• Sep 26 – Adelaide to Perth to Dubai
• Sep 27 – Dubai
• Sep 28 – Dubai
• Sep 29 – Dubai to Munich
• Sep 30 – Munich – Oktoberfest
• Oct 01 – Munich to Stuttgart
• Oct 02 – Stuttgart to Bucharest to Brasov
• Oct 03 – Brasov
• Oct 04 – Brasov – start of volunteering
• Oct 05 –
• Oct 06 –
• Oct 07 –
• Oct 08 –
• Oct 09 –
• Oct 10 –
• Oct 11 –
• Oct 12 –
• Oct 13 –
• Oct 14 –
• Oct 15 –
• Oct 16 –
• Oct 17 –
• Oct 18 –
• Oct 19 –
• Oct 20 –

We’re off to Europe for 2 months, September 26 -> November 27 2010.

The primary reason is to go and volunteer in Romania and go outside of our comfort zone. So for a month, we’ll be living with a family in Romania (city of Brasov) where we’ll be working with local organisations. Deb will be working in the orphanage and hospital, primarily with babies and young kids. I’ll be working with the brown bear sanctuary helping injured bears restore their health, help with the sanctuary and so-on.

For the remaining time on our trip, we’ll be travelling through Europe and seeing as much as we can.

We’ll endeavour to keep this blog updated with what’s happening, but we’ve also set up a Twitter account which we’ll post to frequently: http://www.twitter.com/oztourist

Here’s the pics…

We got chatting with one of the flight crew and asked about the drunk guy who got thrown off on our way over there. Apparently the Fijian courts weren’t open on the weekend so he was kept in lock-up then deported back to Australia. No word on what his punishment was.

The flight attendant went on to say that apparently a passenger had uploaded the footage to Youtube. I confessed to it. Had a few other attendants come up to me throughout the flight asking about it or saying that it’d done the rounds of Hawaiian Airlines. Kind of amusing really.

10.5 hour flight was long, but bearable. I’m pretty sure ex-moto gp rider, Daryl Beatie, was on our flight.

We’re currently in an airport hotel in Sydney awaiting our flight. Just keen to get home now, rather sick of flying now.

They’re not in order.

Deb’s list:
—-
Day spa in Hawaii
North shore lounging
Beach umbrella and lounge day at waikiki
White water rafting in Rotorua
Waikele shopping/factory outlet
Moana Surfrider hotel stay
Queenstown night on the town
Pearl harbour
Jetboat in Queenstown
Hot springs/spa at Franz Josef

Glen’s list:
—-
Milford Sound flight
Motorbike trip around Oahu
White water rafting in Rotorua
North Shore beaches
Jetboat ride in Queenstown
Spa day in Waikiki
Snowboarding in Queenstown
Driving around Oahu (even if the car did suck)
Natural hot springs in Rotorua
Walking around Waikiki until midnight most nights since shops don’t close until 11pm, not to mention the sidewalk entertainment (singing, artwork, breakdancing, fortune telling etc) and a truckload of people enjoying their holidays

Needless to say, the trip has been just incredible. To have 20 things between us and have to leave out the following (plus others we’ve forgotten) remind us what a cool trip we’ve had:
Zorbing
Blackwater rafting
Monteith’s brewery
franz Josef glacial walk
Lounging by the pacific ocean
Germaine’s luau
Photography stuff
Talking with locals / randoms
…

So if you’ve read all our posts, thanks! I know they’ve been badly written for the most part so thanks for putting up with it.

I also realize that they’re very self centered, but this has always been mainly for our benefit.

We’ll sort through our thousands of photos when we get back and put up some of the better ones.

As the locals say, mahalo and aloha!

Tuesday – Waikele outlet stores – a massive complex with 50 outlet stores of big name designers and clothing companies. Shopping is the 3rd biggest industry here, so we thought we’d do our bit, but didn’t buy that much. 2hr bus ride was actually really useful, saw heaps more of Honolulu than we would have otherwise.

Wednesday – drove to the North Shore, home of the big surf beaches such as Waimea, Pipeline, Sunset etc. Checked into our bungalow which was set up for 10 guests, but since the place was empty, he gave it to us for $125/night. Bargain. We had about 1km of beach just next to Sunset which we shared with 10 other peeps. Just a beautiful, secluded location right at our doorstep. Couldn’t ask for more.

Thursday – checked out NS more including Turtle Bay, an enormous resort which is almost it’s own town. $540 a night in their 1 bedroom studios ( plus 12% tax) was considered cheap, it’s usually $1080 a night. We had our $9 shared lunch and enjoyed the experience.

Friday – Haleiwa, one of the original towns on the North Shore. Just tried to blend in with the locals really. Slow-paced day but really enjoyable.

Saturday – drove back from North Shore, checked into fancy hotel, I walked to and up Diamond Head (big volcano-like ridge with old military outlooks), Deb checked out more of Waikiki

Sunday – spa day as it was our 10th anniversary of being a couple. Basically just an excuse to use the hotel’s incredible facilities. 4hrs of massage, hot tub, private view over the ocean and fitness gym was a great way to spend the day

Monday – didnt do a whole heap. Couldn’t sleep so we went to denny’s for breakfast @ 6am, surfed in the day and then went to Germaine’s Luau for evening entertainment

Tuesday – i got to do my motorbike ride. Hired a 750 Honda cruiser for 4 hours and did a big tour of the east coast, stopping off at Sandy’s beach, the local beach break, Makapuu Point, Kailua and Pali. Incredible mix of ocean roads with cliffs on the other side along with mountain roads with rainforest as far as the eye can see. Had a huge grin on my face the whole time, was just awesome. And yes, despite the hiring guy looking at me funny, I insisted on wearing a helmet. Deb had an enjoyable day doing some more shopping and of course finished the day with a swim/body surf.

Wednesday – Pearl Harbour was a trip we weren’t sure about doing, but glad we did. Pretty incredible place with 1100 personnel still intombed by the USS Missourri after getting bombed by the Japanese. Funnily enough, there weren’t that many Japanese there. Learnt a lot more about it all, even though we’d seen Ben Affleck’s documentary on it Had lunch at the cheesecake factory as today is really our last day here

So tomorrow we leave at 12:55pm local time and get back to Sydney at 5pm Friday local time. We stay in Sydney Friday night and fly into Adelaide at about 12:30pm Saturday (have to check that).

From there, we headed back to our hotel for a nap (big day) to prepare ourselves for a well-known eating challenge – The Cheesecake Factory. Definitely one of the best known eating places in Waikiki, the restaurant is enormous and so are the waiting queues. Even at 6pm when we rocked up, it was a 20min wait. The night before, it would have been a couple of hours, easily.

The portions are huge! We foolishly ordered an entree as well which would have sufficed as a shared main for us both. The mains then came and we started to struggle big time. Great food, good environment and we didn’t even have a chance to try one of their 20 odd cheesecakes they’re famous for! Next time…

We rolled back to our hotel, watched some tv (42 channels) and fell to sleep. A very good day!

We booked one right by the main street in Waikiki for a bargain price of $71/night. We’ll stay here for 3 nights and then might have a look at other parts of the island like the north shore (home to Pipeline, Waimea etc).

Since we only really brought winter clothes with us, we went to Alo Moana -an enormous shopping mall with something like 290 stores. Good way to spend the day and we now have some stuff to wear that’s more appropriate.

- first organized sport we saw in Waikiki was rugby union – quite a big crowd too
- at Denny’s, we watched 2 managers have their lunch which required the waitress to bring out a fold-up table to serve from. The 4 plates were so big she couldn’t carry them. Incredible amount of food for 2 people
- you don’t need to wear helmets here for anything, including bicycles and even motorbikes. Saw a 1100cc chopper being ridden by a tiny woman with no helmet. Kind if freaked me out a bit. It feels wrong just starting up my motorbike-wannabe 125cc without my gloves on! Will likely hire a motorbike while I’m here though, looks like great fun
- saw sunscreen that was SPF4. Umm, what’s the point? Bought spf85 for our pasty white skin. Bronzed Aussies we are not… yet
- you can spend ages just checking out the different foods here and marvelling at what they’ll combine together. Wasabi macadamias, m&m almonds, 750ml cans of red bull-like drinks
- tipping still sux. Don’t like the concept. It’s especially hard to not reward bad service by tipping less whilst being a foreigner. You just end up feeling cheap
- you can hire all sorts of motorbikes. I grabbed a pamphlet, a Kawasaki Ninja 600 for $149/day, a 1200cc Fatboy for $199. Scooters for $30 seems good value

Didn’t do a whole heap today – mostly just checking out the shops around our area, looked at some new hotels they we’ll be switching to and just enjoying beautiful Hawaii.