Out last stop in Australia was Melbourne, a lovely city on the South East coast, a quick flight from Sydney.

I was getting pretty excited about visiting Melbourne as we had arranged to stay with a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. (Wow, that makes me feel really old.) We were planning to meet up with my friend, Victoria, and her family and head to nearby Phillip Island to relax a bit.

Before meeting up with Vic, we checked out some of the scenes in Melbourne. Personally, I liked Melbourne a lot because it was so “green.” I don’t mean in the environmentally friends sense, although it may be, but that it was literally very green with beautiful flowers everywhere and Gardens to walk around in for hours.

We started with the Royal Botanic Gardens, which was just a short walk from our hotel. We could literally have gotten lost there and enjoyed the colors the whole time. We wandered around and checked out the huge variety of plant species. Everything is nicely labeled, which is awesome so you can know just what are looking at and finding some cool facts out. There are gazebos everywhere for relaxing while taking in the scenery. All around awesome place.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Griffin’s favorite bird of all time, which we found in Melbourne, the Cassowary. We like to call it the Dino Bird because of the oddly shaped crest on the top of its head that looks prehistoric in our minds, if to no one else. Anyway, Griffin has become obsessed with this bird.

After checking out the garden for a while, we stopped in the nearby Shrine of Remembrance, a military museum detailing Australia’s journey to freedom and contributions to world wars. It’s a solemn place of remembrance and touched our hearts even as foreign visitors. The place also boasts a pretty amazing architectural feat, which can be seen in the Sanctuary. A sunken stone plaque which reads, “Greater love hath no man” is read by the visitors in such a way that they much bow their heads to read it. The quote is part of the Bible verse, John 15:13, which states, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Every year on November 11th at exactly 11:00am, the sun shines through a open block in the roof and lands directly on the word “Love.” Daylight savings time has caused the necessity of a mirror to be placed to continue to tradition, but it is no less powerful. During the rest of the year, visitors can enjoy a simulation.

Finally we were ready to meet up with Vic’s husband, Chris, for the ride down to Phillip Island. I was happy to see my friend again and meet her sweet family. We had a great time catching up. As it turned out, we also got to meet Chris’ parents and Victoria’s parents as well, which was a blessing to us.

Vic and Chris offered lots of advice for things to see around the island, so we started with the Phillip Island Wildlife Park. This place is getting up close and personal with all kinds of animals and we loved every minute of it. We got to pet Kangaroos, Wallabies, and Emus and saw Koalas, Eagles, and so many more animals I can’t even think of them all. Basically, I didn’t want to leave there and tried to talk Griffin into letting me have a Kangaroo to take home. He said no. =(

We took an extended family trip with all ten of us to The Nobbies, a nature park with one of the most beautiful coastal walkways I’ve ever seen. There is a small island off the coast with hundreds of seals sunbathing, which we enjoyed seeing as well.

Finally, we had to do it, we went to the Penguin Parade. This is a natural phenomenon that occurs nearly every evening at the same time, when hundreds of penguins arrive on shore after a day of fishing and waddle to their beach homes. These are not just any penguins, though, they are “Fairy Penguins,” tiny little fuzzy penguins that stand about 12 inches tall. They are some of the cutest things you’ve ever seen. People have been coming to watch the penguins come home since the 1920’s and it’s still extremely popular. I tried to talk Griffin into letting me have a penguin to take home. He said no. =(

After a few days of seeing the sites on Phillip Island, we tagged along to Vic and Chris’ home back in Melbourne and had a great time hanging out and playing with her cute kids. From there, we booked a rushed flight to continue our journey in New Zealand!

If your in the area, I can’t recommend beautiful Melbourne or Phillip Island highly enough!

After spending several weeks enjoying the coast of Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, we decided to continue down the east coast to Sydney.

Griffin had visited Sydney before, but I hadn’t, so I was getting pretty excited.

Upon landing we headed out to Bondi Beach to catch up with Griffin’s friend, Joel, who was letting us crash at his place for a few days. Bondi Beach is an awesome place and we had a great time relaxing there for a few days.

After a couple of days at Bondi Beach, we hopped a train to just outside the city center, where we were greeted by Kathryn, a friend of Griffin’s from his previous travels, and her husband James, who had graciously offered to let us stay with them during our visit.

We arrived to a wonderful home cooked meal, which we had been missing for a while. And, after a good night’s sleep we were ready to go explore Sydney.

Our first stop was the most recognized landmark in Australia, The Sydney Opera House. The place is huge and it was interesting reading the placards and learning a bit more of the history of it. We opted out of the tour because it was a little too expensive for us and we were having a hard time fitting our Australian expenses into our budget already. We took a fun walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens and then walked across the Harbor Bridge for a great view of Sydney Harbor and another look at the iconic Opera House.

We did, however, decided to tour “The Rocks,” which was the area where the British Prisoners, who would become the first Australians, initially settled upon arrival into Sydney Harbor. Since it was a national holiday, the tour was only two Australian Dollars. Sweet! The tour was interesting and I highly recommend checking it out as it really gives you a feel for Australian history.

Later we went down to the harbor to watch the fireworks for Australia Day, which was a nice surprise since we hadn’t planned that!

We spent the next couple of days catching up on work. You may have noticed that pattern by now. Usually, our travel schedule consists of touring for a few days and then working a couple days. While we saved up for our travels while we were in Korea, we decided that we didn’t want to deplete our savings and then have nothing when we arrived back home, so Griffin ramped up his business and I’ve been doing what I can to help. If you are thinking of long-term travel and can do some work remotely, I encourage you to try it! It can also be a nice break from the constant barrage of tourism.

So, after relaxing and working a couple of days, we went back into town and took a ferry out to the Manly Beach area. Basically, all of Sydney is beautiful and lined with beaches. I love Sydney!

Kathryn and James could not have been more gracious hosts. They took their free time on the weekend to drive us to the Blue Mountains to see the view. I’m sure the scenes there were beautiful, but unfortunately we weren’t able to see them! There was a fog that moved in and we couldn’t see a thing! We settled for checking out some postcards of what the scene would have looked like. We hope to visit again one day when the weather is better. Kath and James are such a fun couple that we really didn’t need to see the mountains to have fun.

We spent a total of about a week and a half in Sydney, which was not nearly enough for this beautiful city. We hope to visit again some time after we’ve saved enough Aussie Dollars to see everything!

About midway through our time in Indonesia, we needed to decide our next destination. Griffin’s little sister had set a wedding date, so our time was limited, but we knew we wanted to see all we could of Oceania before heading back to the U.S. So, we booked our next flight to Cairns, Australia, the most popular access point to Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef.

We arrived in Cairns and got settled into our hostel before trying to determine what avenue we wanted to take to get out on the reef. Griffin had been diving before and easily talked me into wanting to give it a try. We looked into several intro-diving options, but they were all pretty expensive. Finally, we found an option that would grant us the opportunity to actually get our diver certification, as well as a way to get our budget around it.

We headed down to the Reef Encounter office to talk with them about their Hostie program. Basically, we needed to go out on the live-aboard boat as paying customers, during which time we would get our diving certificates, then we would stay aboard to help with things like washing dishes and making up beds, etc. In return, we would have free accommodation, free gourmet food, and at least two free dives each day. We figured out that in order to balance out the amount of money we needed to spend as customers, we would need to stay aboard for an extra 10 days. It seemed like a lot of dishes, but we decided to give it a try.

Early the next morning, we boarded the Reef Experience, a day boat by the same company that would dock near the Reef Encounter and serve as a taxi out to our floating hotel.

We settled into our rooms and got started with our course right away. I believe we had the best dive instructor possible in ‘Albie.’ The guy was patient, fun and extremely talented and knowledgeable. Not only was he a great teacher under the water, but his explanations of theory were easy to understand as well. Eight dives, several hours of book work and a test later, we were certified divers able to dive on our own up to 15 meters.

Each time we went under the water was a new experience. It honestly could never get old to me. Sometimes we had an agenda, something special we wanted to see, sometimes we just went for a relaxed exploration. We enjoyed swimming through tunnels, or just peaking into some of the soft corals to see what fish were hiding there. No matter what, we always saw something new and amazing.

As hosties, our days started early with setting up for breakfast. As soon as that was finished, we would go out for our morning dive. From the water, we would grab a quick shower to get the salt water off us and then head downstairs to wash up the breakfast dishes. Then we would spend the rest of the morning cleaning up rooms for the incoming new passengers. Lunch setup, lunch dishes, afternoon cleaning… all just the next steps until we could get in the water again for the afternoon dive at 3:30. After the dive, wash off again, dinner setup and dishes, plating up desert and then waiting to see if there is room for us on the night dive. Head to sleep and then do it all again the next day. By the time we left there, we felt like regular crew members. We stayed aboard so long, we decided to go ahead and get our Advanced certification. Now we can dive down to 30 meters. =) Not to mention, we gained several new friends. Always the best part of travel.

When we finally got off the boat, we literally had land-sickness. For the first couple of days on land, we felt like we were constantly swaying. It was a crazy feeling.

We ended up sticking around in Cairns for another couple of weeks, catching up on some work and checking out the town. We even went back out to Reef Encounter for a another night and a few more dives.

Cairns is a beautiful place with a million options for checking out the reef. We met some great people and had some of the best experiences of our trip.

Have any of you been scuba diving? Share some of your favorite memories and locations in the comments. We would love to hear them.

From here, we booked a flight down the coast to Sydney. Check back to see what we got to do there. =)

When someone says Munich, most people immediately think of Oktoberfest. Yes, this famous festival does fill up the city for 2 weeks each year, but there is so much more to Munich than beer and pretzels.

We had the opportunity to visit Munich as guests of the Munich Tourism Board, officially known a München Tourismus. Their website, with information on just about everything available in Munich, may be the only guide you need. It’s certainly one of the most comprehensive city websites I’ve ever seen… and I’ve seen a lot.

Upon arrival at the main train station, we walked just a few hundred meters to King’s Hotel, which was exactly what we needed to get rested for our whirlwind tour. After a quick and delicious dinner at the famous Augustiner Keller and a tour around the beer cellar, we spent the next several hours before bed trying to decide what to see for the next two days. It was no easy task! We could easily have stayed two weeks and still not see everything! Instead I turned page corners in a city guide book and then tried to cull it down from roughly 30 of my favorite activities listed.

We jumped up early the next morning and headed off to the city center to take in some of the sites. Munich has so much history to learn about that we barely had time to take it all in. We even passed by a little known building with just a plain marker indicating the place where plans for the holocaust were first hatched. From there we took a short walk over to The Frauenkirche, also known as The Cathedral of Our Dear Lady, a beautiful church with several unique aspects, including the legendary “devil’s footprint,” and a curious menorah on the ceiling. You’ll have to visit to find out why it’s there! (It’s quite a touching story.)

By then it was nearly 11:00am and we rushed back to the Marienplatz to get a glimpse of the Glockenspiel in action. We were delighted when the hour struck and the giant clock came to life. You really can’t miss it and it wasn’t at all disappointing to us! Below is a video of the clock in action. It’s a bit long, but fascinating, especially if you’ve never seen it before. Although, I highly encourage you to head there and see yourself!

We settled down to lunch with Isabella from München Tourismus and took her advice on some traditional Bavarian menu items. I think we would weigh entirely too much if we stayed in Munich for any longer than a few days. Wow, that food is amazing.

Finally we headed off to meet up with the famous New Europe Free Walking Tour group to catch some more history for a couple of hours. If you’ve never tried one of these walking tours, you don’t know what you’re missing. They are informative beyond belief, entertaining and will help you get oriented in the city in no time. Plus, they’re free! You should tip your guide at the end according to what you think their tour was worth. What a nice business plan.

When I say that it’s important to get into a tour, I really mean that. Any walking tour will take you around the city to places you never knew existed and give you more information than you could find in a thousand guide books. We had no idea about some of the landmarks in Munich as they are so subtle, yet so important. We saw an extremely unique memorial to the German resistance, the place where the army tried to block the Nazi’s from marching, fun things like the May Pole in the city center, markets, beer gardens and so much more, all while being thoroughly entertained and enlightened about each of these places. The more you know about a city, the more you will love it! München Tourismus can also set you up with a tour, and personally knowing how thorough they are, I know it would be a great option for sure.

When the tour was finished we took a closer look at a couple of beer gardens and had a bratwurst dog for dinner. Yum. Griffin tried out the famous Weissbier, or Wheat Beer, but I’m not crazy about beer so I settled for a Fanta. After Griffin grabbed some night photography time, we headed back to the hotel to catch up on rest.

As if day one didn’t hold enough, we quickly headed out the next morning to see what else we could get into. We were delighted to “hop” onto a Gray Line tour bus to hop on and hop off throughout the city. What’s great about this company is there is a live tour guide to give you information about the upcoming stops and different landmarks about the city. Other companies tend to have a recording, but recordings don’t answer questions, so we were happy for the change. A complete circle takes around an hour and half, which we actually did just to have some uninterrupted information about the city. Then we jumped off at the different stops that interested us the first time around.

Of course, no tour of Munich would be complete without a visit to BMW Welt (World). Here you can catch people driving their new cars around the indoor test facility or venture over to the BMW Museum and see how the company got started as well as all the makes and models! It was really cool, but there was no free gift of a new BMW at end! Too bad!

BMW Welt is the same tour stop as the Olympic Park, which is a beautiful site in itself. It’s easy to spend hours wandering around taking in all the athletic history.

We were also able to check out the English Garden, Opera House, City Hall, and the Nymphenburg Palace, all within a few steps of a Gray Line stop.

After picking up a few souvenirs, we finally and regrettably had to leave the beautiful city of Munich all too soon. I am absolutely sure we’ll be back again! If you get the chance, please make sure to visit Munich… even if it’s not Oktober!

We were greeted at the King’s Center Hotel by a friendly staff and a smooth and quick check-in. (Also a plus when you’ve still got those backpacks on!)

Our greatest greeting, though, was when we entered our room. The room was absolutely beautiful. It included a large, wood-framed bed carved with beautiful designs, a desk, a beautiful wardrobe and others. I have to admit to you that I love a clean bathroom… I wasn’t disappointed with the bathroom in our room. It was spacious and clean and had everything we needed, including plush towels. We’re both into nice linens, so we love good towels! Is that weird? =)

We asked reception for a recommendation for a good restaurant nearby and we were so glad we did. The staff didn’t hesitate in directing us to Augustiner Keller, the famous beer garden and cellar that we didn’t even realize was close to us. We had a wonderful dinner there and then took a walk around the cellar as well.

After dinner we settled into our room and spent some time looking through guidebooks at the limitless things to see in Munich. (No easy task.)

We both slept like rocks and awoke feeling so much more rested and happier. If you’ve done long term travel, you know the importance of good sleep and recuperation to help you travel well. Cranky travelers are not good to be around!

We crept downstairs in our PJ’s to have breakfast and we were, again, pleasantly surprised. A buffet of deliciousness awaited us and we couldn’t wait. I love breakfast food and I could eat it three meals a day. This buffet had everything I wanted and then some! I definitely ate too much, but it was so worth it!

It is so much less stressful to go see the sights of a city when you know you don’t need to worry about the place you’re coming “home” to that night. We knew our hotel was centrally located, comfortable, clean, offered good sleep and a delicious breakfast the next morning. You can’t beat that.

To top it all off, when we were getting ready to leave, the staff made it leisurely by offering to hold our luggage for us while we spent the last day in the city seeing the rest of the sites on our list.

I will say that we encountered one slight issue, which was a slow internet connection. Internet is not included in the room prices, which is annoying this day and age, so we purchased it separately. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the connection we were hoping for, which slowed us down in our work a bit. Overall, not a big deal, but something we feel the hotel should work on.

If you’re looking for good accommodation in Munich, we can definitely recommend King’s Center Hotel, a fantastic place to get rest and then get involved in everything Munich has to offer!

How To Make One Yourself

To make your our video similar to this one, go to pummelvision.com as you may have guessed from the video.  There you can pull pictures from Flickr, Facebook, Dropbox and a few others.  You’l have to authorize pummelvision to allow access to the account you choose and then also let it know if you want to publish to Vimeo or YouTube, so you can instantly link it to anyone on Twitter, Facebook, etc. After that, put in your email address and wait a few hours to a couple days and pummelvision will email you when your video is ready.

Bonus Video!

Griffin has been taking pictures every couple of days and posting them to his Facebook account.  Here is a video of all of them.  These are taken and edited on an iPhone.  Enjoy!

If you are new to the site, you might want to check out where we got the idea for the site name, or, perhaps, get to know us a little more by reading our about page.

Some of you have asked how you can more consistently/easily follow along and I wanted to share some different options we have available.  Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions about any of these options or need clarification.

Option 1 – Check the site frequently:

This option is the most straight forward, but also probably the least efficient.  This just means you have to manually come and visit our site regularly by either typing in our address, or clicking on a bookmark or link.  Many people do use this method and we are not saying it is wrong, just maybe not the most efficient or convenient for some.  Sometimes when we are getting busy with life, or traveling, we may not post for a while and we would hate for you to come back again and again only to be disappointed that there is nothing new.  Because of this, we recommend using one of the other methods.

Option 2 – Subscribe Via Email

This is a great option and one that we use a lot for other sites we enjoy ourselves.  The way it works: you first submit your email address by clicking here.  You will then receive an email to confirm that you were the actual one who signed up and that you do in fact want to receive updates from us via email.  That’s it.  You can then just sit back and relax and from that day forward, anytime we update the blog, you will receive and email of our post which you can read/view to your heart’s content.  If we do not update for a while, then you do not get an email for a while.  It’s that simple.

Option 3 – Subscribe Via RSS

“RSWhat?!?” That is what most people say when I mention this option.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  It’s basically like subscribing to a newspaper, but just in the online world instead of the physical world.  The way it works is in your browser there is an RSS symbol usually located in the right corner of the address bar.  This icon lets you know that the website you are viewing has a news feed you can subscribe to so you can get any and all updates.  Some more robust news sites even have multiple options like a sports only RSS feed or a technology only RSS feed etc.  When you click on the RSS icon your browser will either open a program for subscribing to that site, or you will be directed to a page where you can select different options.  Most people already have accounts that can accept RSS feeds either through a blogger account, Gmail account or other email services.  One of the most popular free RSS readers is Google Reader.  I use and love google reader and also sync it with some iPhone apps and a desktop applications so that all my blog reading is up to date wherever I check it.  This means that if I read an article on my iPhone and then later open Google Reader online or on my desktop, that article will be marked as read similar to how email works for most people.

Option 4 – Follow us on Twitter

We have set up our twitter account to let you know about any new blog posts, pictures, or videos that we post and also occasionally hop on to update you about travel tips, exciting current and future plans and helpful links and resources.  If any of these things sounds interesting and you have a twitter account or want to set one up for free to follow along, just click here.

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10. Fun, one sided conversations with our landlord, who only speaks Korean at 90 mph

9. The pastor at our church, who speaks 4 languages and says he constantly confuses them

8. The beauty of the sun shining on rice fields in late afternoon.

7. Cheap and usually mysterious street food

6. Even something as boring as going to the grocery store is an adventure because nothing is written in a language we can read

5. Learning the Korean language from a private tutor, for Free!

4. No one starts a sentence with the words “In these economic times…”

3. Going on weekend hikes with Mr. Choi to get water from a mountain top spring

2.  Going on weekend adventures with Mr. Shin who is our unofficial Korean tour guide

1. The friendly, welcoming and amazingly generous people, especially our co-teachers and friends

An-yang-ha-se-yo!

It has been about three years since Griffin was last able to walk to work and/or use public transportation instead of having to have a car and he has missed it greatly.  Griffin really enjoys walking to work in the morning.  It gives him time to think, pray, relax, reflect and plan.  His school is about a twenty minute walk from our house and we are able to get anywhere we need to in the entire city by walking, taking the $0.75 bus, or a combination or the two which we love.

Valerie’s morning commute is a little different.  Since my school is a little too far away to walk, I take the bus the 4 or 5 stops to my school.  I find it hilarious every morning that the bus drivers are all intent on dislocating my arms and legs with their stop-on-a-dime and then peel-out driving techniques.  I equate the ride with the same leg maneuvers I would use to water ski.  I also ride the bus with about 20 of my students, who each wave feverishly and say “Hello” when they see me enter.  All city buses stop at my school, so it’s nice to be able to jump on the first bus that pulls up.  The total ride time is about 8 minutes.

Valerie and Griffin put together a quick video of our walk/rides to work so that you can see some of the sights and experiences that apart of our daily lives.  Hope you Enjoy!

Valerie’s Morning Commute from Valerie & Griffin Stewart on Vimeo.

A short video of Valerie’s walk and bus ride to work in Ulsan, South Korea. Actual travel time is about 10 minutes.

Griffin’s Walk to School from Valerie & Griffin Stewart on Vimeo.

A short video of how I get to work everyday. Actual travel time is about 20 minutes. I really enjoy walking to work everyday as it gives me time to relax, think , pray and prepare for my day.

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