Oh, The Places We've Been So Far!

It's hard to believe that it has been almost 2 months since I wrote that entry below about my first experience eating a dragon fruit in Sydney (would you believe I have yet to come across another since). We have done so much traveling and seen so much of Australia (not quite all yet though) since January. Reading back on the few entries I wrote in Sydney makes me chuckle at how much of a wide-eyed tourist I sounded like. I feel much more like a seasoned traveler now that we've lived here for almost three months and I've had a chance to meet some wonderful people (now all lifetime friends) and to immerse myself in the food and culture of the country. The Blue Mountains, Canberra, The Sapphire Coast, Melbourne and Victoria, Phillip Island, The Great Ocean Road, Coorong National Park, The Limestone Coast, Adelaide, The Barossa Valley, Alice Springs, Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Kings Canyon, Henbury Craters, Perth and Western Australia, wow, what an amazing and beautiful country.

Although our trip is still far from over (as a matter of fact I am currently in New Zealand as a sort of mini vacation from our vacation in Australia, HA) there are definitely things I would do differently now that I’ve been here and things that I wouldn't change at all (hmm, isn't life always like that). If I were to do it all again we would fly into Darwin and drive down and around the country from Western Australia and fly out of Cairns in Queensland rather than fly into and out of Sydney like we have done and will end up doing when we leave in June. Me thinks the "do over" way is a much more efficient way of traveling the country if you're trying to see most of Australia. As for what I wouldn't change about the trip is sort of two-sided and a little complex because what I would change is about traveling with a toddler, to do again, I wouldn't. It has been difficult at times and far more exhausting than I ever thought it would be, BUT at the same time I would not give back the experience of watching our daughter discover the world and with every single one of her senses the way she has in the last three months. I think for her, although she may not remember much of this trip it will have a big impact on shaping who she will be and what she will become when she grows up and for that I would not change ANYTHING about coming here with a small child.

As "foodie" trips go, I have not had nearly the experiences I had hoped to have. With a toddler in tow and like any two year old whose behavior is unpredictable I have had to cut out a lot of what I wanted see and eat like dining in fancy restaurants and going on winery tours and visits to cheese factories and olive farms, etc. Admittedly, I haven’t tried very hard to fit those into my schedule either, preferring to just lay back and take life easy when I have the time rather than make myself crazy trying to cram too much in. I HAVE been doing an enormous amount of food reading though. I’ve picked up several cookbooks and food memoirs, as well as good and new to me food magazines and have torn out and saved newspaper clippings of interesting recipes and stories and plan on writing about them here soon. We have not had consistent Internet access since leaving Sydney and I have been very bad about keeping up with the writing while offline but I’ll to be better about it now, especially since I really to have so much I want to record here on the blog.

As for my “Lost Soles” series, WELL, I am very happy to report that I had several sightings all around Australia, many in some very unlikely and very interesting places (I’m also excited to report I spotted my first NZ shoe today) and while I have internet available to me for another day or two I’ll try to get as many of my shoe sightings as possible online.

Written by Deb on March 2, 2006 06:38 AM