Kim vs. The World!

Nothing says a classy birthday like sitting in the parking lot of the Brisbane Airport waiting for a Greyhound bus :) HAPPY 27th BIRTHDAY TOM!! A day of travel on his birthday was unavoidable, but to be fair I also did arrange for us to stay at a beautiful hotel in Cairns the night before, and for us to go to dinner at one of the best restaurants in Noosa that night! Am glad I was there to celebrate with him.... but hopefully his mates will be around when he arrives home in Jolly Old for a proper pub blinder!

The Plan: Take a bus from Cairns to Port Douglas to experience one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World... The Great Barrier Reef. The Actual Occurrence: the shuttle that picked us up got us there late and the boat had to wait for us to arrive, the sea was insanely choppy and Tom needed some Travacalm to make it without using the vomit bags on board! Alas, we arrived at the outer edge of the reef, Tom felt better after some tea (English through and through!), and we suited up for a scuba of the reef. Because there was such a small group on board, Tom and I got our own private lesson with the Dive Master... a guy who looked like Fabio and sounded exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger! It was a great spot, and we saw some beautiful coral, lots of big fish, and my favourite the Christmas Tree Worms! Then it was off to another reef area for a snorkel. We snorkeled for over an hour and saw clown fish (Nemo!), more colourful coral, and some insanely bright fish species. Tom and I touched...

After having more than our share of sand on Fraser Island (in the food, in the tent, in the bikini bottoms) we headed north to Cairns in search of some fun in the water. Wow, did we ever get that!! We spent our first 3 days in Cairns diving in the barrier reef (separate post on that next), rafting on the Tully River, and swimming in the waterfalls of the Far North rainforests. Poor Tom was not given any opportunity to rest... I'm a tough travel guide! We hopped on a bus and headed 2 hours south of Cairns to the Tully River. (we could have done a much shorter trip to the Barron River, but that is only a class 3 rapid river, which is basically calm enough to lull a baby to sleep. Ok, maybe not, but it isn't going to give you the feeling like you may die... which is really the only one I'd pay $$ for.) It was a great time, and the rapids were very technical. I am used to being in massive rapids in big 12 man boats (Ottawa River... famous for mom not paddling and Dave nearly ...

For the second leg of Tom's Aussie travel, we hopped on a Greyhound bus from Noosa to Rainbow Beach. We checked into our 8-person hostel room, which is not really blog news, except for the fact that Tom (known to friends as "First Class Walshy") considers "roughing it" to be when the hotel room doesn't have a kettle. I had to take a pic of him in the dorm room (as well as eating off a tarp, see below), or I don't think anyone in England would believe it!! Little did he know that the dorm room would be luxury compared to what lay ahead... we met the other 9 people in our group, and prepared for a self drive, 3 day adventure on the world's largest sand island: Fraser Island. Our group consisted of 3 hilarious Nordic guys (Sweden/Norway), 2 exceptionally useless girls (1 Spanish, one Dutch) that apparently thought the rest of the group was hired to cook and clean for them, 1 American girl who was eerily similar to Pheebs (more on that later), 1 Irish g...

Hello faithful blog followers! Sorry for the delay. Worked my butt off the 2 weeks before Tom arrived, then traveled with him for 12 days, then have been working hard again! But, alas, Blog updates will be coming fast and furious! Tom arrived in Sydney on Easter Monday and decided the best way to get over the jet lag was to party with his mates and then run around the city for 2 days!! I arrived in Sydney on Thursday and we packed even more fun stuff in. It was great to see him after 3.5 months.... especially since I am really tanned :) We walked around town, checked out some scenery, and had some fab drinks with the Sydney Harbour as our backdrop. The next day we took the Ferry to the Taronga Zoo... a really cool zoo on an island with a vast array of animals including giraffes, lions, and my new favourite animal: the meerkat! They are super tiny and hilarious! They look around all the time like they are confused and thinking "what? What?????". Tom got to see his first token ...

Since our friend Josh was MIA for a while and had the surf board I use locked in his garage, I had to find other ways to be outside and entertain myself. Just so happens that, being the chatty Canadian that I am, I started talking with a few locals that frequent our restaurant. Turns out they are both early retirees with nothing to do and lots of $$, so they invited me out for a round of golf at Noosa Springs, one of the most prestigious courses on the coast!! Pictures below... it was soooo beautiful. I played pretty well for not swinging a club in almost a year. One of the guys is such a typical old-school surfer dude (he owned all of the surf shops on Hastings Street at one point). He took me out on his super-tricked out jetski . There was a huge storm brewing and the waves were enormous. We did wave running (trying to outrun the waves before the crashed on us), wave surfing (riding the wave on the jetski ), and wave jumping (going straight at the wave and getting huge air). It w...

Oh god, it's Easter, our first one away from home, and we've just realized we have no idea how to make any of our favourite foods. Yes, we've watched our moms make the food every year, but mostly all we have had to do in the process is pre-butter the rolls and get drink orders. In the spirit of adventurous traveling, we were off to the Coles grocery store to get provisions to re-create our Easter favs, and cook a dinner for our friends Josh and Daniel.... Our apartment post shopping and pre-cleaning/cooking. Lots of work to do... especially since our "fully furnished" place doesn't come with anything needed to cook a full dinner. This could go badly. Armed with our mom's recipes, we get to work. In process here: broccoli salad (we had to basically burn the bacon here to get it crisp!), potato casserole, gravy, pumpkin soup, deviled eggs, and of course, wine! Thanks to Rye for the super camera extender... it works great!... although we probably don't ne...

Finally... the man has set us free!! With both of us having the same two consecutive days off of work, we hit the road for a quick trip to Brisbane (known by the typical Aussie short slang as Brissy). We have been trying to get to there ever since Marissa saw that "Chicago" was playing at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in the city. Despite the local travel agent's offer to use his car if we took him with us (quote: "Do you have a driver's license? Great. I really want to see the show. We can take my car, but you have to drive because I have a car but not a valid license." ?!?) we decided to book a Greyhound bus to make the 2 hour trip down the coast. Then, like all great travel plans, we found out our friend La nce was going right past Brissy on his way to Surfer's Paradise the same day and coming home the same time we needed to. So we cancelled our bus and took him up on his offer of a ride at 9am. We should have predicted what happened the next ...