I woke up this morning to a dark room. Dusk was just beginning to peek through the window but the light wouldn't actually come out until I was well away from our dungeon-esque hostel in Glebe. The rest of my family slept soundly still because I get to have a lovely solo adventure in Perth instead of flying straight to Bali (where I'll meet them) later in the day.
I got my things together, sleep-walked down the stairs and was greeted by a very nice Chinese cabby. He was such a dude. Got me to the airport quick and enjoyably. I checked my bags all the way through to Bali at the domestic terminal and uneventfully descended to my gate.
The flight was, well, a four hour flight. In other words, no biggy. Luckily pretty much right as I exited the airport an airport-city center shuttle pulled up. For $15 I got taken right to the cultural center of Perth. I than aimlessly strolled around for a while. Saw a garden, too many churches (at least 5 in a 6 block radius, in the center of town), and eventually got to the museums. The art museum was closed due to the installation of a new show but I got to spend a few hours at the Western Australia Museum (their equivalent to a natural history museum).
I've decided I don't much like Perth. Like, I wouldn't mind living there but it's a shit place to visit. From the very little time I spent there (which obviously makes me an expert) I've surmised that the general attitude of the city of Perth is 'we live here, now leave us alone'. The people are not rude or anything, the cities attitude is just generally not much for the whole 'tourist' thing. Yet, they have great free internet/wifi access and pretty cool urban garden/social justice-y types of things.
I was in fact stopped on the street by a woman, about my age, who was convinced I was Australian until I politely informed her she was mistaken. She was campaigning for Amnesty International to raise money to send people into schools all around AUS to educate kids about domestic violence issues. It sounded pretty worthwhile and I would totally have been down to help out (as I told her) if only I was actually Australian. I did take some pride in the fact that she insisted she would never have thought I was from the States (even though I'm pretty sure my accent could not be from anywhere else, except maybe Canada...)
I ended up seeing a good deal of the downtown area of Perth, between walking all up and down the streets and taking the airport shuttle around town. The university area was quite chill but seemed a bit small. There was a pretty cool art scene around the museum area that made me want to do art and look at it less (again, a side effect of being a living city).
I had to leave to the airport at 3:20 (even though my flight wasn't until 7:25) because that was when the shuttle left and there wouldn't be another one until 6:20, which was too late. It was all smooth and easy sailing. I ended up getting a new book in the airport that I've wanted to read for ages, 'the fault in our stars.' We'll see how it goes. I'm about halfway through.
The one awesome thing about the flight, that in all my years of traveling I have never experienced, was a truly delicious airplane meal. It was a Thai pumpkin red curry and rice with this weirdly great chocolate mousse. Yum! It was probably made better since all I had eaten the whole day was some ice cream...
By the time I made it to Bali it was midnight, but actually 4am Sydney time. This meant that I had officially been awake for 24 hours and a trip that took my family 8 hours total took me a full day (but they didn't get to experience a whole new city, so who really won?).
Now we get to go off and see all of what Bali has to offer! And I can check off #4 on my countries visited so far and #37 on countries in total. Pretty, fricken cool!
I got my things together, sleep-walked down the stairs and was greeted by a very nice Chinese cabby. He was such a dude. Got me to the airport quick and enjoyably. I checked my bags all the way through to Bali at the domestic terminal and uneventfully descended to my gate.
The flight was, well, a four hour flight. In other words, no biggy. Luckily pretty much right as I exited the airport an airport-city center shuttle pulled up. For $15 I got taken right to the cultural center of Perth. I than aimlessly strolled around for a while. Saw a garden, too many churches (at least 5 in a 6 block radius, in the center of town), and eventually got to the museums. The art museum was closed due to the installation of a new show but I got to spend a few hours at the Western Australia Museum (their equivalent to a natural history museum).
I've decided I don't much like Perth. Like, I wouldn't mind living there but it's a shit place to visit. From the very little time I spent there (which obviously makes me an expert) I've surmised that the general attitude of the city of Perth is 'we live here, now leave us alone'. The people are not rude or anything, the cities attitude is just generally not much for the whole 'tourist' thing. Yet, they have great free internet/wifi access and pretty cool urban garden/social justice-y types of things.
I was in fact stopped on the street by a woman, about my age, who was convinced I was Australian until I politely informed her she was mistaken. She was campaigning for Amnesty International to raise money to send people into schools all around AUS to educate kids about domestic violence issues. It sounded pretty worthwhile and I would totally have been down to help out (as I told her) if only I was actually Australian. I did take some pride in the fact that she insisted she would never have thought I was from the States (even though I'm pretty sure my accent could not be from anywhere else, except maybe Canada...)
I ended up seeing a good deal of the downtown area of Perth, between walking all up and down the streets and taking the airport shuttle around town. The university area was quite chill but seemed a bit small. There was a pretty cool art scene around the museum area that made me want to do art and look at it less (again, a side effect of being a living city).
I had to leave to the airport at 3:20 (even though my flight wasn't until 7:25) because that was when the shuttle left and there wouldn't be another one until 6:20, which was too late. It was all smooth and easy sailing. I ended up getting a new book in the airport that I've wanted to read for ages, 'the fault in our stars.' We'll see how it goes. I'm about halfway through.
The one awesome thing about the flight, that in all my years of traveling I have never experienced, was a truly delicious airplane meal. It was a Thai pumpkin red curry and rice with this weirdly great chocolate mousse. Yum! It was probably made better since all I had eaten the whole day was some ice cream...
By the time I made it to Bali it was midnight, but actually 4am Sydney time. This meant that I had officially been awake for 24 hours and a trip that took my family 8 hours total took me a full day (but they didn't get to experience a whole new city, so who really won?).
Now we get to go off and see all of what Bali has to offer! And I can check off #4 on my countries visited so far and #37 on countries in total. Pretty, fricken cool!
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