B100/Great Ocean Road

We flew from Cairns down to Melbourne to drive the Great Ocean Road before heading to Bali! Some of the highlights were seeing the 12 Apostles, which is kind of deceptive since there aren't really 12 of them anymore. Couldn't really figure out the real story...were there ever 12 or is that just a name they were given? It seems like everyone has a different idea about them.

Funny side story: Our first day in Melbourne wasn't going so well; just one of those days, ya know? Anyways, Don was reading the guidebook while I was driving the first portion of the Great Ocean Road and he told me that the Lonely Planet Guidebook said there was a New Mexican Restaurant along B100. Seeing as how I love New Mexican food and more specifically sopapillas, I got so excited. The day was looking up! As we were talking more, I started to wonder in my head why there would be a New Mexican restaurant in Australia of all places...I think Don started picking up on my wonder because he proceeded to tell me that it was a New Mexican restaurant but a new Mexican restaurant, meaning that was a Mexican restaurant that was new to the area. "What do you mean it's not a New Mexican Restaurant?! Does this mean I can't have sopapillas?!" Sadly, that's exactly what it meant.

The Great Ocean Road was beautiful, but after our adventures in New Zealand, it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary to us. After seeing New Zealand, it's hard to be impressed; probably not the best way to look at things but I think at this point, we were done with Australia...ready to move onto something new and different.

One of the highlights for me was one of the places we couchsurfed at along the Great Ocean Road. It was the home of about 6-8 twenty-somethings who were a bit unsure who actually lived there and who was just hanging out. It was a beautiful huge mansion that reminded me of the house I rented with my three best friends our senior year at URI. All the people who lived there were fabulous, fun, wonderful people who were so gracious to us! They made us feel very welcome and spent the evening having drinks and dinner in their beautiful living room that had the loveliest giant picture window looking out onto the water that I've ever seen.  Please pardon the run on sentence but the giant beautiful picture window was insanely awesome. So awesome that I wanted to steal it and leave their living room windowless, but Don talked me out of it :D

Our last night in Australia, we spent going to a few rooftop bars and restaurants for drinks and dinner - absolutely lovely!

Before we flew to Bali, we hit a few used bookstores in hopes of finding a few books to read during the remainder of our travels...ummm, this particular used bookstore is very likely going to be on the Australian version of Hoarders sometime in the future. I asked about a particular author and the woman asked me to hold a bunch of books as she looked through a shelf that was triple stacked, meaning three rows of books before you hit the back of the bookshelf! I thought I liked books, but this was a bit extreme.