Round the World

So many things accomplished, so little time to type it all out!

After our marathon flight across 3 continents we arrived in Vancouver and piled into the hire van as planned. I was surprised at the lack of jet lag, but we did well to eat and sleep at the right times, and we had plenty of opportunity for daytime naps over the weekend.

Sasquatch was quite amazing- the photos on flickr show what a stunning setting the venue was. Saw some great music, watched some crazy characters, ate dodgy american festival food and drank nice american beer.
Was great to have a practice run at a US road trip and sort of get my head around the driving-on-the-right thing, since I'll be doing most of the driving over the next few weeks.

Once we were back in Van we tried to figure out just what to do in the very limited time we had left. We settled for one day checking out beautiful Lynn Canyon on the outskirts of the city and downtown Vancouver itself. We had a great dinner at the Foundation where Conor worked while he was living here, and spent the next day exploring Main St shops and roaming the classy neighborhood of Mount Pleasant with it's big beautiful 3-story wooden houses. Our last night in town turned into a snowball of people saying goodbye to our Vancouver-Perth friends, and we managed to catch up with Luan, Gemma and Brendan Tapley all in one night!

We got 3 hours sleep, jumped on a plane which was delayed, made a really tight transfer only to find out our luggage was not so fortunate. After hanging around for a couple of hours as SF airport our bags turned up and we made the train ride into the city to meet our other friends who had arrived at the hostel some hours earlier.

We've just spent the day roaming western SF on foot, checking out lots of great design and clothing stores, and some galleries and cafes to boot. SF is not as beautiful as Vancouver, and seems to lack that *something*... that character.

Lots more stories to come, we start our road trip on Monday and will hopefully have a bit more downtime to connect

-Liam

Just a quick update this time- have managed to grab a spare hour at an internet cafe to upload photos and check in.

Sydney is beautiful, we walked into the city and did all the touristy things yesterday, since it's my first time in the city. I love the buildings, especially all the little townhouses and steep streets in Surry Hills where we're staying with Adele.

Sonia is feeling pretty lousy, she's come down with a cold and sore throat. I think the last week or two before we left must have worn her down, combined with the big night we had on Sunday in Melbourne. So while she rests up at home, I've been exploring Sydney some more on my own today- she's seen it all before a couple of times :P

We fly out early tomorrow morning and spend over 20 hours in the air- we gain an extra 12 hours crossing the international date line, and then bundle straight into a waiting hire van to drive south to a music festival for the weekend. Will be pretty much uncontactable until Monday, but will no doubt have a stack of photos and stories to share once we've back in Vancouver.

-Liam

Ah how sweet it is... to drink beer all afternoon with good friends on a Sunday, go see some live music and wind up eating chocolate on the couch in front of a cheesy movie before crawling off to bed.

After a hectic last couple of days in Perth which consisted of late nights finishing folios and last-minute packing and list-checking, it feels nice to have a few days off to sleep in and relax.

Melbourne had been great so far, I can really see myself coming back to live here somewhere down the track. The buildings and streets just have so much more history and atmosphere than Perth- I think I'm going to flip out in Europe :P

It was great catching up with all our ex-Perth friends last night in Fitzroy- our original choice of cafe was full so we became like a snowball rolling around the backstreets, picking up people one-by-one until we ended up rolling right back into the same cafe half an hour later to find a table empty and waiting.

After getting in a few jugs of beer, lots of conversation and a bang-up pub meal round the corner, we bit the bullet and went along to a live performance from the one and only Peter Combe. For those of you who are struggling to recognise where you know this name, cast your mind back 15-20 years... to a time before "wiggles" where all you needed to entertain kids was an acoustic guitar, bad hair and a bright waistcoat.

It was a surreal experience- to walk into a packed (and probably sold out) venue, filling with 20something hipsters alternately singing along at the top of their lungs and falling into giggling fits at the sheer hilarious experience of it all. There were so many songs that I thought I'd long forgotten, only to find myself singing along after the first few words... and the between-song banter was dynamite, with Peter exclaiming how much we'd all grown in the last 20 years :D
They played all the classics- Toffee Apple, Newspaper Mama, Spaghetti Bolognese, Mr Clickety Clane; as well as a few of the more obscure hits like Bag Dad and Blowflies.

After the first encore, the audience refused to let Peter (and trusty piano wizard Phil) away so easily, so they came back to pronounce that they had played their entire reportoire and would have to play Newspaper Mama one more time.

We staggered away emotionally drained and yet spiritually nourished, feeling a warm connection with each other having experienced such a mind blowing performance, and some of us even have the signed cd boxsets to prove it

-Liam

The last few weeks have been a blur- so many things to sort out, so few hours in the day...
But here we are, only a few days away from the start of our 3 month round-the-world trip, and the anticipation is starting to build. It's going to be so much fun to see so many new places that I've only dreamed about visiting... so great to catch up with friends who escaped from Perth long ago... and so exciting to head out into the world without a solid plan of where we'll end up

This will be our main point of contact with you all while we're away. You can use the menu on the right to subscribe to this blog (so you receive emails when it's updated) and to search through our ramblings once we have actually posted some :p

There will be a few select photos posted here, you can see all my other photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/legham/

I've started to update our travel info in order to keep you all up to date with where we're going and when- this map is interactive, you can zoom around and follow our trail around the world. It's pretty vague for the Europe rail leg, but that's because we're still deciding exactly where to go and how long to stay for

-Liam