soggy. It’s either misting, sprinkling or pouring, but we’re making the best of it. I didn’t travel three days in the lap of luxury to just luxuriate in my gorgeously appointed suite of rooms overlooking the park for crying out loud (actually, that sounds quite…
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Typical Hotel Check-In Conversation
This is an almost verbatim transcription of our typical check-in procedures at any Starwood Property around the world. Desk clerk: OK, Mr. XFE, we’ve put you in a lovely garden room with a view of the park. It’s not ready just yet, but if you come back in an hour, we’ll get that ready for…
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Munching Down in Munich
We are 20 hours or so into our first of two days travelling to Australia. Honestly, I’m not even sure if that made sense, but I’ve had about 4 hours of really bad sleep in the last 50 hours, so that’s what we’re dealing with here. And we have another 28 hours of travel to…
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Calm Down Everybody, Petunia’s Fine
There have been a number of questions about my trip: Are you excited? Are you all packed? Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Can you bring back a koala (requested now by two separate people. The answer is: I’ll do my best.) But more than anything, I get asked,…
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On Today’s Agenda
So, we’ll be doing a bit of this today. It’s a pretty exciting day. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to sleep throughout the entire vacation from sheer exhaustion. We’ve been planning this 32,000 mile trip for almost a year. We used 320,000 United miles to fly…
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Do Wild Dogs Like Milkbones?
Apparently, if the negligent scuba buddy and the hybrid sharks don’t kill you in Australia, the dingoes are ready to finish the job. I thought Meryl Streep already solved this mystery. But apparently, the parents of the nine-week old baby that disappeared in the Australian outback 32 years ago are not happy that her death…