For my passion blog last semester I talked about my personal experience in traveling abroad. For this semester, I decided to take my own advice and start to explore the other places around the world that I haven’t been to yet. This lead me to take on the topic of talking about places that I have not yet traveled to, but would like to someday, almost like a bucket list. I will be interviewing individuals who have traveled to these different places to get their top picks of experiences to have while traveling to these countries.
The first inspiration for where I would want to travel came about over winter break. I was able to go to California for the Rose Bowl and there I befriended a guy who happened to be the little brother of a Penn State football player. He was from Australia, and we started to compare our countries to each other. We talked about the differences in everything from school to government to animals (aka koala’s & kangaroos). This conversation sparked my interest to go to Australia to go find out for myself the awesome things he was talking about.
My roommate, Abigail, traveled to Australia on a People to People tour so I thought that I would get her perspective on traveling there since she had experienced it first hand. I asked her what she would recommend as the “must do” attractions of Australia.
The number one place to go is the Sydney Opera House, that was the first thing to came to mind when talking about her trip. You are able to take a tour of this one-of-a-kind building and see the unique architectural make up of its long curved walls. There are many different rooms contained on the inside of the building, each with its own name. There is even a balcony that contains a huge mirror so that when you look up, you can see a reflection of the harbor skyline.
Another must do when traveling to Australia is an evening dinner cruise on the harbor where you can see a full view of the Sydney Opera House. When you are back on land, she would advice that you take some time to explore the harbor. It has lots of cool restaurants to offer that serve an array of the food native to this country. You can expect to be served fish and chips, scones, barramundi (a local fish), vegemite (a salty spread put on toast and crackers) and that’s right, even kangaroo meat usually garnished with cooked pineapples. Surprisingly, it’s pretty good but the taste can be a bit strange.
Don’t leave Australia until you go snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. It is suggested that you go out for an hour tour so that you have enough time to take in all the beauty. You will take a boat out until you are to a certain point far enough away from land, and then you will take a pontoon boat to bring you to a location where you have the opportunity to go deep sea diving & snorkeling. Abigail went snorkeling on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef and she described it as one side of the reef being coral and the other side just drops straight down into a deep darkness. Crazy right?! She saw sharks, different types of fish, clams,and starfish-it was all very colorful. Australia is know for their sea creature, the sea cucumber. Be careful because if you upset this creature, it will spit it’s guts out at you! You also have to be cautious of not touching the coral because that can be harmful as well.
If you consider yourself having good balance, surfing at Bondi Beach should also be on your list of “to do.” Here you will be able to get surfing lessons from the local surf shop. First, they will teach you how to surf on land and then you’ll take the courageous step of trying it out in the ocean. There is a net that keep the sharks and whales out of the surfing area, but the day after she left, a surfer got knocked off his board by a whale, so I am not sure how reliable the net is.
Finally, you should try to get the chance to go to an animal sanctuary and get to hold a koala. What is surprising about the koala is it smells really bad and its claws were super sharp. Not to be worried though, these animals just sit in trees all day and nap all the time. Kangaroos are also very abundant, as well as opossums. In fact, people try to hit the opossums with their car because they consider them to be such a nuisance.
I hope this give you a good idea of the opportunities that Australia has to offer and that you consider traveling there! It is definitely on my bucket list and I hope to get the chance to travel there someday and experience these amazing opportunities. All comments welcome!
I like how you are incorporating people who have visited the region as a source of information. While everyone hears about the opera house and the Great Barrier Reef (this would be intimidating yet exhilarating), the other places such as the evening dinner cruise or the animal sanctuary sound really fun (although I think the claws would scare me from holding the koala). I also appreciate how you went into the different cuisine available there as I did not know they ate kangaroo (it better have hops in it, haha, get it? Do not actually put in hops as they probably would not mix). Overall, I think it is interesting and sounds like a great bit to visit. Maybe the one other thing you could add (if you still have any room) is the beauty of other places in Australia other than Sydney. The outback covers the middle third of Australia so you could describe more of this. This is simply a small idea but I think this is really cool and I can’t wait to see what you write about next (New Zealand is lit)!