I'm Back!

I'm back! But I'm not happy about it. My family is currently on a plane crossing over the Pacific to the other side of the the world, and I'm only left with the memories and our pictures from our ten days together. We're all going back to work tomorrow, and I think I have the worst post-holiday blues of my life. 

As you can tell, I haven't blogged in ten days! I was planning on keeping my normal consistent schedule, but I was very, very bad. It's hard to do anything responsible when you're on vacation! I'm going to spend the next couple of days going over our holidays in several different posts. I also have to steal pictures off of my mom's camera, which I can't do until she gets home.

Below, I meant to put this picture up when I got to Melbourne and wrote my first post. It's the sun rising at the Adelaide Airport. I took it while drinking my coffee. If you don't like the look of sun rises, then you are a real grinch (I took that on Christmas Eve morning, so I can say that).

My mom gave me a whole bunch of presents when they arrived, including a very generous supply of Larabars! I learned about Larabars when I started reading healthy living blogs (which inspired me to blog in the first place). They seemed so good, and I can't find them anywhere in Adelaide. They're apparently in Australia, but they are very difficult to locate. I was very excited to try them.

Over the course of the vacation, we managed to eat all of them. They're one of those foods that taste funny at first, but then they taste good. I think my favorite bar was the peanut butter chocolate chip.

After we all got settled in, my parents, brother and I walked around the city. We walked from our neighborhood in Southbank to Federation Square (on the other side of the river) and then around to theFitzroy Gardens. I loved the detailed bricks in the ground.

Beautiful gardens.

We walked around for a couple of hours. We passed the major sporting complexes and stumbled upon the British cricket team practicing. My parents went back to the hotel to shower, and Jon and I strolled through the city to get some snacks and thongs/flip flops for him. It was so wonderful to be reunited.

We also switched our rooms around so that Al, Jon and I shared the two-bedroom apartment. This room was much bigger and had a balcony. I actually don't know what we were thinking with taking the one-bedroom apartment in the first place. It makes sense for the "young" people to be together.

We had a great view of the city. The lower old-fashioned building is the Flinders Street train station. It's very iconic for Melbourne.

We were across the street from the Eureka Tower, the tallest tower in the city. 

We ended up staying in Melbourne for a week instead of going to Noosa. It was the best decision that we made of the trip. We would have been stuck in our hotel room for four days with nothing to do, thanks to the never-stopping rain. We lost a lot of money, but I think it was worth it. 

My Christmas recap is next!