Author: Jane

We’ve been back in the US for the past 2ish months and our trip is over! We’ve spent the past two months catching back up with family and friends, meeting new babies, trying to get use to the cold after 18 months of chasing summer, and job hunting.

This is us right after we went through US customs in Honolulu and right before I got yelled at for taking a picture in the customs area.

We thought we’d have some issues reentering the country after more than a year away and 67 countries visited (plus Antartica). When we approached the customs agent, he said, “Wow! 67 countries! That’s a lot”, or something like that. He then stamped us in and didn’t look through our passports at all. That was it. No bag searches. No additional screening. Nothing.

Mike’s parents picked us up from the airport and we went to the most American place possible for breakfast: IHOP! And it was glorious.

It had been about 11 months since we had seen them, so it was great to have a few days in paradise to catch up, play some cards, and enjoy the views.

Here are the before and after pics for the trip. Here’s the day we left Chicago:

And then back in the US over a year later:

If nothing else, we were traveling lighter at the end than we started. The tent and sleeping bags were the biggest joke of our initial packing. For the most part everything else was put to use.

Once we were back on the mainland it was time to see some new babies and some older kiddos (plus all their amazing parents). First stop, Seattle to see Hugh.

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Then it was off to StL for a huge airport welcome home!

Awesome.

Next stop on the tour de US was Michigan to meet back up with a few of our favorite niños.

And, of course, to get some laser tag in.

Laser tag: an activity I never knew I needed in my life.

Plus we got to finally meet Miss Colette while we were in Michigan. What a sweetie!

Then off to see the notorious Mira in Iowa:

We made it back to Chicago, finally, just in time for some incredibly cold weather.

That’s right, it was so cold and icy that we couldn’t get into the courtyard – only an issue when you have been chasing summer and don’t have winter coats or boots to keep you warm.

We’ve been able to spend a ton of time with Lucy and MVB in Chicago.

Plus we circled around to a few of our favorite restaurants. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

So. Good.

We got to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with family, great food, and some good wine as well… some of which we had shipped home and were pumped to share. Plus we got to visit with the Suardis who always provide the best decorations and the best cookies for Christmas.

We also snuck in the birth and baptism of Charlie Hunter!

How sweet are these boys?

Plus we got to practice this cool photo trick we learned while traveling.

We spent New Years in Chicago, but Johnny came up to visit and help us ring in the new year in style.

And we helped Michael’s dad celebrate his retirement – 30 years as a Michigan judge. Thank you for your time on the bench! Now you’ll have more time to travel!

And finally a few pictures of the nephews in their awesome headbands that we brought them back from Japan.

We’ve packed these couple of months with a ton of family time. It has been strange being back in a country where everyone speaks English and it’s easy to pop into Walgreens or Target to pick up the exact brand of gum that I prefer. Some people speak of reverse culture shock when returning to the US after being gone for a long time. I wouldn’t say we’ve had that issue too much and if we did it was mostly dealt with during our month in New Zealand and Australia after leaving Asia. We have already acquired some “stuff”, but mostly clothes and shoes to deal with the cold or to wear to interviews. I’m sure that will change a bit when we finally have an apartment of our own. Huge shout out to our parents and Ken and J9 who have let us live in their spare bedrooms for the past couple of months. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

So now we’re just going to say goodbye to this blog. I know what you’re thinking.

Yes, it’s officially over. We are sad that the travels are over, but we are excited for the next phase of our lives. We’ll still do a lot of traveling, but you won’t get to read all about it any more. Just call – I’ll tell you all the details.

Thanks Dad B for this great photo from the end of our trip!

Thanks to our family and friends who supported us throughout this wild ride. I know some of you thought we were crazy to quit our jobs, sell our stuff, and travel. Thanks for being supportive anyway. Also thanks to the family and friends who didn’t think we were insane. Your confidence in us and our decision making encouraged us immensely during this process. Thanks to everyone that came out to visit us. We would not have lasted a year without your visits which gave us a small taste of home. Thanks to everyone who accepted mail and packages from us or who have kept a box or two of our stuff (or six or seven) in your basement. Thanks to everyone who had to explain (for the hundredth time) to a niece or nephew why we didn’t come to visit for so long. Thanks for all the parents who helped a niece or nephew follow our trip on their map. Thanks to the three of you who are getting married in 2019 – I’m sure you planned it this way so as not to interrupt our trip. Thanks to all the new friends we met along the way. We are so lucky to have met you and look forward to hosting when you come visit us. Thanks to Michael for being a great partner in travel and in life. And thank you for reading the blog and following along on our trip around the world. Now on to the next adventure!

Now that we’ve finished our year long extravaganza, it may feel like we’ve been everywhere, but if nothing else, traveling this much has reminded us how huge this world is and how many more places we want to explore. So what’s on our list as of today?

Amazon River

Ecuador – Galapagos

Cartagena

Cuba

Laos

Israel/Jordan/Lebanon

Berlin

Madrid

Myanmar

The Arctic

Oaxaca

Vancouver

And the places we can’t wait to go back and visit?

Vietnam

Patagonia

Australia

New Zealand

Copenhagen

Mexico City

San Miguel de Allende

Cape Town

Puerto Rico

San Sebastián

Plus there are a ton of places we need to explore in the US! We have a bit of travel planned for the next 12 months. We’re off to Wales this summer for a wedding, New Orleans for the marathon in February, Disney this summer, Sonoma for a Bach party, Denver for a wedding, Miami for a wedding, and who know’s where else!

Now back to the job hunt so we can afford to keep traveling!

OK – so if you’re following along you know that we love to visit wineries. We have had the chance to taste a lot of delicious wine over our year of travel on four different continents (I don’t think we had any worthwhile wine in Asia). But you’ve also probably noticed that we’ve had a few beers.

Many of you know that Michael is a beer dork. There is no getting around that. Some of you have even waited in line to get him beers. Michael and I often go to beer festivals or other long lengths to seek out breweries. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s who we are.

So here are a few beer pictures from our year abroad. This is not an all inclusive blog, and I’m going to guess that very few people care about these pictures anyways, so feel free to just skim through or wait patiently for the next post.

Ken just showed me how to see pictures on a map. Look at our beer picture maps!

Ok, so let’s start with our time in South America. South America has terrible beers. Those are the facts. We did have one good experience in Montevideo where the beers were fine and they had this clever van out front.

Here Michael is drinking a beer in Córdoba. I don’t recall them being terribly bad, but they weren’t anything special either.

While in Córdoba, Michael drank his 2500 distinct beer, as checked in to an app called untappd. For all of you people out there who don’t know what this is because you have better things to do with your life, this app allows Michael to track and rate all of the beers he has drank on his phone. It is just a way to inform your “friends” via social media how many beers you’re drinking. It’s a very bizarre competition. One of the main competing points is “distinct beers”. For example you can drink Bud Light every day, but it only counts one time in this category. So for Michael to have had 2500 distinct beers is really quite impressive… in a “we’ve spent way too much time and money drinking beers” kind of way.

We’ll come back to distinct beers in a few minutes.

A beer during our quick stop in Lima:

We had a beer while fly fishing in Patagonia:

Michael did find a beer bar in Cusco that imported a lot of good beer from the US, so we hung out there a few times while we were acclimating to the altitude. I think alcohol helps with altitude sickness.

We also got to try some cool local beers like the quinoa beer and the purple maize beer.

We shared one beer on the first night of the Inca Trail and we had a few beers when we finally made it to Machu Picchu although there doesn’t seem to be a picture of the beers.

We nabbed a few beers in Santiago over Christmas (but mostly just wine):

Mmmmm! How amazing does that shrimp dish look!?!

Beers with Philip and Krystal in Valpo and Mendoza:

This Bolivian beer that apparently is made with coca leaves:

Beers with Juan and Yubeley:

Plus this Colombian mix of soda and beer when we had bbq with the Dussáns.

A michelada in Medellin:

This Pilsen in Rio:

There was a really good beer bar in Rio that we hung out at while kids in the street were drinking bad beer.

OK – so we may have had a bad beer on the beach as well. It was carnival! When in Rome!

Sol in São Paulo:

Also that burger there was DELICIOUS! Plus they had Heinz ketchup!

So that’s it – a good summary of the beers we had in South America (for the most part).

We did also have a beer or two while we were visiting Antartica. Here’s a pic of Michael with Leigh and an empty glass. That’s the best I have.

We then flew to Africa. Each country that we visited had two or three local beers that we would try. Other than Cape Town and Namibia we just didn’t drink too much in Africa.

Addis Ababa while playing golf with some Sofia cards:

Seychelles:

Nairobi at the super cool Havana nights club:

Madagascar beers:

Beers with Jeff and Vanessa in Cape Town:

Such an artsy photo…

We had a few beers while we were in Zimbabwe visiting Victoria Falls:

And this St. Louis beer when we were visiting Chobe National Park in Botswana.

While in Zimbabwe we saw this amazing quote by Frank Zappa: “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” I thought about editing out the WMD portion of the quote to make it a bit more enjoyable. Zimbabwe does have a beer and an airport which is good since they don’t have a currency.

A boot of beer in Namibia! Makes sense since Namibia was a German colony.

A beer in Morocco and lots and lots of tea:

And then we were off to Europe where we had no worries about finding good beer. First stop is Barcelona where Michael and I sat and drank beers and were sad while waiting for Johnny to start feeling better and get there!!

Here is Johnny hanging out in Jersey trying to get to us!!

It was also the first stop on the trip to a Mikkeller. First of many Mikkeller bars.

Then… Johnny got there!!! Andy brought a few beers from home to make Michael happy.

Johnny hung out with us in San Sebastián while we had a few great beers:

And Barcelona:

You can see Johnny sleeping in the background of the last picture. Here’s a reminder of the head dress he was napping in:

So good.

After Johnny’s visit, we toured around Europe a bit and had just a few beers.

Cinque Terre with the coolest bar owner in the world:

Post marathon beers in Paris:

Enjoying the sun in Lisbon:

Porto at one of Bourdain’s finds:

Tuscany with mom was mostly wine, but we found some Brewdog beers in Florence as well:

Then a few beers in Croatia, too!

Then off to London for a few beers with Dave, MP, Maggie/Hannah, Jackie and David. I forgot how much great company we had in London!

Then off to Ireland where we had the best bar experiences of the trip (not the most diverse beers though).

We enjoyed a few more options when we got to Galway:

MMMM Dough bros! That pizza was awesome. We ate there twice.

It was also at Dough Bros when Michael noticed that he was drawing in on beating Ken at beers. Or something.

Then off to Amsterdam where they have Heineken beer openers in the hotel rooms.

This is where Michael overtook Ken in the winning at beer category. We also got T-shirt’s for doing a pub crawl to four different breweries. It was a fun day but made for a tough and super early bus ride to Paris the next morning.

In Paris we hung out with Ben Folds before Ken, Janine and Sarah came in to start Euro Beer Fest 2018.

First, Paris’s best meats and cheese for the train, plus train beers and this beer schnaps that I had lugged from Cape Town for this train ride specifically!

The train took us to Belgium which is basically the Bordeaux of the beer world. We sampled quite a few while there.

First, a few tears shed by Michael regarding the beers and swag that Ken brought him:

Then off to the breweries!

Cantillon:

Then the Brussels Beer Project:

Three Fonteinen where we did surprisingly ok at British Trivial Pursuit:

Plus some random beers while hanging out in town:

After we drank all of the beer in Belgium, Ken, and Janine had to head home (via Paris) and Sarah, Michael, and I continued on our quest to drink Europe dry.

Hofbrauhaus in Munich

Vienna:

Budapest:

Kraków Food and Beer Truck Park:

We didn’t eat any Cubanos, but I thought it was amazing they had a Cuban food truck in Kraków.

Minsk:

Vilnius:

Tallinn, where we drank beers at another Brewdog location while watching some World Cup:

Then off to the World Cup in St. Petersburg!!!

It was mostly just vodka or Bud heavies at the matches.

Here’s Jacob drinking beers and waiting patiently for us while we slept in after our bus ride from hell to get to Helsinki.

Ferry beers in Norway with Katie and crew:

And a few beers in Oslo while watching another World Cup game with Sofia and Liam:

Our last beers in Europe (give or take): Copenhagen beers!

This is not, however, the last Mikkeller bar we found.

Finally! We made it to Asia! For the most part we’re back to drinking less alcohol in total and a ton less beer – excepting for Hong Kong and Bangkok visits.

We did grab a Tiger while enjoying street meat in Kuala Lumpur:

And we had a beer in Tokyo with some huge oysters and met some geishas who preferred to sip on Zima and Smirnoff:

We saw some beer taps that reminded us of home in Shanghai.

We did have a beer in Lhasa:

And then we took some beers to Everest base camp to enjoy with Ralf.

Those pictures would be cooler if you could actually see Everest in the background.

Most importantly, while waiting for the collapsed bridge to be repaired, we had a dinner of beer and Snickers on the road from Tibet to Kathmandu.

We deserved at least a few beers for enduring that 16 hour ride.

A Nepalese beer once we finally made it:

During Bangkok, round 1, Michael and I enjoyed a few beers.

More important to note is that amazing noodle dish above!! One of the best meals of the trip.

After our Siem Reap bike ride:

Phnom Penh – a growing city with a few good breweries:

Ho Chi Minh City – breweries and street meat beers:

Hoi An – perfect.

Hanoi – recreating Obama and Bourdain’s meal, complete with Hanoi Beer:

And another brewery with a huge tap list… usually:

A tasting flight from some place in some city:

Good news. I’m currently sitting on Janine’s couch and she has informed me that the above tasting was from a yakitori spot that we ate at on their first day in Hong Kong.

Then off to Phuket with Ken and Janine!!

Look at how cool this Muy Thai boxer koozie is!

Michael got an insta shot at our fancy resort with his beer:

And Ken diversified his drink choices:

Then it was back to Bangkok for round two with Ken and J9.

Yes – another Mikkeller bar.

Then it was off to Bali for detox!

Seriously. The above is coffee and tea – not a paddle of beers.

Another flight over to New Zealand to enjoy the beautiful scenery and just a few beers. Please note the artistic shot below.

Note the Cantillon sweatshirt I’m wearing in the above photo… because we don’t just drink beer, we live it.

And we got to hang out in Nelson hops area in the South Island with appropriate lighting.

Tasmania:

And that awesome beer roulette machine at the art museum.

A beer in Sydney before meeting up with Leigh:

And then enjoying a beer at the oldest pub in Melbourne while playing some golf.

One thing to note about drinking beers with visitors and those that we visited is that we did a lot of card playing at the same time. We played a ton of golf (shown above) and a ton of Euchre. The issue with Euchre? Hours of playing results in busted cards:

It is hard on half of the deck. You can see the high valued cards so obviously that it caused us to go through quite a few decks of cards.

So that’s it. We drank a ton of beer all over the world. When we landed in Hawaii, we enjoyed a few Konas…

…and I was pretty pumped to have a Bud Light tall boy. I was also excited that the woman at the convenience store carded me. Boom!

That’s it. Beer. Writing this post has made me thirsty…

November 5-7

I know, I know. It has taken me a very long time to write this post. My lack of dedication to cranking this out is not representative of our experience in Melbourne. We had a blast, which is no surprise since we were still hanging with Leigh. We flew into Melbourne on Sunday evening and had a chance to see the city by night.

First stop, the oldest pub in Melbourne for some cards:

Then a bit of wandering around. The train station:

With its famous clocks:

This beautiful church:

This building that looks like The Eiffel Tower:

And two of my favorite guys walking down the street:

The next morning we rented a car and headed out to Mornington Peninsula for wine tasting.

As luck would have it, two of our buddies from Chicago, Phil and Kate, just happened to be in Melbourne at the same time as us and their plans exactly coincided with Leigh’s plan to take us wine tasting.

How random is that? We had a great time catching up with two other travel-loving Chicagoans.

The views were stunning and the wine was delicious!

The next day was the big event! When Michael and I were waiting for our delayed disaster of a bus ride from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, we popped into a gyro place for dinner and met a couple from Melbourne. When they found out that we were going to be in Australia in November, they told us that the Melbourne Cup was an event that could not be missed. So we reached out to Leigh all those months ago and no surprise he made it happen.

The 158th annual Melbourne Cup!

Leigh wasn’t the only person that had to do some prep work for the cup. I had to do a bit of fascinator shopping.

The day is quite the event. Melbourne has a public holiday and most of Australia shuts down during the main race of the day. This year it was a bit quieter due to torrential downpour throughout the first half of the morning. We got a bit wet on our commute out to the tracks and after 12 months and 5 days on the road, my trusty sandals got tossed as I changed into heels and we walked into the building.

Adios sandals. You’ve served me well.

Michael and I had been carrying around fancy clothes ever since we left Bangkok and Vietnam, respectively, for this exact day. The fascinator was purchased in Sydney, but the rest of the digs were handmade in Hoi An.

This was my first time to a horse race and I’m pretty sure I was spoiled.

Our table overlooked the race track (specifically the finish line) so we could stay dry and comfortable for the entire day. Plus they served us champagne and wine all day along with an incredible meal. And second lunch:

Much of the day had a very British feel to it – especially once we got to these tea time snacks. Far left is a meat pie, if I recall properly. Very fancy.

Leigh taught us the cool kid way to keep track of the races in your race book by tearing off the corner as a race is completed. Genius.

The above bet was in honor of Colette who’s only 11 months so she won’t know that Zizis is spelled wrong.

An StL bet that would have been cooler if the horse had placed:

And here are our handsome hosts:

During the halftime show, Sam Smith performed!

And then it was time for the main event!!

Michael made all of the bets.

Michael’s bet on Prince of Arran to place was a big win and that covered all the other bets we lost money on, so we are still going to have to find jobs soon. But we had an amazing time! Look at this great photo of Leigh and me with Michael creeping in the back.

We did see the sad part of horse racing. Michael’s horse, Cliffs of Moher, broke his leg during the main race and had to be put down on the course. It is one of the most heartbreaking things to see. They slowed the horse down and put a curtain around him before putting him down. It was just horrible.

We also saw the other sad part of horse racing: when older women have too much to drink and fall down steps.

This isn’t a great shot because I didn’t want to be too obvious, but the hand on the ground belongs to a woman who fell down the steps and broke her arm. We know because the bone popped straight out of the skin. It was disgusting and we felt bad, but we also made quite a few jokes about them hanging a white curtain around the area and having to put her down.

The rain had subsided, so after the main race we went down to the track to get a closer look.

And then off to a bit more schmoozing in the club which gave me a chance to snap a few more fascinator shots of the crowd:

And that was it! We won a few bets and lost a few and ended up basically even. But we ended our year+ adventure outside the US with a bang! Our week or so with Leigh in Sydney/Melbourne was basically just one big party. We are so lucky to have made such a good friend all those months ago in Antartica. Would you look at that?!? Just look at it!! We can’t wait to reciprocate when Leigh comes back to the US, hopefully really soon! We miss you already!

And now it is off to Hawaii to meet up with Mike’s mom and dad for a few days of relaxation and catching up before heading back to the real world. Don’t worry! There’s still one more post coming about our re-entry to USA.

November 2

Some of you know I love music. Some of you know I love music I can sing to. Some of you know I love music I can dance to. Drawing the obvious conclusion – I love Taylor Swift. Warning: there are a ton of videos in this post. I’m sorry. Every one is essential.

I have loved Taylor Swift since 2006 when her first album came out. I loved her when she wrote/performed country music and I loved her as she transitioned to pop.

That said, I have never seen Taylor Swift live in concert. As Michael and I have traveled this year, we have been constantly watching some of our favorite artists to see if there was any time that we’d be able to catch a show while traveling. When I found out that TayTay was going to be performing in Australia around the same time that we were going to be there, I reached out to Leigh to see if he had any interest in going. He already had tickets! Perfect! From there, Michael and I organized the end of our trip around the Taylor Swift concert.

As we got closer to the big day I found out that Craig wasn’t going to be able to make it back from his trip abroad in time for the concert which meant I was going to be living large with Leigh and Mietta at T Swift. Reminder: we met the delightful Mietta, Leigh’s daughter, in Capri earlier this year.

A bunch of stuff went wrong on this day. It was a comedy of errors really, but as one thing went wrong, it opened up some extra time to adjust for another issue. It started with the Sydney Bridge climb. We booked the long climb on accident and then couldn’t adjust to the express climb. This meant I was going to miss my departure time from the hotel with Leigh. But Mietta was flying in from Melbourne for the concert and her flight was delayed, so our departure time got pushed back which allowed us to still do the climb. Then her flight got delayed a bit more so instead of picking her up from the airport she was going to meet us at the concert. This change in plans meant that it wasn’t that big of a deal when we had car trouble the entire way to the concert and had to drive at about 20 kph out to Olympic Stadium. Since the car had a major transmission issue, we left it in the parking lot to be towed to a mechanic the next day and had the good fortune of being able to take public transportation home. It was probably faster, PLUS we got to see the clever way that they renamed the station stop:

So we made it to the concert despite Leigh’s frustrations with the car and waited (as patiently as possible) for Mietta’s Uber to arrive. Then another terrible thing happened that ended up being wonderful: it started to rain. Not just a little. It rained a ton! Torrential downpour. This postponed the concert and gave us ample time to collect Mietta, stow her bag at the hotel next to the stadium, and grab food and a few drinks before settling in to our incredible seats.

Insane seats!!!!

After being settled in we had another hour or so before Taylor finally went on stage. They didn’t wait for the rain to stop – they just played right through it. It was incredible. Her stage had no overhang, so Taylor was drenched in a matter of seconds. But her and her team put on an amazing show making me love her even more than I did at the beginning of the night.

And she loves us too because we’re real friends:

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Reputation Tour:

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Michael’s favorite:

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Some of you may have noticed that Michael isn’t mentioned in this post. He wasn’t invited. Michael likes some of T Swift’s music. But not all of it and he has a way of letting others know his opinion of music in real time. Basically I was worried he was going to ruin it for me. He was also worried about that. So we decided together it would be better if he not attend.

Snake.

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My favorite song from the album:

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Please notice the awesome drummer and the snakes above.

Here you can see just how insane the rain is:

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Also note the glowing wrist bands. They are all coordinated so they glow in time to the music and change colors. They’re amazing.

To say I was having fun would be the understatement of the year.

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With all the rain, the people working at the venue basically just gave up on any type of order. People were standing on chairs and just basically going wherever they wanted. It gave us some great dancing space.

But it did start off fairly well organized:

That time Leigh went for drinks and instead just got really close to the side stage:

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Snake.

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This is that time that Taylor Swift ripped her fake eyelashes off mid-song. I saw it happen and thought it was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on stage. Then I saw that Mietta was recording at the time and was completely jacked that we had that great moment memorialized!

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Some piano time:

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To say it was a spectacle would be the second biggest understatement of the year.

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In case you’re wondering what TayTay thought of the concert, she had an awesome time as well:

The biggest thank you to Leigh and Mietta for letting me tag along. I had an absolute blast. I will definitely be making it to all of Taylor Swift’s shows in the future. Maybe this is my calling in the next phase of my life: groupie!

October 29 – November 4

Another word or two on Uluru before moving on to Sydney. I was reminded as we flew out of just how beautiful and expansive the Outback is.

Uluru is a favorite of many people that we met in Australia with several people calling it the “Spiritual Center of Australia”. In addition to the beautiful landscape, Uluru is home to a lot of Aboriginal artists. This is a piece that our buddy Leigh has in his office that I really loved.

Upon arriving to Sydney, we dropped off bags and went out to meet up with Leigh. Reminder: Leigh is our friend that we met on the ship in Antartica and also had the good fortune of being able to meet up with in Capri. Somehow he’s not sick of us yet, so we are looking at about a week of adventures with him.

First stop – oysters and a bit of wine before he let us go check out his office and his courtroom.

Tell me that’s not awesome.

More awesome:

The next few days were a wonderful blur of delicious food and drink in a great city.

Check out that delicious pizza, Melissa and GDM!

This is definitely the best burger we had on the trip and one of the best we’ve ever had.

Also – I got my haircut at Desmond & Molly Jones. Definitely chosen exclusively for the name.

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We visited the Royal Botanical Gardens and surrounding areas, which, of course, I loved.

It didn’t have a (chlorma) Climatron, but it had more of those ballerina flowers that I love!

We also ran into Leigh while we were grabbing lunch. That is definitely a “little thing” that I didn’t know how much I missed over the past year – just running into a person randomly and deciding on the fly to grab a cup of coffee with them. I love it!

We popped into the beautiful St. Mary’s Cathedral.

And we got our first glance at the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge!

We got another great view later that night when we had drinks with Leigh at the Sydney Opera House bar.

Yes. Leigh and Michael are wearing matching shirts that they bought in Capri, because that’s what besties do. They call in advance to make sure they match.

After drinks and more oysters, we had a delicious dinner overlooking the harbor at Cafe Sydney.

The next day we nabbed some runs and ran some errands before heading off to do the Sydney Bridge climb.

We got the last round of postcards in the mail!

And we saw these kids:

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The little brother was mostly moral support. The older brother was nailing it.

Also a quick shout out to two things that have been with us the entire trip:

That is my tiny straightener. It has been amazing for an entire year and has consistently gotten the job done, even after my horrible hair cut in Madagascar. It has been the MVP of all items brought along on this trip, in my opinion. Also, props to that converter. It was Michael’s from his first trip to Asia some 14 years ago. It died while we were in Sydney. I know it was asking a lot and it took a lot of abuse this past year, but we only needed it for ONE MORE WEEK! Apparently that was too much to ask.

So, the Sydney Harbor Bridge climb is a little touristy. But it was also awesome.

Our guide, Micah, was full of information that I would love to share here, but I know Leigh hasn’t done it yet and I know he’s going to read this, so I don’t want to ruin the experience for him. Anyone else who wants the most interesting piece of info can ask separately.

It’s super high and super windy, so you get to wear these cool jumpsuits and everything, including your person, is tied down at all times.

That night, Leigh and I went to see Taylor Swift. Even though I’m burnt out on blogging, she deserves a separate post. So she shall get it.

The next morning, we popped over to Sydney’s popular Bondi Beach, just four miles east of downtown Sydney.

It was one of the first warm Saturdays in spring, so everyone was out, enjoying the day.

The weekend was spent relaxing at Leigh and Craig’s wonderful home outside Sydney: Ventnor.

This historic home sits in between two bays with great views everywhere you look.

Look at this gorgeous bougainvillea! And yes, I had to google the spelling on that one!

The home is situated in a national park and is only accessible by boat. What a great way to commute!

Leigh and Craig just moved in two months ago and have big plans for the home. I already love it just as it is, but Michael is excited for a pizza oven addition! We are pumped to go back and visit again and see all the changes!

With access to a kitchen, Michael got another shot at pasta making. Not our best effort, but with some delicious wine and great friends everything tasted great.

Breakfast on the grill!

Leigh’s still getting use to all his new toys.

We could have stayed for weeks, but it was off to Melbourne for the last international stop of the trip. Even though their hospitality was not even close to being over, a huge thank you to Leigh and Craig for hosting us in their great city. We didn’t spend nearly enough time in Sydney and we’ll definitely be back!

We have had periods of this trip where we’ve listened to a ton of music and periods when we’ve been fairly music free. But here are the songs that for better or worse have accompanied us on this trip.

Despacito – we don’t necessarily like this song, but it is probably the most consistently played song in random countries. We’ve heard this not only on every continent, but also in many different languages and quite a few versions/adaptations.

https://youtu.be/gBsxR4VfkDc

Come on to Me – Paul McCartney. There is an episode of carpool karaoke with James Corden and Paul McCartney. That’s where we heard this song for the first time. It’s a great song with a great beat. You should probably just watch the entire episode.

https://youtu.be/QjvzCTqkBDQ

Fast Car – the Tracy Chapman classic. I know you probably didn’t expect to see this here. But we heard it on every continent. Seriously. We especially heard it a lot in Africa. In one restaurant in Zanzibar they played that entire album which I was jacked about.

https://youtu.be/DwrHwZyFN7M

Ben Folds – this is an artist, not a song. I get it. But we played a bunch of Ben Folds on the trip and also saw him live. Gracie is Michael’s new favorite from that concert. Landed is one of our go-tos and a bit appropriate as we’re coming home soon.

https://youtu.be/0vPygzPSg8M

https://youtu.be/fCXdauZBnpI

Sunshine – Matt Costa. Listen and tell me it doesn’t make you a bit happier. Plus Liam loved this song while we were driving around Norway in the fiesta bus.

https://youtu.be/i1LqXQfsOHA

Africa – by Toto by sung by Mike Masse and Jeff Hall. I like how they’re super into it at the end but then they finish and remember that they’re in a pizza shop and that there is not really any one to cheer for them.

https://youtu.be/MLrC7e3vSv8

Havana – Camila Cabello. This is another song that we heard everywhere and love.

https://youtu.be/HCjNJDNzw8Y

Feel it Still – Portugal. The Man. I would say that there is a different Portugal. The Man song that is better – People Say – that Rolf played for us while driving through Tibet. But this is the one we’ve heard a lot more and that Michael prefers.

https://youtu.be/F09POwrBn-M

Shape of You – Ed Sheeran. Every once in a while you need to paint the town Ed.

https://youtu.be/JGwWNGJdvx8

Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) – Arcade Fire. Great song for road trips through beautiful scenery.

https://youtu.be/rH_7_XRfTMs

Échame la Culpa – by Luis Fonsi & Demi Lovato. First heard in South America, especially Argentina and Chile, and then downloaded while in Asia.

https://youtu.be/sKJwRscRWr4

Taylor Swift – again, not a song. I have a few of her albums on my phone that we listened to here and there. I also did most of my running to her Reputation album. Plus – concert in Sydney with Leigh!!! More on the concert later, but here’s a teaser:

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/img_5915.mov

Southern Cross – the Crosby, Stills & Nash classic and one of my all time favorites. I downloaded this song before leaving so we’d have it available the first time we got to see some stars in South America. The first play was in Uruguay last November and I’ve put it on as often as it was appropriate. Fun fact – the Southern Cross is depicted on the Australian & New Zealand flags.

https://youtu.be/Bw9gLjEGJrw

La Bicicleta – Carlos Vives & Shakira. We went to Carlos Vives’ restaurant/night club extravaganza with Juan and Yubeley when we were in Bogotá and loved this song.

https://youtu.be/-UV0QGLmYys

Feels – by Calvin Harris but it turns out the song was written by a friend of Mike’s brother, Phil. When people played this song, then tended to play it a hundred times, often in a row. People who like it, really like it.

https://youtu.be/iWPHy-NfAW0

Maps for the Getaway – Andrew McMahon. This was a song I played a lot leading up to actually leaving for the trip. It felt relevant.

https://youtu.be/2DwwyEuiF3o

Mess is Mine – Vance Joy. Our favorite Aussie artist, I played this song as often as Michael would put up with it.

https://youtu.be/kINi_D0SW0Y

Honorable Mentions:

Bette Davis Eyes – We only heard this once, but it was just a few hours before we saw Rod Stewart in person, at which point Leigh quoted Bette Davis Eyes to him. You don’t get a video of this because I couldn’t find one on YouTube where Rod was singing. And that is because Rod Stewart did not perform or write Bette Davis Eyes. It is sung by Kim Carnes. Whoops.

https://youtu.be/EPOIS5taqA8

Rod trying his best to avoid us:

U2 – not the best “Bond” out there, but a really good one. Plus remember that time we saw Bono in Capri?

Ray LaMontagne – the Trouble album. That entire album is really excellent and we listened to it a lot.

https://youtu.be/lMcMAsNXfiw

We also have it on vinyl and are pumped to get back to the US and play some of our records again!

October 27-29

Wanting to round out our Australia visit a bit, and on the recommendation of our good buddy Leigh from the Antarctica and Capri portions of our trip, we found our way to the Northern Territory to visit Uluru. We made it to the Outback! We made it to the bush!

Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. It is a sacred site to the Pitjantjatjara Anangu who are the Aborigines in the area. The name Uluru come from the Anangu. The name Ayers Rock comes from 1873 when a surveyor named William Grosse saw the landmark and named it in honor of the Chief Secretary of South Australia at the time, Sir Henry Ayers. The land was inhabited for over 10,000 years before the Europeans arrived. In the 1920’s the land was declared an Aboriginal reserve with the first European settlements beginning in the 1940s. The Australian government returned ownership of Uluru to the Anangu in 1985.

Our first view of Uluru:

Except that isn’t Uluru. It’s actually Mount Connor which is the site from which Grosse first saw Uluru. So we kept driving a bit further through this incredible expanse of nothing but dust, clay, pockets of grass, some bushes and cows who roam freely on the road making the drive quite dangerous.

Uluru is one of Australia’s most recognizable natural landmarks and stands 1142 feet high with a circumference of 5.8 miles. We chose to hike on the path around the rock which ended up being just about 6 miles long.

A theme you’ll find in this post is that we didn’t prepare properly for this trip to Uluru. I was in dark pants and a dark shirt and we were worried about hiking 6 miles in the middle of the day in full sun and heat.

What we should have been worried about was the incredible hoard of aggressive flies that attacked us for the roughly two hour hike.

I am not standing still in that picture. I am walking with a brisk pace and the flies are just content to hang out on me and relax until they are rested enough to dive bomb my ears again. It was basically an exercise in not going crazy.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_6658.mov

It’s a shame because the hike would have been really enjoyable if we weren’t trying to finish as fast as humanly possible. The rock formation is incredible and there is definitely a sacred feel to it.

Most of the holes and ridges in the rock are caused by rain runoff.

I would definitely recommend people come visit, but with a fly net covering their face. Other people, better prepared, had them. This is a disadvantage of nonstop travel – you don’t always do enough research before arriving to a location.

Uluru has great cultural significance for the Anangu people. There are many Anangu traditions and stories that accompany Uluru. Apparently the Anangu women were the story tellers in the communities and were responsible for keeping the traditions. Many of the tales correspond to cuts and boulders at Uluru which speak of serpent beings, war and death.

The stories we read about spoke of morality and the proper way to behave. In cases of people making the wrong choices by stealing or being lazy, they were murdered and their bodies were left at Uluru as a reminder to future generations. There was also a great story that outlined a woman’s requirement to trust her instincts and protect her family at any cost, no matter how brutal. The stories were passed down from grandmother to granddaughter as family inheritance.

In the picture below it looks like a profile of a skull.

With such dry weather, there is obviously a constant concern of fires. In the picture above, it seemed like a fire had just swept through this bunch of trees. I could even still smell the charred smell, although Michael disagreed.

The holes in the below rock come from marsupial moles. They spend most of their time underground and only come out after rain. They are blind, have soft, golden-colored fur, and are small enough to fit in your hand. They use their front paws like spades to tunnel horizontally just under the surface.

The flaky surface of Uluru results from the chemical decay of minerals and it looks rusty because it… you guessed it… is rust. The sandstone has iron in it which turns to rust when exposed to oxygen. Chemistry.

Did you know that eucalyptus covers roughly 227 million acres of Australia? Me neither! It is the tallest known flowering plant on Earth.

The scent of eucalyptus is overpowering in many areas that we’ve visited in Australia. I love the smell. It makes me think of walking into a Ben Franklins craft store, which then makes me think of penny candy.

One of the main features of Uluru is that it appears to change colors depending on the time of the day and the year. Most significantly it glows red at sunrise and sunset.

We were excited to see Uluru at sunset, so we sat around for a few hours to see the crazy red glow of the rock!

Getting closer!

And then this happened:

Beautiful clouds, but we lost the sunset behind them. So we didn’t get to see the amazing red glow. Time to get on the road and drive back.

Besides the plethora of cows, there were also kangaroo crossing signs. We saw a few unlucky kangaroo that seemed to have been hit by unlucky cars. Michael caught a glimpse of a few running along the road later that night which required slamming on the breaks and some added anxiety. This was just after another incident where we had to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting three cows that were hanging out on the road. With no streetlights, driving at nights was a mistake on our part, but we were unprepared. We had planned on driving out one day, staying in a hotel and driving back the next day. But by the time we looked into hotels, the few that were in the area were all sold out. All of them. So instead we had the good fortune of driving back to Alice Springs the same day. It was an incredibly tense drive, but Michael really nailed it.

We stayed in the nearest large town, Alice Springs, which is 280 miles away from Uluru and is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory. The town lies on the Todd River, although that river is typically dry – as you can see from this picture I took while running along the river. Google maps thinks there is water there.

Although we experienced no problems while we were in town, Alice Springs has a lot of issues with strong racial divide. From what we could tell it was definitely a poor town with problems typical of a poor town. There were quite a few people living under the bridges and wandering around town who seemed to be homeless and/or unemployed. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza that is next door to the casino. We walked over our first night to get dinner and the casino is like a casino you see in a poorer community. The place is depressing with people whose eyes have glazed over from staring at the screens mindlessly popping their paychecks into machines.

The city center was not much better. It had a very depressed feeling to the entire town with many of the stores and restaurants closed when we wandered through late afternoon on a Saturday.

We have now spent a few weeks in New Zealand and Australia, two countries that often seem too good to be true. The locals are kind and have a relaxed attitude towards life, and both countries really have an excess of natural beauty. It is a bit of a (very selfish) relief to find out that these countries have their own problems. Well Australia at least. New Zealand may still be perfect. We had heard anecdotes about racism towards Aborigines in Australia, and similar to some of the problems we have in the US right now, there is a lot of animosity towards non-white immigrants.

While in Barossa I had the chance to watch the 2008 Baz Luhrmann movie, Australia, with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. It was a bit long, which made it feel that much longer when I made Michael watch it just a few hours ago. But I think the film helped me understand at least a sliver of Australia’s history with the Aborigines. It spoke of the “Stolen Generations” which were the mixed-raced children who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and put in church missions for roughly 65 years ending in the 1970s. It’s shocking to me that it was still happening so recently. It is believed that between 10 and 30 percent of indigenous Australian children were taken during this time. The thought was to assimilate the children into white society.

Not surprising, the children of the Stolen Generations ended up less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely to have acquired a police record and twice as likely to use illicit drugs verses Aborigines who grew up in their ethnic communities.

All of that info is from Wikipedia and I’m by no means even close to being properly educated in this area. However, the movie helped shine a bit of light on it and helped me to understand more about the history of this area. It was also a pretty entertaining love story set in the Australian Outback. If you have a chance to see it, you should. Michael even enjoyed it despite his groaning about watching it originally. I found it on Netflix, but it may not be available on Netflix in the US.

Tomorrow we will be flying back to a major city: Sydney!

October 23-26

The next stop on our tour de Australia is Shiraz country: Barrosa Valley. We flew into Adelaide and then drove an hour out of town to our delightful airbnb in the small town of Angaston. We had a couple of days where we drank great wine, cooked in the airbnb and relaxed. Here’s a hilltop view overlooking a sculpture garden and the valley:

The Winery Rundown

Thorne-Clark: first winery and a big hit. We especially loved their big fancy bottles of Shiraz (no surprise we like the expensive ones).

Henschke: this winery sells $800 bottles of wine called Hill of Grace. We didn’t sample that wine. We did try some of their other stuff which was pretty good. They have extensive distribution in the US so we’ll be on the lookout for that when we’re back. Also, Hill of Grace can be found in the US if any of you are looking for a homecoming present for us.

Rockford Wines: this place was pretty cool – really solid wine and great atmosphere.

Lambert Estates: we liked these reds, but I was more pumped by the name and sent pictures off to my friend Cris to try to get a friends and family discount… no luck.

Also, Lamberts had all the hokey signs that I equal parts love and hate:

Langmeil: this was some of Michael’s favorite from the region.

David Franz: this winemaker is the son of Peter Lehman which is one of the really huge, old producers in the region. His dad sold the family winery some time ago to a huge corporation and now David runs a small winery. The space was beautiful and a great chance to relax and check out the view.

Yalumba: these wines were great, especially the Cab Sauv, and they had possibly the best rose of the trip.

Plus Yalumba has a coopery on site where they make their own oak barrels. How cool is that?

Elderton: this place had beautiful grounds and the wines were delicious, but the place was a bit pretentious.

Yelland and Papps: this was one of our favorite stops. It is a small shop with a husband and wife team. The wines were all easy drinking and super accessible. Plus we liked the guy a lot. It had more of a brewery vibe than a winery vibe.

Besides the great wine, I told you there was delicious food. We had a great Asian fusion dinner at a place called fermentAsian. Points for the clever name. This place had the highest recommendations from everyone we spoke to which is hilarious because before the recs we had actually walked by and I noted how terrible the place looked, based strictly on this sign:

The fish just looks gross. The recs were all absolutely correct and the food was incredible, but that picture is icky fish.

The best food we had though was the stuff Michael grilled for us:

That steak was so good! Plus Michael tried his hand at baking fresh bread and I tried my hand at baking boxed brownies. Neither were our best attempts.

We nabbed some pretty good fruit and vegetables while we were in town as well – some great strawberries, asparagus and rock melon which is what Aussies call cantaloupe. Why did the two melons have a long engagement?

We also got a few good runs in. The area was a bit hilly, but we did find a nice bike path.

Now there was a “danger falling rocks” sign that made me a little nervous to run through this area. But otherwise the views were great!

We had a wonderful time exploring the area. After the younger wine regions in New Zealand, it was cool to see some old vines again.

Look at how gnarly that is! Some of the vines in the region are over 130 years old. That’s old. This is our last wine region of the trip and although we’ve loved checking out all of the different styles of wines, we’re a bit burnt out on wine tasting. We’re ready for our next Australian adventure!

October 17-22

We arrived in our final country before heading back to the United States. Round two of Australia! This time we started in the southern most part – Tasmania – which is an island state of Australia. Tasmania was originally settled by the British as a penal settlement in 1803.

There are some cool animals in Tasmania. We didn’t get any photos, but we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a few of them. So all of the below pictures are hijacked from google images.

Wombats – they’re about three foot long with stubby tails and the google picture is pretty cute. We didn’t see any in real life, but Tasmanians loves their wombats. There were statues of them and habitat groups raising funds for them everywhere we went.

Platypuses – Michael saw one of these swim by while we were fly fishing. Apparently you only find platypuses in the wild in Australia (including Tasmania). Also, platypuses are the only mammals that lay eggs instead of having a live birth. I thought live birth was a requirement for mammals. Apparently it’s not. To be a mammal you have to have a neocortex, hair, and mammary glands. The neocortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for sensory perception, cognition, certain types of motor commands, spatial reasoning and language. The more you know…

Wallabies – the term wallaby is an informal name for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo. Michael saw one of these while we were driving with our fishing guide.

Tasmanian devils – unfortunately we didn’t get to see any of these.

I know, I know… but the joke is just too easy and too funny. Plus the cartoon version is much cuter that the real deal:

As mentioned, we got out of the city one day to do some fly fishing at Arthur’s Lake with our trusty guide, Glenn. There is hope that we may be able to get a few more pictures from that day, but for now we’re only working with this:

We should have gone fishing in New Zealand but the timing didn’t work out. So instead we had Glenn take us out on a pretty unsuccessful trip. It was a good chance for me to work on my casting. Lots of practice. Lots of casting. Not a single bite. Plus the weather was pretty cool and even though we had waders on we were chilled early on. But Glenn was a really interesting guy who had some great stories about living in Tasmania and fishing in Tasmania. I think we’re both glad we did it and it was great being more intimately involved in nature, but we both were pretty willing to head back into the city at the end of that day.

About 40 percent of Tasmania’s population lives in Hobart which is the state capital. This is also where we stayed for most of our visit. We loved Hobart.

It had great seafood, a cool harbor vibe and the largest market in Australia every Saturday which we were pumped to check out.

I wish I could say that Michael bought that hat. We didn’t buy anything too crazy, but we did do some replacement shopping. Michael got new jeans and new casual shoes and I got a new purse. The past year had done a number on this poor purse. With broken clasps and broken zippers, it was no longer the super safe and secure travel purse that I started this journey with. Plus I spilled a bunch of sour cream on it which is just really gross.

Thank you for your service.

Besides the market and the harbor, I’d like to give a shout out to two amazing things from the city.

1. The Cathedral Church of St. David which was just beautiful.

2. This spicy Aztecan hot chocolate. It was good enough we went back and bought a package to bring home with us.

We originally were planning on spending half our time in Hobart and half in wine country up the Eastern coast, but we loved Hobart enough that we only spent one night on the coast. That gave us a chance to pick up some fresh mussels and cook in our airbnb. Now, we didn’t have the best kitchen set up. But we MacGyver’d the entire situation and ended up using this hot pan to steam the mussels and cook the pasta pasta. Plus we grilled a bit of fresh salmon.

It was really delicious and quite a feat with the tools Michael had available to him.

Besides our delicious mussels, we also visited a couple of wineries. The best stop was Pooley where we really enjoyed the rieslings.

One of the best parts of the Tasmanian wineries was this guy landing on our windshield:

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_6453.mov

He must have come over to check out the great music.

We stayed that one night up in Coles Bay in the Freycinet National Park which we explored just a bit the next morning before heading back to the city.

Here’s me enjoying a drive through the park while Michael is getting killed by the hills on his long run.

The state of Tasmania actually includes the main island along with 334 surrounding islands. We visited one of those islands – Bruny Island. Is anyone else nervous about how easy it would be for me to drive our rental car right into the sea?

After the short ferry ride we were able to enjoy the beauty of this island…

… and the oysters:

Besides eating all of the seafood, we also took some time to check out the MONA.

The Museum of Old and New Art is just a 30 minute ferry ride from the main harbor in Hobart. It is a mostly underground art museum that is pretty controversial. Having been to a few modern art museums, I don’t typically get that scandalized by modern art any more. Usually there is a lot of nudity, often for nudity’s sake, which I don’t think is clever. And then usually there are few exhibits that I think are really interesting. The MONA did have some things that were truly grotesque and shocking. Like this:

This piece is called Cloaca and it is a digestive system. The word “cloaca” is Latin for sewer. The museum apparently feeds the machine food twice a day, the food works its way through machine as food would work its way through a human’s stomach and intestines, and then the machine poops once a day. I didn’t get too close. It smelled terrible and we didn’t wait to see it poop. This falls into the category of “art” that I don’t understand. I just do not get the purpose.

That said, they had some cool stuff, like this machine that tracks a person’s heartbeat and then shows the heartbeat as flashing lights.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_6497.mov

I also liked these:

Random bowl on a chair with goldfish and a huge knife:

A lot of the art was interactive including an exhibit by Jane Baker called The Inward Eye – A Psychoacoustic Journey. It dealt a lot with how you hear and how you process sound. I think.

This exhibit was cool:

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_6507.trim_.mov

The words are chosen based on words that have the most hits on the internet during a certain period of time.

Then we had several rooms with lights and strobes and other anxiety and aneurism inducing art.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_6509.mov

The below exhibit was just huge pools of motor oil. You know you shouldn’t touch it, but you just want to put your finger in it so bad. It is just so smooth and perfect.

Somehow we both walked away without any oil on our clothes.

And then the main event!

At the bar they had this roulette machine that chooses a beer for you. Seven of the beers come from the same brewery, while the eighth beer is the “bad” beer, which in this case is a Fosters. Australian for beer. Too funny to pass up, Michael took it for a spin.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_6534.trim_.mov

That definitely put a light ending on an odd day at the museum.

It was definitely worth a visit out to the MONA island, but modern art makes me tired.

We did get a great travel reminder while on the MONA ferry from one of our favorite people: