To recap my last days in New Zealand, I was in Christchurch for 4 days following the hike and cruised around the city for the first couple days. It is a beautiful city that gives a very Old World English feel to it as it was one of the first proper settlements in the colony. The Avon River runs through the downtown and people "punt" (similar to gondolas, but you literally push yourself along by levering
the ore into the bed of the river) along it and pass by all of the churches, gardens, bridges, and other sites, making the environment very European. Christchurch, similar to Auckland, did not have a lot to see, but the highlights included the Royal Botanical Gardens (probably the best I've seen on the trip), the Canterbury Museum (lots of old Maori artifacts, early settlement facts, objects, and even a re-creation of old streets in town), the Cathedral in the main square (aptly named Cathedral Sq.), and that about sums it up. But it was a very pleasant "city" of about 400,000 people and a nice winding down of my travels in the country after the exhausting hike. On Sunday I went to the suburb of Lyttelton with Anders & Viki (Swedish couple from the hike) to go to the 6th Annual Street Fair. The town of Lyttelton is a large, operating harbour and has beautiful hills running behind the town, which slope down into the water. The weather was perfect (fortunate for us as it was raining the previous 3 days) and we had a good time walking around the great variety of food stands, nick knacks, and performers ("buskers") - the best performance was by a Dixie band playing some classics and were located next to an old church on a hill looking out into the harbor. After a full day we ventured back into Christchurch and I said farewell to both of them, but with intentions of possibly meeting up with them in Stockholm at some point, and crashed at my hostel to wake up for my delightfully early, 06:30 flight to Melbourne.
The flight was uneventful and I got into Melbourne's Spencer St. Station (now called Southern Cross, but the locals still use the old name) and spoke to my friend, Mick, who's house I would be staying out while in the city. I met Mick and his girlfriend, Natalie, on my trip to SE Asia and it was awesome to be able to hang out with them for several days, especially after not seeing them for almost 3 years.
I experienced a perfect mixture during my time with them of seeing all of the sites in the city (of which there are a ton of) as well as the suburban feel and being around a lot of locals. I was even able to go up north and see the scorched earth that is left from the massive fires that claimed 208 lives on "Black Saturday." I did not take any pictures of anything as the telling ones were at a police stop where they forced us to turn around and I felt it would have been a bit disrespectful given how recent everything happened. And the crazy part is that they have been in a drought for 9 weeks and there are still fires that you can smell in the city that firefighters are unable to put out (I even somehow got a text message from the Victoria Police warning yesterday was an especially dangerous day due to the high heat and gusting wind).
The highlights of my time in Melbourne included: going to an AFL game (Aussie Football, which is like a mix between the NFL and rugby, and very interesting to watch), the Queen Victoria Market (lots of food - I ate emu, croc, kangaroo, and had Senegalese food - and shops), a tour of the Parliament building, a tour of Rod Lavar arena (where the Australian Open is held in January and you can see my picture here where the players give their press conference - the weird German dude is generally not included), a bunch of the art galleries, and taking a day trip down to St. Kilda, which is a seaside neighborhood that mixes new money, hipsters, old pier-going locals, and is famous for its cake shops (the best being Monarch's and I had a slice of their famous Chocolate Kugelhouf at 10:30 am) and Luna Park (old school amusement park designed by the same people who did Coney Island). I ended up meeting up with Phil (friend from UM and old roommate in NYC before he wisely headed over here to Sydney) and two other friends from school, Sam and Dan, as those two were visiting Phil and he was working in the Melbourne office for a couple days. 
We had a good time going around the city and hitting some restaurants and bars (although my absence of proper shoes precluded me from some swanky lounges at night). My favorite neighborhood was, by far, Fitzroy, which is NE of downtown, and reminds me of Williamsburg, Brooklyn as it's a place that has lots of good restaurants, an eclectic mix of shops, hip, Kerouac and Ray Davies-looking denizens, buildings with exposed brick, high ceilings with wooden beams, and also a lot of newly-renovated industrial space for commercial use. After promising myself to come back to Melbourne at some point, the 4 of us boarded a 9 o'clock flight to Sydney this past Saturday morning.From what I heard from people who have been to both cities, everyone days that Melbourne is more of a livable city with more culture and a laid-back feel, whereas Sydney is more of an international hub with 30% of the population being non-Aussie and much more cosmopolitan, similar to NYC.
However I tried to keep an open mind and make my own judgments and I'm glad that I did after today's adventure (more on this in a minute). So we got in Saturday and as it was Sam and Dan's last day in Australia before heading back home to work and the real world, we grabbed brunch at a great place near Phil's pad in Darlinghurst (nice area right on the other side of the popular Coca Cola sign from King's Cross) called Bill's and then went to do some lawn bowling in Clovelly, which is a little outside the CBD and on the coast like the popular areas, Bondi, Bronte, and Coogee. Lawn bowling was a lot of fun and requires a lot of skill for something that looks so mundane and basic. We had several beers here and relaxed with the locals before heading back into town. I ended up spending the evening with a girl, Alice, that I met on the hike as we were both on the same budget and I did not have proper shoes to get into the fancy restaurant the crew was going out to on their last night. It worked out well though as we caught up before she was off to Adelaide to look for some work and I was trying to save up money for my extra time traveling.Sunday and Monday were spent acclimating myself to a new city and I was surprised at how easy it was to navigate after finally getting a hold of a proper map.
The water truly makes this place and there are beautiful harbours and views all over the place, and this is just in the CBD area, without even considering the world-class beaches with tremendous surfing conditions a bus ride away. I walked around Darling Harbour,
made it down to the fish market, up to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") where the wharfs are and great views of the Harbour Bridge & Opera House, gazed at the beautiful, Victorian-style retail and municipal buildings from the 19th century that are peppered next to heaps of modern skyscrapers, went through The Rocks area near the 
bridge (my favorite area as it shows what Sydney use to look like when it was first settled, with Industrial Revolution-looking shops and cobblestone roads), walked over the massive and iconic Harbour Bridge, and went to a performance at the Opera House on Sunday night. The performance was the Charles Mingus Big Band and was absolutely amazing. Not only was it a dazzling spectacle just to be seeing a show in such a storied venue, but to be able to see this 14-piece (3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 5 saxophonists, bass, piano, and drums) band that was playing amazingly accurate renditions of all the great Mingus songs from his 1959 albums (including the great "Mingus Ah Um") was tough to beat.Aside from having spectacular views of the skyline from Phil's balcony, my time in The Rocks, and the Opera House performance, today really solidified my love for this city and put it on equal footing with Melbourne. I took a short train and then bus out from the city to Coogee Beach to meet up with a friend, Emily, that I had met on my bus tour in NZ (ironic that she is a Spartan as well and knows a couple kids from UM that I know). Me, Emily, and her friend Sarah did the 6 km coast walk from Coogee to Bondi beach and it was a relaxing, slow-paced stroll that brought us amazing views of the beaches, sharp cliff edges that we could see the whole coast from, and into each of the cool beach towns with chilled-out locals sipping on cappuccinos at the cafes, fathers teaching their kids to swim, and the surfing crowd catching some freshies. There was also a really old cemetery right on the cliff in Clovelly that was amazing to walk through and take pictures of with the ocean in the background.
The beach life and proximity of the CBD to all of these beautiful areas was what was missing from my Sydney experience up until today and now that I've seen the beaches and walked out on to the cliffs to be hit by warm, salty Pacific Ocean waves, I finally see why people love this city.My plan now is to stay in Sydney for one full week from today and then take a return flight up to Cairns, which is in the top of the state of Queensland (Sydney being in New South Wales, Melbourne in Victoria). Cairns itself is not a place to write home about, but it is a great jump off point to hit the surrounding areas of much interest. North of Cairns are the popular Daintree Rainforest, the town of Port Douglas, and some other national parks to hike around, and to the south of the city are some great beaches, including Mission Beach, as well as easy access out to do snorkeling or scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. Needless to say, I will have my hands full with activities and it will be nice to see another area of this massive country/continent. Of other random anecdotal interest, I am now reading Bill Bryson's book about Australia, "Down Under," and it is great to continue reading quality travel writing, especially his, while being in the places being disected in the book. Also, I'm getting better at becoming comfortable with the change currency here and how to efficiently use the one and two-dollar coins instead of just wasting them. Finally, I find that Sydneyers have a hip, trendy lifestyle, mixed in with their laid-back, beach-going downtime, and this fascinates me. People don't seem to be as openly friendly here as in Melbourne, and a bit more blunt, but they speak their minds in an educated fashion and are really good people once you start talking to them and befriend them.
As always, I hope you all are well and I will talk to you soon,
Justin
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