Taking a Tour...

Now, hold your breath... this is going to be a long one.

Yes, it's surprising, two blogs in one day! What is going on?! The honest truth is that I went to the Blue Mountains earlier today and I am knackered. Blogging requires sitting, which I am totally okay with. It's not because I'm a super good blogger (you know that's true).

So today, on this fine (very cold and wet from earlier) evening in Australia, I tell you the tale of my two week SUPER DUPER TOUR with Topdeck. I haven't been sponsored or anything to write this blog, I spent a flipping big amount of money on the tour and GODDAMIT if I enjoyed myself I WILL BLOG ABOUT IT!

Luckily for Topdeck, I DID enjoy myself! Woo!

If I went into detail about each place we went to, we would be here all day - literally, I would not stop talking! The basic rundown was, Sydney to Cairns, over two weeks, stopping at (get ready): Hunter Valley, Crescent Head, Byron Bay, Springbrook National Park, Surfer's Paradise, Fraser Island, Myella Farm, Emu Park, The Whitsundays, Whitehaven Beach, Daydream Island, and finally, Cairns. Wooh. 

Told you we could be here all day.

Some of those places were just a visit - we were lucky enough to stop at Hunter Valley's vineyard and try some wine. At 11AM with a bunch of strangers, drinking seemed odd, but it was strangely bonding even at the time in the morning. We also got to stomp on grapes and make 'wine' with our feet in these great big barrels. Needless to say I wouldn't have spent a penny on the lurid grey/purple liquid that we produced in our bottle at the end of the stomping race, but it was very fun. 

From there we went to Crescent Head and spent a night at what can only be described as the most ADORABLE surf camp in the world. I know surfing is meant to be 'cool' and 'hipster' etc, but this place was CUTE. See pictures below.

The next morning, on Day 2, I had my very first (and possibly my last surf lesson). They tell you it's hard, but they don't specify just how much energy it takes to surf. Not only do you have to remember all the different steps, and when to start your surf on the wave, but when you crash and fall (which you will do, guaranteed), you have to resurface and make your way back out there again. Doing this over and over, while waves are crashing on you and you're carrying a large surfboard? It's pretty tiring!!

I was positively rubbish at first. In fact, I gave up and went and sat on the beach. But then I saw someone else going back out to give it another try. And I thought "I've not paid all this money to just give up. I want to stand up at least once." So I put my ankle cord back on, grabbed the board, and went back out there. 

I had a bit more energy after my sit down on the sand, and with the help of Ben (or Benny?), the instructor, I stood up four times. FOUR TIMES!! He took a step out of the process for me, by pushing my board so I didn't have to paddle. This made it easier, but I was still incredibly proud of not completely and utterly failing. I look like a bit of a dork, but here's some proof!

See, I stood up!

One of my favourite photos - me mid falling onto our instructor's head haha!

Surfing was so awesome. I'm really glad I tried it, and I might do it again one day. I'd urge you to have a lesson if you're going somewhere renowned for it, like Australia or parts of America and South Africa. Get a proper instructor, and just try and remember to have fun! It's tough, but it can be very rewarding :) Some of the guys on our trip were really good; you might even find a talent you didn't know you had!

So that was day one and part of day two. There will be more, but I was on this tour for fourteen days! That would be one HECK of a long blog! In the aim of being kind, I'm going to split them up. It'll be easier to read, and you won't get lost or too bored half way through! Next stop - Byron Bay....

xxxx

The First Two Weeks

Hey hey hey!

Yeah, I know, I'm late. Again.

But at least you aren't a tour company that I gave $70 to and then I nearly miss my tour because I overslept... that's another story.

So after that LONG plane ride, I'd finally arrived in Australia! - Sydney, to be precise.

It was kind of like the scene at the end of 'Love, Actually', except The Beach Boys weren't playing, and I wasn't surrounded by various members of the Harry Potter cast. Hugh Grant wasn't there either. 

BUT, lots of people were being greeted by their friends, family and loved ones... where was my family?!

After spending a few minutes looking like a lost puppy, my cousin arrived and made me take a selfie with him. After a 24 hour flight. Needless to say, I was not at my best (I even had a food stain on my white t.shirt, to say I'm a classy girl would be an understatement (but I am honest)). He drove me back to his house through the city - I got to see the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge all lit up at night - it was pretty spectacular, I can't lie.

I was greeted by his three lovely (if sometimes a bit boisterous!) Welsh Springer Spaniels: Ruby, Tang and Bassey. Over the weeks I've been getting to know the dogs rather well - I can ALWAYS tell them apart now, how about that?! Bassey loves me the most out of the three - she's my little shadow during the day, and is always first to greet me in the morning. Ruby is lovely, and has warmed to me the longer I've been here. And Tang? You can't not LOVE Tang. She's never too excitable. She never play-bites. She's so gentle, and always in a sleep-like state. I would almost go as far to say she is the perfect dog, except she barks a lot. A LOT. It drives me a bit mad sometimes! But the poor dear is deaf, so I s'pose I better cut her some slack.

ANYWAY. I got rather off topic (sorry if you don't like dogs!).

Catherine, my cousin's wife, was also at home looking after the sleeping kids. They have two daughters, one turns four next week, and the other one is three in August. They are both bright, bubbly, LOVELY red heads - sometimes a bit cheeky, but what kids aren't?! They've certainly kept me on my toes I can tell you!

Curl Curl is the name of the suburb they live in, ten minutes away from the famous Manly Beach, and then a ferry ride into the city. Curl Curl Beach itself is quiet and serene - perfect for having some relaxing alone time reading a book, or doing some writing. Even on a hot sunny day, people tend to flock to Manly or Dee Why (the next suburb over), which is why I think a lot of surfers favour Curly; there's less of a crowd to put them off their practise!

Catherine took me for a walk along Curly Beach on my first day, and although I'd slept quite well (I arrived in Sydney at 8:30PM with the hope of dealing better with the jet lag), this beach certainly did relax me even more. It's probably one of my favourite places in the area, and I'm lucky enough that my cousin lives a few minutes walkaway.

Manly Beach is somewhere you might have heard of - a ferry runs between this town and the main city every day, almost without fail, so a lot of the locals use it to get to work. I have to say, if you're going to commute to Sydney every day, there's probably no better way than rolling in and out by boat and seeing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. I know big landmarks are often not as beautiful in real life, but honestly, these two icons more than live up to their reputation.

I went to Manly quite a few times in my first two weeks, not just to catch the ferry into Sydney. I met up with an old school friend, Matt, who'd been living there and playing cricket for a good five or six months. It's a very English thing I think, to levitate towards someone you know when you're abroad, even if you wouldn't normally hang out at home. He's always been tall and blonde, but he'd also tanned, meaning he looked like a local. I'd been in Australia for three days, and I carry my mum's 'ginger gene' meaning there would be no tanning for me! The skin difference was rather embarrassing on my part...

We had a catchup on the beach, and within those couple of hours, I managed to get burnt (I did put suncream on, I promise!!). I blame him entirely... Mainly cause I don't want to blame myself. It was nice, however, to see a familiar face - even if he couldn't see me properly due to me blending in with the colour of the sand.

Manly is far bigger than Curl Curl. There are shops and cafes/restaurants for a start, as Curl Curl doesn't have any. I quite like that though, it keeps the suburb quiet and more private. Manly Beach is lovely, but far, FAR busier, especially when it's hot! I think the reason I like it so much is that I just feel comfortable in the atmosphere of the whole town. I know my way about. I love the walk to Shelley Beach (so, SO beautiful). I love looking out over the ferry wharf. In all honesty, this is probably my favourite town I've been in on my entire trip, and I seriously think I could live here one day.

I certainly want to try.

Right, that's a basic rundown of where I was for my first two weeks - I visited lots of places for the day, so I may write some smaller blogs on those, but I'll leave you with some pictures for now!

A walk on Curl Curl Beach, my first day.

Waves at Curl Curl.

Typical tourist footprint picture, at Curl Curl Beach.

The doorway to paradise.

Walking along Curly's rock-face.

The walk from Manly Beach to Shelley Beach.

Thanks for having a read, I know I go on a bit haha!

Caitlin xxx

One Seat, Two Americans and A Whole Lot of Pee

Hey! It's me again! Look who's keeping their promise of blogging again, hmm, *makes baby noises* cutchiecutchiecutchie, yes, it's me!

*cough* Right, now that's done with, on to the flight. Or, as I like to refer to it as, 'the strangest, most claustrophobic, pee-inducing 24 hours of my life'. 

Plane rides are tough, y'all.

I booked my flights, return from London to Sydney, with Singapore Airlines. I'd been told they were one of the best, and that I would be comfortable flying with them. This was sort of true - the staff were so helpful, and really nice (their uniforms were beautiful as well!), but was I comfortable? How about you hold in your pee for hours whilst you're METERS from a toilet and THEN answer the question, okay?

I'd chosen the window seats for both flights; 14 hours to Singapore, a 2 hour stopover and then a further 9ish hours to Sydney. I'd thought at the time when I booked it how nice it would be to look out the window at the view, and when I got on the plane I even looked forward to being able to nap on window ledge. WRONG.

So wrong.

This was the worst decision I could have made (regarding the flights, not just 'in life'). Unless your flight is 4-5 hours or less, and you could potentially, hopefully, only need to pee/wee once or twice during the whole flight, AVOID the window seat at all costs. I IMPLORE you.

Seriously, you only see the view during take off and landing, providing it isn't dark, and then the rest of the time you literally see clouds. Or darkness. Or cloudy darkness. Or you're asleep. The window seat so isn't worth it! 

"But it's nice and easy to sleep in the window seat" I hear you say - wrong again! ALL the seats are comfortable to sleep in, well, as comfortable as they can be, and I would favour being able to get up, walk around, and pee whenever I wanted over the possibility of a bit more sleep. You can sleep when you're dead, but you can't pee when you're dead. No. You need to be alive and able to get to a toilet to do that!

Anyway, you can probably see where this is going judging by the title I gave this blogpost: I needed to pee. And I had this American couple sat by me. Nice enough, but they clearly had some flight issues as an attendant kept coming up to them at various points during the flight with apologies and 'options'. But this couple, they were slightly larger than a lot of people, which meant I could not step over them or around them whilst they were sleeping. There were a couple of times where I just had to sit and wait, for what felt like hours, and just had to hope and pray that they would wake up soon and see my desperate little face and let me out. I would have felt really guilty if I'd have woken them up. I couldn't even concentrate on any of the huge array of films they had on offer - now that is a first world problem.

And, as it was a long flight, you are advised to walk around and stretch your legs to avoid blood clotting - nothing like a bit of Deep Vain Thrombosis to get you in the holiday mood! 

My aunt who has made the trip many times, told me to walk down the aisles every few hours. I PLANNED to follow this advice, but every time they let me out for the toilet, they would stand around WAITING for me to return! So I didn't feel like I could take my time. Yes, like a stereotypical English person, I felt RUDE. As one always does when they want to walk around on a 14 hour flight, how despicable of me! 

When you sign yourself up (and pay £900) for a flight this long, you don't really think about 24 hours being a long time to fill. At home, or out and about, time just flies by. You could be sat in a coffee shop on Twitter for a good couple of hours and not even notice time passing. But boy, on a plane, time just goes at 0.000000001 mph I swear. It only hit me when I sat down on the plane at London Heathrow that I had 24 hours to go. You end up just staring out the window trying to forget the time, and hoping an hour has passed, when in reality it's only been 10 minutes. It all becomes relative then, 12 hours left down to 6 hours is a joyous occasion - when 6 hours is actually the length of a full school day. Needless to say, I was so very happy to get off that plane!

I managed to get through the first leg of the flight without peeing my pants, but I hadn't slept as much as I'd liked. I'd only watched two films as well, bearing in mind all I do is watch TV at home, and they had all the films I'd wanted to see at the cinema in one place! But lack of sleep and the need to pee had drained me so much, and just looking at the TV screen made me feel ill and tired. What a waste of movies, huh?!

After the longest and loneliest two hours in Singapore airport, which included witnessing some indescribable frightfulness in the toilet and me basically crying to my friend Alex over text (thanks again Alex), I made it onto the second flight. Shorter, only 9 hours, and I managed to sleep through a lot of it - huzzah! And I was in the middle, one seat closer to the toilet - AMAZING.

Now plane food... quite a marmite subject. Some people hate it, some people hate it slightly less.

I realised quite quickly that I was going to have to eat as much as I could from what was on offer - there wasn't exactly a shop I could pop along to and buy a sandwich from, plus it was free. I do love free food... most of the time.

To be honest, the food on Singapore Airlines wasn't THAT bad. Sure, the meals were bizarre to me at first, they served breakfast when my body felt like it was dinner time, but that's time difference for you! Breakfast was good, the other meals were questionable. But, it wasn't as awful as the food I was served form Sydney to Wellington a few days ago... yuck! It smelt sooooo bad, I can't even tell you! Unfortunately though, I slept through the sandwiches and crisps round on Singapore Airlines (my faves :( ), but I managed to nab the last packet of crisps after I'd woken up. She said they'd run out of everything else, which makes me wonder now, if I'd have been awake, would someone else have missed out? YEAH, SINGAPORE, HUH???? *cough*

Well I think I've been going on long enough. But, here are 5 tips I've messily put together of the top of my head, for the next time you want to fly half way around the world:

1. BOOK AN AISLE SEAT. Sweet baby Jesus, you will be thankful you listened.

2. BRING YOUR OWN SNACKS. Got a favourite chocolate bar or packet of crisps? You are allowed to bring them! Just do it. Worst thing that happens is that they throw it away at Singapore (no food through customs there!), so just eat it before you arrive on the plane.

3. BRING A JACKET/HOODIE/BLANKET/SOCKS. They give you a pillow and a blanket, but it's always nice to have your own, and if you have double then you're extra comfortable! You do not want to get cold on the flight, it won't make sleeping any easier!

4. PUSH THE BUTTON. Don't be afraid to call the attendant if you need something - that's why they're there! And believe me, there are worse passengers than you on that plane, people who are more annoying/needy, so don't worry if you need another drink or have a question. Plus, calling them over could potentially wake your sleeping neighbours, so an excellent excuse to FINALLY go to the loo (hooray!).

and 5. FREE FILMS. Unless you're really tired and just can't face looking at the screen (eh, word playyyy), then try and watch a few movies. You'd have to buy Netflix, buy the actual film, or search around to borrow it from a friend to watch it at home/abroad, so watching from their huge selection on the flight is a bit easier!

Okay, that really is enough for now. I'll finish off this post with a few pictures of my travel companion, Gerald the finger-puppet cat, enjoying his first ever flight.

Until next time

xxxx

My Koala socks from my friend Anna, specifically chosen to be worn for this flight.
I'm nothing but easily pleased.

Gerald ready for take-off! 

Some mountains... somewhere...

Gerald posing with his favourite part of the plane, the left phalange.

Hmm yeah well

Right... hi there, again. Eventually. After what feels like thousands of years.

I'm currently in New Zealand after travelling around Australia for a month. So I guess I've got some explaining to do...

But I've already got ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, okay?

_________________________________________________


Lets back-track to Christmas 2013.

Almost everyone in my year at sixth form was applying to university. And I did the same. However, I ticked this little box on my application, stating that I wanted to defer my entry until 2015, rather than September 2014.

Don't worry - I meant to do this!

I had this idea/thought in my head of travelling for a year in Australia. I have family in Sydney, and I had saved money from my job at home... why not?!

And I just kept saying it.

And telling people. 


And saying it again. 



And telling more people.

Until it came to August 2014 when BAM, results day came, and I got into university. Hooray!

It's a scary day for everyone, but luckily I came out of it relatively unscathed. I did end up crying at McDonalds a few hours after receiving my results - but that's another story.

So, you with me so far? I'm into uni, and I've told all my friends that I'm basically going to Australia for 6 months to a year... well it didn't exactly work out that way.

Come September 2014, and all my friends bar a few have left for university - Scotland, Leeds, Kent, Sheffield... all places far away from me. I'm still working at Homebase, a job which I loved, but still stuck in my loveable but unfortunately average hometown.

My plans for Australia were still just talk. I kept saying I was going, but I wasn't booking anything. I was all talk and no trousers, or so the saying goes.

Eventually I started looking into things, because by October my friend Charlotte (who was also still at home) was making plans. Before we knew it, Christmas had gone, we'd said hello and farewell to our friends home from university, and I waved Charlotte goodbye as she embarked on a three month adventure to Nepal as a volunteer with the ICS.

It was time to get my butt into action, I thought. It's 2015 and I'm still here. So I spent money, money that it pained me to see disappear, but I got in touch with my family in Sydney. I got a visa. I booked return flights to Australia. 

And suddenly it was all very real.

After what seemed like no time at all, it was a month until I left. I was still working, and then I had to hand my notice in. 

I know some people will think that I'm crazy, but I really didn't want to leave my job. Lots of people who work in retail know the everyday, mundane stresses over customers and stock, and yes, every job can be a pain, but I loved it. It was the best first job I could have ever had, and I had so much fun working there. I'd made so many good friends, too - leaving my job sucked, and I stand by that statement.

Before this I had booked a two-week tour of the East Coast of Australia for while I was over there. There were lots of problems and money worries regarding this, and I don't know whether I should go into it online, but let me tell you it was not a happy time - and I was leaving in a matter of weeks! But it got sorted out. I guess that's what matters now, looking back.

Suddenly I had a week left, my first week of not working since the previous summer (I was rubbish for taking holiday time!). I had to do all my packing, and say my goodbyes. And, after copious amounts of vodka with my friends, and almost sitting on my suitcase to get stuff to fit in, I was ready.

Although my original year-long Australian travel dream had dwindled down to two months, at least I was going. And when I booked it, it felt like it would be the longest time away from home ever! How wrong was I.

I have less than a month left now, and I don't want to go. Australia has well and truly stolen my heart thus far.

So, I think that's enough for now. I'll be back with a blog about the flight - believe me 24 hours is far f**king longer than you think. Honestly.

Until next time,

xxxx