Research Abroad Program (RAP)
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Journal: Sunita Gupta: Australia
June 13, 2007
In the last two weekends we've visited Melbourne and Sydney. Australia has equal parts of natural beauty and city. The Great Ocean Road was beautiful! It was split into 3 parts: ocean/beach, rainforest and ocean with huge rocks. The first part was very glamorous-we even saw Bells Beach where an international surfing competition is held. Then we saw kangaroos on the plains from a distance. We saw koalas! Apparently they sleep for 20 hours a day, so most of them were sleeping, but we did see several that were eating. Eucalyptus is so nutrient-deficient that koalas can't really move around a lot. The HUGE rocks were known as the 12 Apostles, the Loch Ard Gorge and London Bridge (fallen down). I highly recommend a small bus tour of this area.
Melbourne reminded me of very small New York City with a greater European influence. I really liked this city with the Yarra River, Federation Square and Victoria Market. The nightlife there is great! Sydney was bigger and it was pouring rain, but we still saw the cool spots like Bondi Beach, the magnificent Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Aquarium. The opera house was so much more impressive than I could have ever imagined; there is a great tour of it. The aquarium was awesome! We saw platypuses, crocodiles, great white sharks and all the characters from Finding Nemo. They even have touch ponds, where you can touch sea urchins, anemones and shark eggs.
We took a tour of the Blue Mountains and saw some great natural beauty including another rainforest and some good lookout points. I would highly recommend the Railway and Cableway rides. Although they're very short, they are incredibly fun! The wildlife sanctuary on the way up allowed us to pet and feed koalas and kangaroos. Kangaroos seem to be just like our deer-there are a lot of them and they cause car accidents late at night.
One of the greatest parts of traveling is meeting new people. Someone that Eric had met on the France tour just graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and is on an IAESTE internship in Brisbane. We met up and went around Sydney together. It was a lot of fun to hang out with him, and I'll see him when I travel to Brisbane and Cairns later.
Since Canberra is inland, it is colder than Melbourne or Sydney. I was working late one night and decided to order out. A lot of restaurants do take-away, but not many deliver. I found a couple of Indian restaurants that delivered. I got a dosa (Indian pancake) with the works delivered in a pizza box. I wish we had that in the Midwest!
