So Me, Ryan and Mike headed out to Australia to do some training for the Aussie submariners. We get to the airport about 3 hours before we were supposed to be leaving, and good thing we did because me and mike didn't have our orders with because we figured that since we had a passport and our military id's that we should be good to travel. yeah, wasn't the case and apparently you have to get a visa to get into australia or have military orders. so we had to make some phone calls to get what we needed to be able to get on the flight. So we had our stuff faxed to the airline and of course right before our fax was coming over, the flight plan got faxed and the machine ran out of ink and it was gonna take them a long time to replace the ink. so we finally found one of the supervisors that said she would help us out, but she had been missing for the last 2 hours, and we were able to get our orders from her email. time was ticking down and i was ready to start crying if i was able to go. but we got it in time and with 20 minutes til boarding, we decided that we all needed a drink after that whole ordeal and headed to the delta sky club. we had a couple drinks and a bite to eat and headed over and got on the plane.
the 10 hour and 40 minute flight was pretty brutal but i got up and walked around often and had a few free drinks so it wasn't too bad. i did get to see the sydney concert hall and downtown while we were flying into the airport. it was just after the sun went down and sydney looks so pretty, hopefully one of these days i can make it back on holiday as the Aussies say! we picked up our bags and cleared customs and it was so funny because they were asking us if we had any nuts and the guy was holding a plastic kukui nut lei and saying that those weren't allowed to come into australia. so, in our hurry through the airport to get on our next flight we passed a krispy kreme!!! didn't get any because we figured we would see another one but we didn't! we are definately gonna grab some on the way back to hawaii!
the flight from sydney to perth was about 5 hours and i think i slept at least 4 hours of it but i was still sooooo tired from flying all day. got the bags and walked out to the car, which is so freakin tiny and with us 3 and our bags, there wasn't anymore room in the car. ryan is the lucky one that gets to drive us around! and they didn't have anymore GPSs at the rental car place so we had some google directions and like 3 maps trying to get to our hotel that was 50 minutes from the airport and it was already 11 at night. we finally got to the hotel at about 1215 after getting lost because the google directions were wrong.
I got up early the next morning and went for a run, snapped a couple pictures and got ready to go to work for the day. This was a friday and we heard the aussies don't stay around work too late, and plus we were just goin and meeting people and checking out the facilities. the navy base is actually on garden island, so it was kind of a cool drive going over there, even though ryan was trying desperately to keep up with the guy we were following.
we took a look at everything and a guy they call spuds got us a tour on one of the boats. it was pretty cool seeing all their systems, different in a lot of ways but all submarines generally work the same.
we got done with the tour stuff around noon and headed back to the hotel, spuds was nice enough to give us his gps to use during our trip so that definately helped out getting us around! we decided to go over to the sail & anchor for some lunch. i got some fish and chips and they were pretty tasty!
After lunch we went back to the hotel and took a nap because we were all pretty jet lagged and we agreed to meet up for dinner and go over to a place called Little Creatures. the place used to be like a crocodile farm or something like that and now its a resturant and microbrewery! i don't know how that transition occurred but yeah. ryan was running late so me and mike sat down at a table in the lobby to wait for him, and ended up having a couple beers before he finally came down. we walk over to little creatures and it started raining on us, we had to walk through a park that had some sand on the ground so when we were getting close to the door we were stomping to get the sand off of our shoes and apparently one of the bouncers saw mike stumble or something because they asked him if he had been drinking! he said "yeah i had 2 beers at the hotel" and they said "you can't come in here, you're too drunk!". it was rediculous!! well australia is really strict on serving people alcohol that are already "drunk" and the server can be fined $1000 and the business $5000!
so we went to this place called the monk. it was a microbrewery and bistro too but without the bouncers outside! the food and the beer was really good! i ordered some ribs that were really tasty and before the food came, a server came by and said something that i didn't understand but he was "offering" food so i said sure! i then figured out he said "goat balls to start with?", it was one of their pupus called goat balls of fire! i thought they were like really goat balls, but it turned out that they were goat meatballs marinated in a spicy sauce and they were really really good too!
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